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Heartwarming! Broke students who can’t afford places to live allowed to stay in their cars in the parking lot!
I’m reading this after coming from a thread in which people were mocking or handwringing over an article that suggested the official poverty line was unrealistically low.
I would be excited to find any open parking spot at school that won’t get me ticketed and/or towed
“Entrepreneurs” will soon be snapping up parking lots and charging rent for a space. Capitalism!..yay?
They already do this? Where do you live with free parking?
A parking spot makes more than I do…
This is not a solution it’s a workaround. Sleeping in cars is typically hard sleeping, which is still the problem.
Don’t call it a crisis, sell it as a new hip lifestyle on social media! #vanlife
ugh. Living in vehicles can work-I’ve done so most of my life-but not in a fucking toyota corrola
I was homeless for about 2.5 months and slept in the parking lot of 24 hour fitness in my honda civic.
Next step will be to provide totalled cars for students who are homeless AND can’t afford cars. They’ll be dropped in these “safe zones”. And then ask for a rent…
if this were a socialist country, rent would be abolished and everyone would be living comfortably. would socialism/communism help reduce homelessness and such?
Not in the long term, because owning a house is not free. The houses would fall apart after a few years without money for maintenance, repairs or upgrades. Any expenses that come with house ownership are paid by rent. My parents own their house that was build maybe 120 years ago, and every 10 years or so there is some expensive bill because something needs modernisation or repairs like roof, windows, plumbing, power, facade, wet basement, heating, …
As the owner of an historic property, really in a fully socialist or communist state, we would be knocking old houses down to make way for multifamily dwellings. Maybe that would be better. I can’t stomach the thought, although, amusingly, I can’t afford the upkeep on my own house, nor can I afford to sell it and move elsewhere. The golden handcuffs that rot while you are stuck in them.
what if house ownership is collectivized and nationalized?
What keeps the guy at the top of that pyramid from not being an asshat?
who are you talking about?
Guillotine
Ignoring the equity you gain when you’re paying down a mortgage on a house.
Any expenses that come with house ownership are paid by rent.
Just … No.
That was not the question. While still being cheaper than rent because nobody is trying to profit from you living there, getting the roof fixed, 15 new insulated windows installed, 1900s electric grid replaced did cost them more than 10k euros each time, for which they had to take out a credit.
So your parents are landlords.
and are raking in the rewards of their tenants paying rent
Lol, they live alone in the house they inherited from their parents. Nobody pays them any rent since I don’t live there. It’s in a small town without any jobs and population decline since the 90s, not exactly the place where there is high demand.
With each new headline like this I hate my country just a little bit more.
time to organize. be a revolutionary optimist, and NOT give in to counterrevolutionary doom and gloom. seriously!
They threw tea in the ocean for less than what’s happening to us right now!!! And Americans are letting it happen while stealing own HARD EARNED money to line the pockets of everyone elected… it’s savage!
what do you mean by that?
Anything but build affordable housing or abolish rent. It’s like that “no way to prevent this” Onion article.
You don’t even have to abolish rent. There are giant predatory companies, small local landlords that got lucky with their timing, and everything in between. They’re getting money for doing nothing, and aren’t going to start contributing to society just because they have to be less wealthy for no effort! Slash rents now to get people homes, and implement rent control and price ceilings.
Maybe put the parking lot down by the river, that’s where I’d like to park my van
River access costs extra
I N N O V A T I O N
Even pod apartments would be better than this…
At least it’s something. I had multiple friends in college 15 years ago that were homeless and lived out of their cars. They went to classes every day, did tutoring, hung out with other people in the student centers, and whatnot like everyone else. Pretty sure it’s common for all colleges. People just don’t talk about it so a lot of people have no idea.
Honestly, a Japanese-style capsule hotel and net cafe would probably do very well in a university environment.
Granted, that’s still charging people for homelessness, which doesn’t help any of the underlying problems. It’s just slightly less dystopian since it’s cheap.
I mean it would be very space efficient to build such a space on some of where the parking lot is. A smallish parking space is 8’x16’ so take 3 spaces, assuming each pod needs an exterior space of 4x8, stacked 2 high you can easily fit at least 32 pods in just 3 parking spaces with enough space leftover for hallway and a communal kitchen or something. They already have a public bathroom and shower facility so they’d only need the sleeping space and some communal recreation space that they can keep open 24/7 for their students staying in the pods
Affordable shelter would go a long way towards reducing homelessness.
whoa there einstien, jam your big fat brain back down on this dollar shaped toast
*not a dig at you, btw. It’s the obvious answer, I just hate the world right now
I slept in my car a lot while I was in college, but I wasn’t homeless. It was just more convenient. “Safe” was the location wherever my car was parked, I would just avoid parking it in unsafe areas.
The difference here is choice. I have slept in my car on road trips. These people are sleeping in cars because they can’t afford housing. If that doesn’t concern you - it should.
It’s concerning that people need housing.
My point was more about the providing safe spaces to sleep in their car. That’s weird. Did anyone ask for that? What kind of solution is this? Was a lack of safe car camping locations the problem that should have been addressed or should the lack of real housing have been addressed?
Its normalization. Its framed as a good thing… Like “protect the children” while masking the problematic thing… Like mass surveillance or in this case: people can’t afford a place to sleep.
I had to sleep in my car from time to time when I was in college.
I’d park in a well-lit spot in an active parking lot (back in the before times, many major retailers were open 24/7) in a safer part of town. The backseats of my car were pull-downs that opened directly into the trunk. So, I’d sneakily climb through and into the trunk, then curl up back there to sleep.
It was a dark space and since nobody could see me back there, there was less chance of someone targeting me for robbery (sleeping person = easy target) or calling the cops on me (sleeping person = drugs or medical emergency). But those were still factors that added lots of stress to an already shitty situation.
I know times are harder for more people these days, but I figured I’d share since a lot of people don’t actively recognize that things were also difficult for many people back in the day as well. While there’s obviously a problem that needs to be solved here, and it sucks that we’re at a point where this is considered a solution, I would just say, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
Of course we should strive for a situation where everybody has a home, familial / social supports, good stable income, etc. But, also, even a little added comfort from having a safe® place to park & sleep as well as access to things like showers and bathrooms is a tiny little step in the right direction.
Well put. It’s in no way the solution, but any progress at the local level, given the little funding they’re provided, is better than waiting for foundational changes that aren’t close to being implemented. These programs are clearly helping at-need students and are at least attempting to give them a better chance of succeeding in their goals.
“We have the money to fix the problem, we really just don’t want to.”
Everyone always says homelessness is a complicated issue due to addiction and mental health and then that’s it. full stop. in many peoples heads those TWO groups are the ONLY groups that make up the homeless population. but after volunteering I know better. you have students, you have women escaping domestic abuse, you have the elderly who can no longer afford rent, you have kids who are LGBTQ+ that have been disowned by their families, you have refugees, and you have people who simply lost their jobs and fell through the cracks.
allowing students to sleep in their cars is not a solution. it’s another band aid applied to a massive gaping wound. And this isn’t just an America issue, several countries are guilty of band aid “solutions”. I mean hell here in Canada the government is talking about investing $1billion into AI for fucks sake. That $1billion could be better served in providing people with homes. There’s never any long term planning here, always short term “solutions”. Wouldn’t it be advantageous to governments to ensure people have homes in order to get them back into the workforce thus paying taxes.
Call me a heart on the sleeve soft liberal all you want but I’m of the firm belief that EVERYONE deserves and has the right to a home and food and if they can’t provide either of those things for themselves than we as a society, as a community, need to provide it for them. And I firmly believe that the majority of our society feel the same and wouldn’t mind their tax dollars going towards that. It’s just that the powers that be don’t want that.
This college doesn’t have the power to fix homelessness at the societal level, but they did have the power to do this. It’s a pretty awesome story.
It’s not a solution, but as someone who slept in her car in a college parking lot because her father got pissed at her being around his house while queer, it’s better than we’d had. I was afraid I would get in trouble for sleeping like that. Mind you, the main reason I couldn’t sleep that night was that it was really fucking cold and it’s really hard to sleep in a car.
Housing first is the best solution, but we also need humane solutions for short term homelessness. The “I left in the middle of the night and need a few days to get my bearings because things could go any humber of ways” type stuff. Shelters are so intimidating and have a reputation for being hostile to those that need them.
My college had a food bank, and as I think of this, they really could’ve had a shelter for students as well. Just a few dorm rooms done simple with literature on resources where if you need to stay there a few days you can. Instead I wasn’t allowed to sleep on a student’s couch for more than two consecutive nights.
One of the most humane solutions is also the most economically efficient. Early intervention programs like rent/utility assistance are significantly cheaper in the long run than trying to rehabilitate people who have already lost everything and have a litany of health issues because of it. If conservatives really want to save money, they should be embracing “an ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure.” Instead, they’re stuck in wanting to SEE the desperation before even considering helping. Safety nets are major economic stimulus in the long run because it’s much easier to attempt entrepeneurship if you aren’t making a life and death gamble. But something tells me the currently wealthy know this and don’t want competition popping up.
Then of course we also need to fix affordability issues, because unaffordable necessities put everyone at risk.
My point is that even if you mostly just care about efficient government and economic growth, you should still come to similar conclusions as “bleeding heart liberals.” Conservatives don’t come to those conclusions not by economic arguments, but because they fail to see the merit of collective problem solving. They want to have their own little castle with all their stuff that they can defend under penalty of death. We pretend the argument is about feasability and cost effectiveness, but the real issue is that they don’t think that any proposal that would take anything from them or require giving is an option. That’s why you see the economically destitute and ultra wealthy in an unholy alliance. Both of those groups are prone to wanting to circle the wagons and consider only the wellbeing of people in their little circle – the poor out of desperation, and the wealthy out of possessiveness. Everyone not in their little circle is someone else’s problem.
Even efficiency takes a back seat to the[ir] real top priority: Hurting the right people and being seen to do so.
it’s not politically viable though. even liberal voters will revolt at this because it is ‘unfair’ or seem as rewarding laziness.
I’ve seen liberal voters only revolt when it’s in their back yard.
“I want to help house the homeless, but I don’t want to see them.”
i live in boston area. every single person here is like this. they love the homeless, but if they have to see them in public the sudden they start talking about how they need to be ‘removed’ because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
same with schools, housing, healthcare. they support it, until it affects them. Then they are against it.
anf i you say you are for it, they call you evil and heartless and inconsiderate of ‘real people who work for a living’. because homeless people aren’t real people if they don’t have six figure office jobs.
NYMBYs is why politicians don’t have the balls to do anything progressive. Unless you have a wide swelling of support, which thanks to our two party system we never will, Democrats are often stuck keeping the status quo.
most democrats benefit from the status quo and that’s why they want it.
the democrat base is wealthy educated professionals who are making a killing in this economy. it’s not working-class people.
That last paragraph hits really close to home for me. I’m like super privileged currently, but have been homeless while I was going to college. Sleeping in my car or any friend who would let me crash on their couch or closet floor. It really sucks and it’s taxing physically & mentally.
Like a small jail cell would’ve been preferable to my car on cold nights. And yet I see so many people that have never experienced it properly claim that people need to earn it to feel better about themselves. Like fucking no they don’t Trevor! Tell you what, you go try and sleep in the cold for a few nights and tell me how productive you are the next day!
You are totally correct, but there is something else: There are limits to everybodies agency. If you’re somewhere in a college administration, you can’t reroute those AI billions into housing for students. That’s not going to happen. But you can try to help struggling students with the tools and powers you have and if it’s a parking lot where they can sleep without fear that robbers or police will harass them, that’s good! If you find a way to give leftover food from the cafeteria to hungry students, that’s also great - even if there shouldn’t be hungry students at all.
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Ew, your hatred of people and desire for others to be suffering or non-existent is showing and it’s gross.
It’s such a 19th century-ass take that it’s on the verge of proposing eugenics and Magdaline laundries.
according to OP we should apparently murder the homeless because nobody below a certain income level should be allowed to live or have kids. i’ve seen this argument before… mostly from people who had wealthy parents and feel like nobody should have kids unless their parents have millions in the bank to pave an easy life path for their children… just like theirs did.
Only the wealthy should be allowed to procreate, huh?
yes. it’s a popular view among the wealthy in particular.
i’ve met many people who have told me i should never have been born because my parents weren’t rich and I had to pay for my college education with loans and scholarships. they argued that people like me are a ‘drain’ and that i ‘stole’ my position uni from a more deserving rich person. they don’t believe in class mobility, just class punishment.
When I was younger i took credit for intelligence and hard work getting a full scholarship to a good school. That’s part of it, but l realize I started in a good place
As I get older I believe everyone who wants to should have a free college education because we desperately need a more knowledgeable and capable society. And it better be ready by the time I’m ready to sit back
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