A new ‘solution’ to student homelessness: a parking lot where students can sleep safely in their cars
A new ‘solution’ to student homelessness: a parking lot where students can sleep safely in their cars
A drive-in bedroom. How very American.
We're collectively picking all the worst solutions, aren't we?
We have sunk to the point where living in your car is an acceptable living option, and the government would rather have that, than address the basic problem of housing affordability.
To exacerbate the issue, many communities and states are "banning" and criminalizing homelessness, arresting people for the crime of being so poor you can't afford any sort of roof.
The beatings will continue until we learn to enjoy it.
Paraphrasing a quote I head years ago: Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.
The 1930s had hoovervilles.
We have the trump dorms.
"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
They'll finally get to use their Rivian's third bedroom.
Hard times for people living outside their means.
Ts&Ps!
Heartwarming! Broke students who can't afford places to live allowed to stay in their cars in the parking lot!
yeah this is their solution. not the 'least worst stopgap while we build student affordable housing', this is it.
What a time to be alive.
This reminds me of those stories of old England where there were warehouses filled with coffins and you could rent a coffin to sleep in if you were homeless. Or even better, if you are too poor for the coffin there were those houses where you can rent your place on a rope tied between two wooden beams, so you can hang ober the rope and have a good night's sleep until in the morning the owner wakes you up by cutting the rope.
I would be excited to find any open parking spot at school that won't get me ticketed and/or towed
Progress.
:3
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.
"Entrepreneurs" will soon be snapping up parking lots and charging rent for a space. Capitalism!...yay?
They already do. Paid parking is a thing in pretty much every city in America. In many places, parking lots are wildly profitable. Each parking spot can often earn upwards of $50 per hour during surges.
Paid parking lots in Dallas average somewhere around $8 per hour. That’s with some people paying like $30 for three hours, or $60 for all-day parking. Assuming a ~50% occupancy (busy during the day, emptier overnight) will have a 100 spot lot taking home around $9600 per day.
That’s a number that many coffee shops and convenience stores could only dream of… And the lot doesn’t even need to worry about things like maintaining inventory or hiring cashiers. Their overhead costs are basically nonexistent. They just plop a sign with a QR code at the entrance for people with Apple/Google Pay, and have an automated card reader for the people who don’t have phones. A pair of minimum wage attendants can watch multiple lots in a few city blocks, golf carting between them every ~20 minutes as they make the rounds to scan license plates and make sure people are paid up. Maybe give the attendant who calls in the most tows an extra vacation day each quarter to keep them “motivated”.
Security cameras make limiting your security liability easy. Hell, in many cases tow truck companies will even pay the owner to be allowed to tow from their lots. Because the tow company makes money every single time they snag a car, so they’ll pay a percentage of that to be allowed to tow cars from their lots. So towing enforcement actually makes you money instead of being an expense.
busy during the day, emptier overnight
Ah, so THAT is the problem they're looking to solve here.
My college roomate's father got really rich owning parking lots in the downtown business district. Just simple ground level lots, no multi-floors. He bit the bullet and bought the first one, then kept buying them. By the time my roomie was in college, his dad owned about ten of them, and they had serious dinero.
They already do this? Where do you live with free parking?
A parking spot makes more than I do...
See? We can have a society in which some people have 10 homes and some have none.
"#BothSides"
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 mean yeah, the poverty line is unrealistically low. It’s tied to the average annual price of food, even though food is not a major expense in most impoverished households. Truly broke people are spending like five dollars a day on food, with beans, rice, lentils, bouillon, spices, and whatever else they happen to have available/find on sale in a 20 year old crockpot. Food is a negligible expense when you take the time to prep, and truly impoverished people don’t have a choice. They’re forced to prep, or else they’ll starve.
The other costs, like rent, car payments, utilities, etc., have all massively ballooned in comparison to the price of food. Rent only used to account for ~20% of expenses, but now it often accounts for over 50%… But since the poverty line is tied directly to food, it hasn’t adjusted to maintain a realistic measure of expenses.
WHY are Less people Going to College?
College costs are ridiculous.
Student loans are extortionate.
The ROI on the investment is shitty. IOW you get an expensive degree for a job field that doesn’t pay enough to pay for the degree and living expenses.
There’s a big social media anti-college push. Don’t know whether that’s politically motivated/propaganda, just get rich being a tiktokker or something, or a combination of that and all of the above.
Ive been in and out of college since 2014 and my most recent attempt, specifically one programming course, was the final straw that made me throw my hands up and say fuck it ill teach myself.
On top of paying out of state tuition, i had to pay fees that were meant to support the online learning platform the school used to deliver virtual courses. No biggie, every school ive attended has the same fees. However, this one programming course was integrated with pearson and not just for a few assignments, but for literally everything. Every module, assignment, quiz, etc. was a hyperlink to pearson. My teacher was doing 0 teaching and grading, I was still expected to pay fees for the schools learning platform that was nothing but hyperlinks to pearson, and then on top of all of that i was expected to pay an extra fee to use pearson's platform. But, wait, it gets better. The hyperlinks to pearson were actually directing to pearson's in-house built course that they openly sell on their site at a lower rate than what my school tried to charge me and with a longer access period than I would have gotten through my school.
UMGC, university of maryland global campus, essentially tried to outsource my education to a 3rd party and then asked me to front the cost in addition to their own fees. Yeah, no, i withdrew from the school. As much as I want my bachelors, its not worth it if i have to play these games.
it's an easy message when they already turned college into a scam. I went 10 years ago and I felt like I was getting ripped off. I ended up flunking out and now my student loans I'll never pay off are in default. we need to make employment less dependent on credentials
Boys are being fed that college degrees are useless, and women are starting to attend college at slightly higher rates. From a realistic perspective, the costs are just crazy.
If I were a kid today, I’d totally go to vet school in Europe.
Out of interest I looked up the price difference.
Typical fees per year in the EU range from zero up to around 3K euro (about $3500) with most being below 1K.
US starts at around 12K for in state public and goes well over 40 for private or out of state.
That's debt for life levels depending on the earning potential of your course.
Crazy financial gamble to have to take at 18.
The millennial generation was called the echo boom generation because it is significantly larger than Gens X & Z. There was also a massive expansion in the percentage of millennials going to college over previous generations.
So millennials were the largest generation and had high college rates that Gen Z can't match.
Because in earlier schooling they never learned the difference between “fewer” (used with a noun that can be counted) and “less” (used with noun treated as a mass or volume or level)
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!
“Orphan-crushing Machine”
Maybe they can finally pay off their school lunch dept
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(r) place to park & sleep as well as access to things like showers and bathrooms is a tiny little step in the right direction.
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…
shoulder of any interstate ramp. leave parking lights on. lock doors. turn off engine and sleep. good for a few hours.
Even pod apartments would be better than this..
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.
Affordable shelter would go a long way towards reducing homelessness.
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
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.
Maybe put the parking lot down by the river, that's where I'd like to park my van
River access costs extra
How about REAL SOLUTION
BAN PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Zoidberg: Still, to have your own parking spot!
The american dream is still alive: enterprising young men can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, purchase an abandoned lot with their inheritance, and turn it into an affordable housing lot for struggling college students!
And after a few years, they can have a flashy exit when they sell their lot to a private equity firm for big bucks!
And with close access to free paper printing to make such incredible decorations with.
Paper curtains, paper quilts, and my homework was used for those paper coasters.
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?
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.
So your parents are landlords.
and are raking in the rewards of their tenants paying rent
what if house ownership is collectivized and nationalized?
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.
Tbh as someone who had to sleep in her car a few times in college, it would have been a nice thing to have. Like, yeah it's bad that it's needed, and an indoor option like some benches in rooms that are unused at night would've been also desired, but the most important thing was being able to know I wouldn't get in trouble for sleeping somewhere.
I get that college is expensive, but I think this hits more closely at the lack of social services and the inherent instability in the lives of people new to adulthood. They don't have the financial backing to get a hotel for a night, especially as they're putting in a full time job of their education (though they may very well be working as well).
They're also just more likely to be in unstable living conditions. Compared to adults 5-10 years older they're far less likely to be in stable long term habitation of their choosing and instead are far more likely to be living with roommates, parents, or a partner of only a few years or even less with whom they have little commitment beyond a lease. These situations are more volatile, especially in ways that can lead to needing to sleep somewhere else for a few nights.
Hookup city
Wrong place for this take right now
Edit: don't feed the troll.
It’s never the wrong place for this take.
Fuck cars
why would you have a car when you don't have a place to live. There's a piece of the logic I am missing
A beater car is still probably cheaper than an apartment. Also, you can't drive your slummy apartment away if you don't like the scene wherever it is, nor can it transport you to work. It's also some modicum of space wherein you can lock up what stuff you do own.
If I were placed under the terms of some very specific curse where I had to choose explicitly between a car and a house, I'm sorry to say I would be forced to choose my car. Actually, if I had my druthers I would probably pick my truck over my car, because despite its impracticality for daily transportation it's big enough to live in semi-comfortably as kind of a mini RV and would also allow me to store and transport some tools and stuff. (It'd also be much easier to use my truck to make money than a car, in some manner of hypothetical sudden destitution scenario.)
If you aren't an American, it may be difficult to understand.
Many cities here are very sprawled out and designed for cars, and therefore they're necessary for economic survival, perhaps more so than a home.
You can easily buy a used car for less than two months rent around here. Less if you shop around for a deal. That car provides transportation, shelter, and does not need to be repurchased every month.
When I was 20-ish it would have cost as much to own a car than to rent an apartment even if you never drove anywhere. Realities vary.
Cheers, yes that does add up when you think about it.
A lot of homeless in America are people who had a decent paying job and lost it. So, they had some material wealth before becoming homeless and this could have included a car. At that point, people may prioritize the car because it provides transportation and shelter while the home only provides shelter. It is also likely that the car is cheaper than an apartment.
There are also a growing class of people who live out of their car and migrate across country during the year. A lot of these people are retired or have some disability insurance, want to travel, and see being alone on BLM land as preferable to living in a dying rust belt town.
Thanks for the context. I understand
It's america. If you didn't have a car you couldn't go anywhere. In many places this is literally true in all but a very select and completely unaffordable zip codes
I N N O V A T I O N
I feel bad for Edgar but he needs to learn how to touch type.
At least it's safe from police brutality. I just watched a video of a police officer breaking grandpas ribs and collapsing his lung for sleeping in his car at a unofficial park. He was driving across the states and got so tired that he couldn't keep his eyes open, so he pulled over to nap with his fucking bird. He had his pet bird in the passenger seat. So we can't even sleep in our cars without getting assaulted
I know many people who worked in the capital but lived outside of it and, since traffic makes it basically impossible to get into the city between 8 and 9am, they would arrive at ~7 and just nap for an hour or two in their cars. I can't, for the life of me, even fathom why that would be wrong in the eyes of a copper. Truly ACAB.
I often sleep in my car while traveling for work. It doesn't make sense to pay $100 plus, when I'm only going to be in it for 6 hours.
I ALWAYS park in a rest area or a truck stop, and I've never had an issue.
If your company is not paying expenses for a hotel, get another job.
Crazy what Americans have to go through
At a rest stop or truck stop it's expected that truckers are a sleep. I know Michigan can be full of truck stops while Illinois has maybe one that I know, more like a welcome center. I'm actually impressed that Michigan invested into so many stops. While driving through some parts the country I got a piss into a bottle or behind a dumpster. The dumpster is fun, I can scare the shit out of random employees taking out the trash. I could also end up unconscious, risky