Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/12/backseat-driving.html
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More people are soon to join:
Retirement homes will be parking lots.
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Americathon was satire at the time. As was Idiocracy.
If life has to imitate art, why couldn’t it imitate Iain Banks’s Culture novels instead?
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Makes one think twice about downsizing to an RV or tow-able micro home.
I’m sticking with my spouse and my plans to downsize to a two room beach shack built on pontoons.
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My first thought were the “Mopads” from 2,000AD’s Judge Dredd strip. As ever the present manages to mirror the dystopian futures of the past.
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Naturally California adds cars to the mix:
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“overnight parking is essential…” I think you have set the bar for essential too low here. Affordable housing is essential.
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Whenever I suggest that paying your home mortgage off is / should be ones top priority before retirement, this sort’a thing pops up to make my point.
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Just “falls short”? I would argue that even if they provide enough safe overnight parking for everyone who needs it, that’s still not doing a damned thing to actually help solve the city’s housing crisis. Unless they really think living in a car is an adequate housing solution.
If anything, it would allow them to go on ignoring it, since the bandaid will have been applied.
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Just as long as those pontoons are American Made…
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Roger that!
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Let the family of school kids park in the school parking lot
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This, so much.
It’s 2019 in the United States of America, and we’re “solving” a homelessness crisis by making overnight parking safer and more accessible?
Fuck,
Fuck
Fuck
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So we’re right on track for Soylent Green then? The fact that it’s supposed to be 2022 (3 years away and right on track!) but everyone’s living in 1960s cars kind of ruins it for me. I’ll just try to imagine this scene but with Honda Civics and minivans. But it sounds like we’ll be living it soon so that’s cool.
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Maybe it’s heartless of me, but I can’t help but think that if you’re living in your car because homes in your area are over a million dollars and apartments are several grand a month, maybe you should move someplace cheaper?
But then they’d have to raid their (nonexistent) trust fund until they find a (nonexistent) job where housing’s cheaper, or crash at their (nonexistent) cousin’s place.
The “go someplace else” answer to a number of society’s ills (racism, anti-abortion laws, lack of affordable housing, etc.) is not really an answer. As the article points out, these people have jobs, they have family, they have kids in school. They can’t just pick up and leave. It’s more complicated than that.
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A lot of people are fleeing “somewhere cheaper” because those are often the parts of the country ravaged by joblessness and meth addiction.
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Glad u qualify for the loan and managed to scrape through adverse events. I most sincerly feel that you do mean to take into account that sometimes life hands lemonsthat prevent those “basics” . here in austin I know of a couple that has their lot paid off and handed down in the family. Taxes bumped them out. Bye bye to another artist family from austin.
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Diet Soylent Green is made of skinny people.
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The would of course be welcome somewhere like my hometown of Cleveland. Of course they would be trading any social stability they have for an entirely new community with rampant poverty, but the houses are certainly cheap, even cheaper if the copper thieves haven’t gotten there yet.
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