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Planning on camping out in the upcoming 2020 Jeep Renegade Hybrid, which is less than 6’.
Love me them legal loopholes, just like most of the upper echelon of society (I have lived long enough to see myself become the villian to some degree, I guess, but maybe I can become the antihero we deserve 
)
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What’s the end game? Make it so that they are force to pay people more so they can afford to live there? Or make it so they start losing competent workers because they can’t afford to live there.
I know silicon valley has a lot of prestige, but like 95% of the rest of the US has a cheaper everything cost of living. You could save a lot of money in that respect by having a head quarters in the midwest. That and there are many fine skilled workers out here.
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I see your point. I mean, I completely dismiss it but I see your point.
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This same law was just passed in San Diego. Effect? Zero, nada, zilch, City of SD miraculously found out that enough impound space isn’t available to enforce the law.
Back to square one…
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This seems especially shitty for people who happen to own vehicles taller than 6 feet and never inted to live in them. Contractors, telecom crew, minivan families, etc. Hell, our Subaru Forester only escapes this by 4”.
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I freakin’ love KOA. We occasionally stay in their Kamping Kabins on vacation. Usually around $40-60 a night and way more fun, interesting and cool than a crummy Holiday Inn. And usually situated somewhere awesome like across the street from the Herkimer Diamond mines.
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I don’t have anything against them. Always had fun at several places I would use regularly when I lived in Oregon. My travel has just evolved since the 90’s to be… in other countries and I just don’t travel up and down I-5 like I used to.
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Technically, that’s what some of them did, and now those areas have had wild property value increases.
I was just there earlier this month, working with a branch of my company that has to move. It was based in this gorgeous building with a view looking out over some water (they lost me explaining what it was). No one wants to move, but they have no choice. See, Google has office space nearby and someone from there noticed that, yes, the building and look is fantastic, so they bought the entire business park campus. And now has told us they will not renew the leases, as they want the space for expansion. The space we’re moving to is going to add ~30m onto the commute (because everything local is INSANELY expensive) and I’m sure we’ll lose good employees due to it.
The insane inflation/housing boom happened in super fast time with the proposed A2 expansion earlier this year. Speculators drove the prices through the roof, only to now have that area crater when Amazon pulled out.
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Don’t worry, selective enforcement is the heart of any measure like this. They’ll only apply it to “those people.”
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I live in Austin. I was here in the mid and late 1990s when the tech stock bubble was still building. TI and all those other companies were still building and there were startups on every street corner. I clearly remember RVs and popup trailers in every parking lot and lining every quiet street. I remember ads in the paper (yes, I’m that old) where people were renting out motor homes sitting in their driveways. The less-visible parts of the greenbelts were full of recent immigrants, come here for jobs with Tracor and MCC and Tivoli and Motorola, living in freaking tents. The “no shortage” you talk about is VERY recent. Any time there’s a boom, there’s going to be more people flood in than there are living spots available, and the prices will skyrocket to where the lower-grade workers have to improvise a place to sleep. I saw it happen here.
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The end game appears to be the immediate effect: chase out low-waged workers.
Short-term solutions for an instant-gratification era.
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it is taxed… and their scumbag tax lawyers make shell companies overseas to “really make the profits” so it’s not taxed here.
BTW, the phenomena is actually historical… They’re are called sundown towns.
It was Jim Crow stuff, expanded to other minorities until in the 30’s okies out of the dust bowl became a part of the game.
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Sure. Turn all the public spaces, parks, forest preserves, and land along the various rivers and creeks wind into modern hobo jungles. Brilliant.
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How will you be able to tell the difference between the hobos and senior developers who just want to live cheap?
I challenge that you will not be able to tell.
Also…
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With the way kids dress in pork pie hats and suspenders listening to old records, it would be impossible to tell.
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Mr. Doctorow, you had an editorial ommission.
“thanks to the sky-high wages commanded by techies, who have gone on to bid up all the real-estate in the region.”
This is simply NOT true. It is convenient to blame tech workers, but they do not set the market rates in the Bay Area. Property owners do. Property owners also, as evidenced in your article, often limit solutions to housing problems in order to defend their rent seeking interests.
There are plenty of examples of tech workers who also live in vans, or in parks, simply because they didn’t pay enough extortionate rent to property owners looking to kill the next golden goose.
In my own case, I was homeless for 6 months when I moved to the Bay, and left there because at no point in my career did I ever say “I look forward to putting in all these hours to learn hard to do stuff so I can hand all of my money over to some greedy dirtbag.”
So please stop framing this as a privileged worker vs unprivileged worker issue. It is a monied class of owners exploiting all workers issue, and has been for a long time in that region.
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You are talking exclusively about Silicon Hills (Austin) which famously has had a housing problem for something like 40 years. What it hasn’t had were laws restricting low income people from using RV parks and campsites. Additionally, the commute from surrounding communities is mush easier than you will find in the bay area. You also seem to be forgetting about the root problem - housing prices. Even when there was a shorttage, you didn’t see 800sq ft homes selling for a million.
The Texas telcom corridor has been home to companies like Texas Instruments, Nortel, and AT&T since the 70’s.
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But Mountain View is where we’re supposed to leave the next RV for Mom to take off for the border in! Hopefully it goes better than last time.
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The terminators are on to your plan.
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