alt Hacker NewsWe also happen to have an extremely serious homelessness problem, which is not relegated to CA.
Go to any warm state in the country and ride through the parking lots at night. If you are the observant type, you should see an astonishing number of folks living in their vehicles.
And home ownership is not only downward, but no longer part of the American dream for most people now. Storage facilities for many, are a place to lay down, or rent hope that things won't always be "this way".
We need to fix this. It's not just drugs and mental problems anymore.
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It is very interesting that in most big cities around the world, but especially Europe having a car is a big luxury while in the US homeless people have cars.
Required link I always leave in these discussions:
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
IMO high housing prices are destroying civilization.
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Of course the storage unit living has been romanticized in literature too, I recall the unit in Snow Crash being a whopping 600 square feet. A palace compared to the reality of storage unit and car living today.
As someone who has worked directly with these people in Los Angeles and Seattle, I tend to focus locally, otherwise the enormity of the situation is overwhelming and fills me with despair.
When you say “we need to fix this” no one can agree what “this” is. There is no one “this” and it becomes a morass of generational systemic issues, localized problems, competing views on economics, morality, government and more. It reminds me of when tech people show up to “fix” education. It just isn’t a single issue.
I agree we need to fix something, but as soon as I think about the big picture it feels futile and I have been involved in efforts for decades.