Dispossesed in the Land of Dreams by Monica Potts
The New Republic by Monica Potts
Dispossesed in the Land of Dreams:
Those left behind by Silicon Valleys technology boom struggle to stay in the place they call home.
December 13, 2015
A majority of the homeless population in Palo Alto93 percentends up sleeping outside or in their cars. In part, thats because Palo Alto, a technology boomtown that boasts a per capita income well over twice the average for California, has almost no shelter space: For the citys homeless population, estimated to be at least 157, there are just 15 beds that rotate among city churches through a shelter program called Hotel de Zink; a charity organizes a loose network of 130 spare rooms, regular people motivated to offer up their homes only by neighborly goodwill. The lack of shelter space in Palo Altoand more broadly in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, which comprise the peninsula south of San Francisco and around San Joseis unusual for an area of its size and population. A 2013 census showed Santa Clara County having more than 7,000 homeless people, the fifth-highest homeless population per capita in the country and among the highest populations sleeping outside or in unsuitable shelters like vehicles.
San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area are gentrifying rapidlyespecially with the most recent Silicon Valley surge in social media companies, though the trend stretches back decadesleading to a cascade of displacement of the regions poor, working class, and ethnic and racial minorities. In San Francisco itself, currently the city with the most expensive housing market in the country, rents increased 13.5 percent in 2014 from the year before, leading more people to the middle-class suburbs. As real estate prices rise in places like Palo Alto, the middle class has begun to buy homes in the exurbs of the Central Valley, displacing farmworkers there.
https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dreams
2naSalit
(86,071 posts)His GF moved into a large house with several other adults in a sort of collective in order to be able to pay the bills and live in San Jose. My niece and her husband have to have two incomes just to have a two bedroom apartment in Oakland... I moved from San Diego a long time ago and I was facing $700/month rent + utilities to have a bedroom in someone else's apartment that was the size of my closet here in this little cabin in the woods where I pay less than half that with utilities included. Good thing I don't care for city life, couldn't afford it if I did.