Not defending the tattletales, but obviously you’ve never done business with U-Haul, because you are vastly overestimating its employees’ work ethic.
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Nobody is throwing parties in storage units. Storage units are small; I don’t think I’ve ever seen one larger than a 40’ intermodal shipping container. Storage facilities do not have wood-framed walls or stairs. Indoor storage facilities have sprinklers and illuminated exit signs. Storage facilities carry insurance. I could go on.
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Unsafe conditions… such as living on the street?
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That’s the chapter called " So you think you’d make a good plotergeist.".
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I can believe both personally.
I have all the amenities you would find in an apartment, just in a tiny space.
This bloke has been looking at some crummy apartments. Mine has windows.
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I’m specifically talking about uHaul corporate. I’m aware of the ‘on the ground’ situation, have rented and done business there many times, in addition to the sometimes even more bizarre family operated joints. I’m not sure the story went far enough for it to be a crisis for the upper level management, who will eventually learn about this and generate a response in due time. If this was featured on the Today show we might have seen more.
Self storage may eventually beyond units.
Although, for me, the idea of storing anything longer than a few months during a life transition feels absurd. But that’s me.
I met a guy once who, after a stint in the Army, was just going around the US staying wherever. His secret was to stay up all night somewhere and then during the day go sleep in a public park on a blanket, like he was just out taking a nap. For some reason the police will roust people at night in a way they don’t bother during the day.
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Unsafe conditions, like sleeping under a bridge?
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Very true. That’s why it’s a good idea to pay your muscle-for-hire a decent wage. Otherwise, guard labour tends to seek out other income opportunities, usually by exploiting those less powerful than themselves (and often to the detriment of the official employer). Of course, the kind of person or organisation that’s compelled to hire guard labour in the first place is often a cheapskate, so the petty corruption grows as a matter of course. Something to look forward to as inequality grows.
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I think this guy may now be living in Rob’s safe…
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One of my work colleagues lives in a van. She just drives to the job site the night before, then sleeps in until a few minutes before we start work.
Not coincidentally, she can give you a detailed review of pretty much every public toilet in Sydney.
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This whole thing looks familiar…
Oh. That Google employee that lived in a truck in the parking lot. That’s right.
Is it fear or people just not wanting a semi-permanent RV parked right in front of their house? I know I wouldn’t want it.
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Yeah, this is what caused San Rafael to ban parking of RVs and Campers in city limits. The claim was not just that people were sleeping in vehicles, but that there were collateral effects of filth and crime associated with the vehicular camping. And having walked by some areas in SF where people are camping in vehicles, the claims aren’t necessarily made up. The question in my mind is whether the blunt instrument of a total ban is the way to go. I wouldn’t want an RV, often with a loud, smelly generator, parked in front of my place. But I also don’t want people freezing on the streets. Not sure the best way to resolve the two.
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My neighborhood is mixed residential/commercial, mostly multi-unit, and we have epidemic homelessness in my city. Most of the RVs are parked in public parking along the streets. The hysteria comes from the refusal to accept that nice people can be down and out, and anyone living in an RV must be selling drugs/sex/weapons/etc.
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I hear you.
That’s just…well, privileged, I guess. I assume, and it is an assumption, that folks living in RVs and vans are down on their luck (probably working poor or out of work) but they aren’t necessarily up to anything…nefarious. They’re just trying to get by.
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To many middle-class-and-up people, being visibly poor is nefarious.
Sometimes I’m working in remote bushland, but I’m often also on the fringes of public reserves, usually in wealthy neighbourhoods. There are no dining facilities provided in the bush; at lunchtime, we just sit on the ground. If there’s a park bench nearby, we might sit there instead. Our staff wear a clearly labeled uniform, and the gender split is roughly 50/50.
We routinely get complaints relayed via the council about “scruffy men sitting outside my house / lurking near the playground”. The only way to avoid that is to make sure we eat in places where rich people can’t see us.
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