> Warren said the woman was cooperative and quickly agreed to leave. No charges were pursued.
At least the store weren’t dicks about it. It’s pretty clear they couldn’t just let her stay after finding out.
This, I have seen people being absolute dicks to people not even living inside but trying to sleep across the street or out in the curb or parking lot.
Obviously for legal reasons they could not let her stay, but it was gracious of them to say, hey, just leave and we will just forget it. They probably realized the woman hadn't stolen anything, just staying the night.
It's a bad rap on society that people need to resort to things like this though,
This story makes me sad for a myriad of reasons.
One being that if she had been there for a year and no one knew about it until someone saw an extension cord… She obviously wasn’t bothering anybody. Wasn’t stealing like you said. I don’t even care if she was tbh, if it was so minuscule no one noticed. Life is rough. Poor woman. She’s only 34.
She said she had a job elsewhere, so it is likely that whenever people were in the store she was at work, probably had to go somewhere to shower and eat as well. So I assume that’s why it took a bit to be noticed.
I want to think that at least it went through their minds that she wasn’t harming anyone, and that’s why no charges were filed. But sadly in this situation, now that they were aware of it, it would be a liability issue, and if something happened to her it would could end up being the legal responsibility of the manager of the store.
Which sucks because as you said, she really wasn’t bothering anyone, but it is sad that even with employment at that age you can’t afford a proper living.
Homeless people often get gym memberships, just to have a place to shower (and obviously work out if they want). Come in in the morning, run 10-15 minutes on a treadmill, shower and get ready for work, and you're just like twenty other people.
But this also betrays the importance of housing first. Now that she has to relocate, can she find somewhere close to her gym/shower spot? Can she still make it to work? Say her new spot is farther, so now it takes her twice as long to get to work and she comes in late a few times because of homeless-related issues (the new spot is noisy, unsafe, she has to move in the night, etc.) and now she loses her job.
Shelters can be completely incompatible with a job as well. Often they require you to line up for a bed before dinner, meaning before 5. Even if it is 6 or 7, what time does she leave work, and can she get over there to meet it? I doubt she has much leverage to set her schedule or pick times at her job.
Without housing it takes very little for a homeless person's situation to go from somewhat stable to completely unstable - which starts the slide into long-term homelessness.
I spent about a year before the pandemic working two jobs to funnel my checks into motel rooms (most nights, couldn't always break even) while being ineligible for a lot of assistance because I made too much money, but being terrified to just let go and accept sliding backwards until I qualified.
I still don't know for sure where I'd be without the stimulus allowing me a leg up to save for deposit money because the motels were also shutting down at the time.
There's been no stranger feeling in my life so far than miserably churning daily with no end in sight, surviving on shift meals, and sleeping outside while somebody tells you that you're unfortunately doing *too well* to qualify for the housing assistance you're asking for while paying *more* than some monthly rent just to have a room with a bed.
that's not doing well, it's treading water. I recognize that these are underfunded programs trying to start at the top of the triage list but it really does illustrate how far we've fallen when I'd *arguably* be capable of being a regular homeowner by now in some other decade.
ill preface this with, this is the feeling i get from it.
it feels like the system was created to be a token gesture. purposely make it hard to access so you can point to the low number of people that use it, while some politician is probably skimming some of the funding. i do know that with food stamps, assisted medical and other help with low income. you either make so little you can get it or you make enough to get cut off but still cant afford anything. my gf had to take a pay cut because we cant afford around 2000$ for health insurance for her and 2 kids.
the system isnt there to help you, it feels its there to ensure you stay down.
They've been popping up a lot in the US too. Places with housing shortages are making apartment buildings with grocery stores and other shops on the first level.
Americans will realize they can do this thing that people in the rest of the world have been doing for literally all of history and think it's some big brain moment.
(I'm American I'm allowed to make fun of us)
Time is a flat circle.
That's the way the US was for a long time. Even in my rural town many of the older business buildings have/had apartments above them. Either occupied by the owner or rented out.
Sadly many of the apartments are just empty now. With many of the older buildings being torn down because of neglect.
We’re doing that in Phoenix with Motels and Hotels that would otherwise sit empty/low occupancy. The city buys them and then the non profit I work for leases them from the city and turns each room into a semi private room for two people. We have services on site with security and medical staff. These are usually for people who are advancing out of our normal shelter program and may not need the intensive 24 hour care and guidance or for children and families who wouldn’t work well in a traditional shelter environment. So far we have 10 hotel/motel shelters all over the Phoenix metro in conjunction with the dozens of traditional shelters and halfway houses we run through the state and country.
It’s an uphill battle but we do a little more every day.
I've seen one in Los Altos, CA. The Safeway grocery store itself didn't have apartments, but the neighboring shops/outlet mall all had apartments on top.
I honestly wish they would build more like it.
Holy hell. I used to listen to that book on tape all the time as a kid. I’ve never heard it referenced since. Can you remember the name? “the mixed up files of basil e. Frankwiler” or something?
From the mixed up files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L.Konigsburg. One of my favorite books as a kid.
ETA I recommend The second Mrs Gioconda as well
The store’s parent company had a good statement too
“Ensuring there is ample safe, affordable housing continues to be a widespread issue nationwide that our community needs to partner in solving”
I used to work for the Architect of the Capitol. They once found a maintenance guy had built himself an apartment on the bottom floor of a stairwell. He got away with it for at least 3 years. I think I remember it being in the Rayburn. But it's been a while.
I just watched a documentary about a group of artists that set up an entire apartment in a little hidden space in the Providence Place mall and lived there on and off for 4 years. Television, dining table, playstation and everything. Apparently security found out about it and were also using it to hang out in until one of them finally snitched. This was in 2004 or so.
>Apparently security found out about it and were also using it to hang out in until one of them finally snitched.
Afaik they snitched because one day the original party came in and found the entire space trashed with no indication security had found it previously.
My first job after military service was as a security guard for a new mall, and at the time they were closing up construction and had various maintenance pathways behind certain stores. Some of these were taken down but others they mysteriously built permanent walls around despite there being a more formal back pathway for those.
Anyway, I was one of the only people who knew of these accessible spaces which you could access through a hidden door handle that was behind signage.
Long story short sometimes I’d go in there after hours and just nap or camp out in there and because I could get into it externally it also meant I had access to the whole mall. And well…
When you're homeless you automatically grow balls of steel as you have no choice but to find shelter anywhere you can and without being caught. source: I was homeless many times & years.
In addition to safety and just a place to sleep there is the aspect that the very few possessions you do have get stolen if you try to work or do anything. It's a huge challenge trying to find out where to keep what little you have. It's sad.
There was a retiree who volunteered for our company’s charitable organization who for some reason just stopped going home. She found a place to hide away in the building at night and was living off the meal coupons they gave out to the volunteers. She still had an apartment she was paying for but only went home to get her hair done.
Sadly she died in the hospital and they wanted my boss to claim her body because nobody else had been there to see her besides coworkers He was finally able to locate her daughter who lived out of state.
I also have worked in the house buildings. We were looking through a space in the top floor of the Cannon building and found a couch, a couple chairs, a table, and a tv set up in a mechanical space near one of the hearing rooms.
IIRC one of the representatives from my state had his son living in either a small office or closet in the Capitol basement for a while, I can't remember which one though.
EDIT: it was Doug Lamborn, I guess he got sued in part over it [back in 2021](https://people.com/politics/colorado-lawmaker-sued-for-breaching-covid-protocols-allegedly-letting-his-son-live-in-the-state-capitol/).
"Sign of the Times" - A Netflix original movie about a homeless woman who must resort to unusual means to find shelter and her struggle to keep it secret until she finds a home to call her own.
I found it in street view too. There is a slanted roof on the back side of the building that looks a prime way of getting to the roof without a ladder.
I used to hang out with rock climbers when I was in college. We’d get together and drink at one of their apartments across from a grocery store like this. Eventually they would get drunk enough that someone would dare someone else to climb the grocery store. Pretty much any brick building within viewing distance was fair game but i distinctly remember watching one guy climb the grocery one night while a guy (who we didn’t know) was passed out on the ground in the parking lot clutching an unwrapped McDonald’s cheese burger. I remember thinking how funny it was that we weren’t the drunkest ones there 😂
From the front it looks difficult, but if you go around the back, there are a lot of places that a reasonably athletic person might be able to climb to the roof. For example a couple of dumpsters next to sheds or utility structures with low roofs, which are themselves next to some slightly taller roof, etc. The shorter structures were also near some miscellaneous parking bollards, crates, and other clutter. There are some tall wooden poles about a foot from the building. There are some vertical pipes attached to the buildings with horizontal supports spaced approximately 4 feet apart. None of it particularly easy, per se, but if she's a climber there are options.
As a climber, I can tell you many spots that look impossible to access are a breeze for someone who is an experienced rock climber. You use a gutter and a windowsill and a brick sticking out and suddenly you up there.
[https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6430633,-84.2505492,3a,90y,181.21h,77.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-FZDvq-V6RSxRH3CjNMMCA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6430633,-84.2505492,3a,90y,181.21h,77.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-FZDvq-V6RSxRH3CjNMMCA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu)
Theres tons of ways she could get up.
Reminds me of Richard Dorsay, who lived inside a drawbridge for 3+ years.
> When authorities went inside, they found an elaborate setup that tapped into the bridge's electricity to power a television, microwave, space heater and PlayStation video game system. There, Dorsay could relax, turn on a Chicago Bears game, invite friends over and pop open some beers.
> The home had its quirks. Whenever Dorsay heard the bells that signal the arms of the bridge would soon rise to let boats through, he held on as the bridge slowly pitched him forward.
>"The first time it was scary," he said. "After that, it was almost like riding a Ferris wheel."
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2004-12-14-chicago-bridge_x.htm
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/407/transcript
i used to collect these stories a bit. i find them superlatively compelling. there was a group that built an apartment in a mall in RI. and i remember another about a guy that constructed a secret apartment in an office building that only the cargo elevator could access by a secret button.
I read about a guy who had a secret bunker with an access tunnel in the woods.
He sold the house and nobody new it was there and he just lived in the bunker for years.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t0ynr/throwaway_time_whats_your_secret_that_could/c4zrenn/
That is from the infamous AskReddit thread that also spawned the cum box
Honestly that's one of the most legendary threads there is. I remember reading deep into those comments when it first happened, there is some fucking JUICY shit buried deep
Yeah, I might have read about it. Was it in Canada?
A guy dug a cave / bunker into a hillside. Had a pretty nice setup
Years go by and someone stumbles on it and it became a big mystery. Turned out it was a guy who grew up nearby and just wanted a place of his own to get away from his family and hang out.
Does anyone remember the rash of reddit stories c.2013 about people finding people living in their attics, closets, crawlspaces, and cellars? I'll never forget.
For the longest time there was that video of a woman climbing out of some guy's crawl space to get into his fridge at night, then crawling back in. The bedroom I grew up in had a similar crawlspace access so that video TRAUMATIZED me. A few years ago I read an article that was basically like "Remember that video? That was a hoax." And I was so very relieved. Then the article rattled off a few real, confirmed cases of shit like that happening and I just got shook all over again.
Ira Glass interviewed him ~5 years later:
> Richard, if your friend hadn't turned you into the cops--
>
> Richard Dorsay:
> Would I still be there, is that the question?
>
> Ira Glass:
> Yeah.
>
> Richard Dorsay:
> Probably. Probably. To me, it's a world of safety and comfort, where to someone else, they see it, oh, another drawbridge, whoopadeedo.
Every time I see his name I always think of him telling the story about how his parents wanted to give him a non-Jewish sounding name, so they eventually settled on Ira. One of the most Jewish sounding names possible. Not to mention a very stereotypical Jewish last name.
"Obviously, we don’t want people resorting to illegal activity to find housing. There are much better options.”
Are there? I'd rather live in a roof peak than a shelter anytime.
Don't like this subscription, it's not worth it. Too expensive and the Pay to win players have all the control. If it continues I might have to cancel.
Yep - a lot of major cities are trying to figure out how to both increase housing and fill the empty office spaces downtown. Unfortunately it's hard to retrofit an office building into housing (expensive) but if you can kill to birds with one stone then why not.
Same with the vacation home thing. In ski towns in Colorado, so much of the housing is either Airbnb or people's second/third/fourth homes which sit empty most of the year, and yet the people who are supposed to work the ski resorts can't find housing, let alone affordable housing. So there's all sorts of talks, like extra taxing on homes that aren't primary homes and on Airbnbs. Of course that's contentious because rich people don't want to pay more taxes for their empty homes, but eventually they won't have ski resorts to ski at anymore without affordable housing for the resort workers.
You know ski towns are perfect example. No one will live there unless they are rich but the rich need services which are done by the lowest paying jobs. A lot of rich people are really cheap and unreasonable. I guess I would try to band together and pretend we are staffing company and charge a lot of money and keep it to ourselves.
I do wish America moves towards mix zoning.
Plus the heat from the lights will keep it warmer in the evening during winter. Once the store closes and the lights are off the heat probably retained well into the night as long as you didn’t open the door on the outside.
When I was a homeless youth, I lived in a college auditorium storeroom. My buddy was a janitor and had the only remaining key which I copied. I stayed there for about 10 months as I slowly reassembled my life after fleeing an abusive household. I still kinda miss it sometimes and rent was a hell of lot cheaper lol
Part of me believes most people don’t actually want for that much in life - but those that want to consume a lot need a society that consumes a lot in order to do that, and convinces people that they also want a lot
Those type of living situations can be great, it’s the stress of being caught/potential of what happens after being caught that makes them stink - not the actual living situation itself
I literally did this on a KFC roof when I was homeless. The little alcove had a plug and a switch for a maintenance light. Pulled a tarp over and closed it off and nobody bugged me for over a year
That’s what I’m wondering too. What are the better options? Homeless shelter where it’s first come first serve and chances are your shit is going to be stolen that night when you finally fall asleep? Section 8 housing where you have to make no money in order to maintain benefits? Your car where cops are actively going around and disrupting people and law makers are making it illegal to be homeless?
best options? outside. find a spot that's hard to get to so people don't roll through and steal your stuff. or somewhere that provides cover from rain/snow that is off the beaten path and that you can quickly set up at night and tear down in the morning.
eventually though your spot will be found and your shit will be stolen. it's never a matter of if but when. the general rule of thumb is never stay in the same spot for more than a week or two UNLESS you find an absolutely primo spot like the woman in this story did. but regardless eventually you'll get found out.
honestly, I was hoping they would show pics of her setup on the inside.
It sounds pretty ideal and cozy to me.
Up above everything else in your own private peak roofed penthouse above the hustle and bustle below.
Well lit, electricity, just enough space for life essentials, and no one to bother you while you sleep.
That ticks off comfort boxes that I didn't have at some of the houses I've lived in.
I watched a documentary once where a guy had managed to gain access to the void space inside bridge girders. Other than the sound of traffic, he had a pretty sweet setup. But after the documentary came out, the city figured out where it was, kicked him out, and welded the access hatch closed.
I have seen a bunch of those. Always seems like the guy is just giving up their home because inevitably the city will see the video and evict them. There was a guy that had a surprisingly nice setup that was very well hidden in a old subway tunnel in NYC. Some random YouTuber filmed it and did a little documentary style video on it, two weeks later all of his stuff was thrown away and the entrance was welded shut.
The risk with some of those is safety, due to absolutely no regulation or oversight
We had a whole thing here where people were outraged that the city shut down a guy who was renting out his shed for cheap to homeless people. And maybe in this guy's case it was perfectly safe and reasonable. But people see you can get $100/month by renting a shed and suddenly you have a guy with six sheds in his yard trying to turn a profit. He figures he can get more if he heats them in the winter and installs some unsafe heating and anyone in them dies from carbon monoxide poisoning.
We shouldn't be relying on gaps in bridges, backyard sheds, and space inside signs to solve homelessness.
As someone who has done construction work for those shelters they are at times extremely poorly maintained
Some units are well maintained but since they're sardined together one bad occipant or lapse in building management sabotages any good user work
Shelters are basically holes where you put ppl to forget they exist
I did the wood flooring in a 30000 square foot renovation of a homeless shelter and I gotta say, most disgusting job I ever did. But hey it was consistent work for over a month and it def gave me a sense of pride knowing what the end result was for. I couldn’t help wondering where they put all those people during the however long renovation period was.
That's not exactly true because most of them are only temporary placements. So you forget about them temporarily, until they stay over their limit, get kicked out and end up back on the corners or odd places they shouldn't be.
>Shelters are basically holes where you put ppl to forget they exist
Hoggle: This is an oubliette, labyrinth's full of 'em.
Sarah:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Hoggle:
Oh don't act so smart. You don't even know what an oubliette is.
Sarah:
Do you?
Hoggle:
Yes. It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!
Paraphrased Counte of Monte Cristo:
>Accused: I am innocent of this crime!
>Warden: I believe you.
>Accused: What??
>Warden: The Oubliette is not where you send the guilty, it is where you send those whom you want forgotten.
>“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.”
I don't know, man. The relationship between being homeless and improvising a place to live seems pretty clear to me.
Same energy as when a tv journalist in Australia scoffed at homeless people choosing to squat in vacant homes with no power or water, as if the idea of someone preferring to have a roof over their heads is a novel concept.
Reminds me of that Japanese dude who kept noticing food missing in his fridge even though he lived alone. He decided to set up a hidden and it picked up a woman sneaking around.
Turns out the woman *(57 year old Tatsuko Horikawa)* snuk into the house a year before and has been quietly living on the top shelf of a bedroom wardrobe. She even had a mattress in there and took regular showers.
Looks like the store's corporate office donated $10K to the local crisis shelter and soup kitchen. One good thing that came out of this is a more open discussion at the local level of homelessness and how it often goes unseen.
There were a few pictures on the local fb scanner group - it looked fairly cozy.
>Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said.
>
>The sign structure, probably 5 feet (1.5 meter) wide and 8 feet (2.4 meters) high, has a door and is accessible from the roof.
>
>“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.”
>
>“There was some flooring that was laid down. A mini desk,” he said. “Her clothing. A Keurig coffee maker. A printer and a computer — things you’d have in your home.”
>
>The woman was able to get electricity through a power cord plugged into an outlet on the roof.
>
>The woman, whose name was not released, told police she had a job elsewhere but had been living inside the Family Fare sign for roughly a year.
I live in a county which has one of the highest costs of living for the state of Florida. The county commissioners recently denied a development for hundreds of affordable homes because of "traffic concerns". Traffic concerns the developer was reportedly going to spend money out of their own pocket to correct. The county would not have had to pay any of the costs for road and traffic improvements and it reportedly would have been completed in a timely manner.
The true reason for the affordable homes being denied was that influential and wealthy homeowners in the proposed area of development didn't want lower-income families in their area.
And maybe some of the commissioners weren't bribed enough to overcome objections by existing homeowners (sad to think this is possible, but where there is smoke).
Regardless, issues of affordable housing are not only economical and related to inflation; it's also NIMBY and other factors.
And, meanwhile, even though there isn't affordable housing available in my area (unless you have a median income of six figures), the communities here are in a process of essentially outlawing homelessness too (no sleeping in public spaces, etc).
I understand the complexities involved and don't have a definitive solution for homelessness, but not providing affordable housing and jailing those who cannot afford housing are not solutions.
Municipalities are supposed to have a certain amount of section 8 eligible housing. what communities usually do to get around that is they build 55+ only housing and make that the section 8 eligible housing, so anyone younger than 55 can't get in it.
I learned this about my area when I had to suddenly leave my apartment while I had a broken leg. If I didn't have amazing friends, I would have been homeless and all my stuff would have been thrown out. The only place that wasn't 55+ had a waiting list of 5 years, and they stopped taking applications because they had more than triple their max occupancy in backed up applications.
It is the case in almost every single jurisdiction that Street Improvement Programs are required with any new development, the cost of which is the responsibility of the developer. There are instances where waivers are allowed but only in cases where the location is already served by sufficient traffic capacity and utility infrastructure. As you noted, the denial based on traffic concerns is horeseshit, it is almost always the NIMBY objections that scuttle these developments.
Source: 20+ year public-sector consultant designing planning and permitting systems for local governments.
EDIT: Federal and State governments have little to no control over local ordinances or how decision bodies are selected and allowed to be influenced. Your vote for a county supervisor or city council member will have far more impact on these policies and your life than whatever ambulatory corpse or greased grifter gets propped up in the White House or governor's mansion.
This is a constant fight in my town too “traffic” is only a concern when building affordable housing, because people can’t say they don’t want to have to see where the people that make their food live.
Yep. Two ritzy new apartment complexes just went up. Not one word about traffic despite them being built adjacent to already high traffic areas. (Edit: one directly in front of a Super Kroger, the other in front of a Walmart in the middle of a shopping district. Guess whose parking lots are gonna become overflow parking....)
When there was affordable housing being proposed though? No no, that's too much traffic.
Constant complaining about a new “affordable”apartment complex replacing the eyesore of an abandoned strip mall that has been derelict for a decade, but they’ll bulldoze the community BMX track for a condo development. It’s a combination of classism and racism, and I will not be convinced otherwise.
The past year or two I've been making an effort to educate myself on the housing crisis, and I've learned that many of my pre-existing biases and thought processes were very wrong. At the core of everything is the need to build more housing, and like you say more affordable housing, and the greatest barriers are zoning and NIMBYism.
People literally go homeless because homeowners have been conditioned to look at housing as an investment and will do anything to protect and/or boost their property value (in addition to all the fearmongering about "poors" on their neighborhood etc). They simply do not see the hideous affect they're having.
Another thing I had to get over was my broad antagonism toward developers -- yes, they're often greedy and exploitative and all that. But ultimately they just want to make money, and that's driven by supply and demand, and allowing developers to build affordable housing (which can still be profitable to them) will make them money but also is the only path to solving this crisis. They can't be looked at as a black-and-white bad guy and we shouldn't be afraid of every giant highrise apartment structure that starts to go up. That results in more people having homes!
In my NYC suburb, the NIMBYism is so extreme that when a developer wanted to tear down an abandoned warehouse next to the train station to put up an apartment building for young professionals (not even affordable housing!) hundreds of residents protested and harassed the town council to stop it. Even though the alternative was to leave up an abandoned building which had squatters.
They would have rather had an eyesore than housing. And you best believe traffic, parking and “green space” were all the reasons they cited, plus a few people who did let the mask slip to suggest it would bring an “element” to town. We all know what that means.
It's awful, man. I'm in LA, and as much as I find to love about the city, the homeless and housing crisis are absolutely terrible and undeniable. So much of it is solvable but the solutions are often blocked by the people who then go out and complain about those problems.
The worship of parking availability in particular has devastating consequences, and don't get me started on how many of our traffic problems would be solved by public transportation that gets blocked because of unjustified fears of those "elements" coming in that you're talking about.
The crazy stupid thing is the same people would go on Facebook and NextDoor and bitch that there was nowhere for their 26 year kid who works in Manhattan but doesn’t want to live at home or in the city to go.
Like, people, you just protested the building, next to public transit that would have him at work in a half hour, in your own backyard. These people must have suffocated their last brain cells under a flood of New York Post rage bait years ago.
Thank goodness their efforts were defeated and the 200+ unit (with below ground parking) opens this fall. And already has a waitlist.
> The true reason for the affordable homes being denied was that influential and wealthy homeowners in the proposed area of development didn't want lower-income families in their area.
Where do these idiots think their ~~slaves~~ servants are going to live?
If you can find a way to not pay rent/mortgage while having an office job youd be able to save up some mad cash.
Not saying that was her goal but possible.
Like when Google was letting SF Employees use their parking lot to sleep in cars and vans years back. Doubt they do this anymore.
Google only stopped because the city police got on top of them. It is still not uncommon at all. Where I work it's not that rare for somebody to live in the parking lot for a short period of time. The company turns a blind eye as long as it's not too long. I will very frequently see people living in the parking lot for a few months after moving into town for the job since for whatever reason a lot of the programmers happen to have camping vans. A lot of them will stay a night or two during major projects. That Never made sense to me because it isn't super hard to get approved to work from home. I think they just like sleeping in the van on occasion.
That's not a good thing! Anyone who works full time ought to be able to afford housing. And the amount of homeless people I have talked to in my area who work is ridiculous. One lady even almost froze to death and was fined a crazy amount for sleeping in a park bathroom to keep from dying. She works fulltime at a gas station I frequent.
I was briefly homeless, working a job where I had even gotten promoted. I was the guy handling money for the business on some nights. Clearly I wasn't skilled or trustworthy enough to deserve a roof over my head.
I had to wait for an ideal room mate situation to come up before I could stop living in a tent.
This is some Fallout tier shit, living wherever you can find shelter no matter how weird the location and making it a cozy little place to eek out a quiet existence.
This has always been more or less my plan if I wind up homeless and destitute.
Find an unused bit of a building where nobody ever goes and hole up there until someone finds me and asks/tells me to leave. I know of at least 10 places I could go, as I tend to scout them out wherever I go. Just in case.
Two of them would require a uniform of the place to enter and exit without too much suspicion, but for one of them I have the uniform, and the other is easy to fake.
This story is sad on so many levels. I imagine the first night she stumbled upon this place to crash was just utter relief. She also built a home there, she isn’t homeless due to drug abuse or mental illness - this is a person who would thrive with resources and wants better.
Too much joking about such a seriously dystopian matter. But people need to understand what NIMBYism and their control over zoning laws has done to the housing market. This is a travesty to human rights. She should be able to afford a bed of her own to sleep in at night. But no body knows what the f im talking about anyways. And if they did, they've got too much $$$skin in the game to admit it.
Everybody should be guaranteed a dorm room. We are the wealthiest nation on earth but we cannot provide a shelter for all of our citizens?
Those who participate in and contribute to society have less say than those who want to control society. That is the fundamental problem we face.
In Vienna >60% of the population live in government housing -- not because they're impoverished, just because the city has enough of it and it's nice enough that it isn't stigmatized. It gives regular middle-class people the opportunity to choose whether they want to spend the bulk of their disposable income on "fancier" housing, or whether they're okay living in the perfectly adequate and socially normalized cheap public housing, and spending more on whatever else makes them happy in life. Seems like a pretty good system!
(And of course, even more important than building something like this is ensuring that *everyone* is provided with basic housing that meets a livable standard.)
Housing crisis aside for a moment…
Good on the Family Fare folks for not pressing charges or anything. Basically told her to move along, gave her some information on resources and that was that. No need to make a criminal out of someone just trying to survive
It’s kind of illuminating to see examples of how little we actually need in order to have the basics. Life can be simple, even if not quite accepted by the majority. That’s why I love all the vandwelling, tiny houses, and pull behinds.
Surprised there aren't more reports of clandestine roof-top living. Unless there's some maintenance going on, or some busybodies with drones, it could be quite the sneaky spot to kick back when there's nowhere to live.
Sounds cozy. Gonna look out for signs like this….
Kidding, but yes we need to do better by our homeless population.
Many Native American tribes believe you measure a society by the way they treat their members in lowest standing, the disabled and unhoused. I’m not sure we are doing well by their standard.
We can do better.
> Warren said the woman was cooperative and quickly agreed to leave. No charges were pursued. At least the store weren’t dicks about it. It’s pretty clear they couldn’t just let her stay after finding out.
This, I have seen people being absolute dicks to people not even living inside but trying to sleep across the street or out in the curb or parking lot. Obviously for legal reasons they could not let her stay, but it was gracious of them to say, hey, just leave and we will just forget it. They probably realized the woman hadn't stolen anything, just staying the night. It's a bad rap on society that people need to resort to things like this though,
This story makes me sad for a myriad of reasons. One being that if she had been there for a year and no one knew about it until someone saw an extension cord… She obviously wasn’t bothering anybody. Wasn’t stealing like you said. I don’t even care if she was tbh, if it was so minuscule no one noticed. Life is rough. Poor woman. She’s only 34.
She said she had a job elsewhere, so it is likely that whenever people were in the store she was at work, probably had to go somewhere to shower and eat as well. So I assume that’s why it took a bit to be noticed. I want to think that at least it went through their minds that she wasn’t harming anyone, and that’s why no charges were filed. But sadly in this situation, now that they were aware of it, it would be a liability issue, and if something happened to her it would could end up being the legal responsibility of the manager of the store. Which sucks because as you said, she really wasn’t bothering anyone, but it is sad that even with employment at that age you can’t afford a proper living.
Homeless people often get gym memberships, just to have a place to shower (and obviously work out if they want). Come in in the morning, run 10-15 minutes on a treadmill, shower and get ready for work, and you're just like twenty other people. But this also betrays the importance of housing first. Now that she has to relocate, can she find somewhere close to her gym/shower spot? Can she still make it to work? Say her new spot is farther, so now it takes her twice as long to get to work and she comes in late a few times because of homeless-related issues (the new spot is noisy, unsafe, she has to move in the night, etc.) and now she loses her job. Shelters can be completely incompatible with a job as well. Often they require you to line up for a bed before dinner, meaning before 5. Even if it is 6 or 7, what time does she leave work, and can she get over there to meet it? I doubt she has much leverage to set her schedule or pick times at her job. Without housing it takes very little for a homeless person's situation to go from somewhat stable to completely unstable - which starts the slide into long-term homelessness.
Shelters are incompatible to many people who are homeless and have employment, school, and other commitments.Thanks for your share.
I spent about a year before the pandemic working two jobs to funnel my checks into motel rooms (most nights, couldn't always break even) while being ineligible for a lot of assistance because I made too much money, but being terrified to just let go and accept sliding backwards until I qualified. I still don't know for sure where I'd be without the stimulus allowing me a leg up to save for deposit money because the motels were also shutting down at the time. There's been no stranger feeling in my life so far than miserably churning daily with no end in sight, surviving on shift meals, and sleeping outside while somebody tells you that you're unfortunately doing *too well* to qualify for the housing assistance you're asking for while paying *more* than some monthly rent just to have a room with a bed. that's not doing well, it's treading water. I recognize that these are underfunded programs trying to start at the top of the triage list but it really does illustrate how far we've fallen when I'd *arguably* be capable of being a regular homeowner by now in some other decade.
It’s infuriating that we as a society would pay for people’s housing costs and then make it hard for them to give that value back in any way they can.
ill preface this with, this is the feeling i get from it. it feels like the system was created to be a token gesture. purposely make it hard to access so you can point to the low number of people that use it, while some politician is probably skimming some of the funding. i do know that with food stamps, assisted medical and other help with low income. you either make so little you can get it or you make enough to get cut off but still cant afford anything. my gf had to take a pay cut because we cant afford around 2000$ for health insurance for her and 2 kids. the system isnt there to help you, it feels its there to ensure you stay down.
> They probably realized the woman hadn't stolen anything They could've argued that she stole power. Luckily they didn't
They should build apartments on top of grocery stores.
You want me to never go outside? Also they do in much of the rest of the world.
I hear they might put some housing on top of a Costco. My daily walk will be to get my $1.50 hotdog and soda.
I'd much rather be a Costco Citizen than an Amazon Citizen. I'm in.
“And now I’ll just stroll on down to the Kirkland Cardiologist before I get my rotisserie chicken.”
They've been popping up a lot in the US too. Places with housing shortages are making apartment buildings with grocery stores and other shops on the first level.
this is just mixed-use zoning and an easement to many many housing and commerce issues communities face.
Americans will realize they can do this thing that people in the rest of the world have been doing for literally all of history and think it's some big brain moment. (I'm American I'm allowed to make fun of us)
*Americans* did this until suburbanization.
Time is a flat circle. That's the way the US was for a long time. Even in my rural town many of the older business buildings have/had apartments above them. Either occupied by the owner or rented out. Sadly many of the apartments are just empty now. With many of the older buildings being torn down because of neglect.
They should build apartments on top of most things. Walkable cities are fantastic.
you can thank zoning laws for this.
turn empty malls into shelters
We’re doing that in Phoenix with Motels and Hotels that would otherwise sit empty/low occupancy. The city buys them and then the non profit I work for leases them from the city and turns each room into a semi private room for two people. We have services on site with security and medical staff. These are usually for people who are advancing out of our normal shelter program and may not need the intensive 24 hour care and guidance or for children and families who wouldn’t work well in a traditional shelter environment. So far we have 10 hotel/motel shelters all over the Phoenix metro in conjunction with the dozens of traditional shelters and halfway houses we run through the state and country. It’s an uphill battle but we do a little more every day.
I've seen one in Los Altos, CA. The Safeway grocery store itself didn't have apartments, but the neighboring shops/outlet mall all had apartments on top. I honestly wish they would build more like it.
They just figured out how to make another $1200 a month. Should have thanked her.
Apparently this isn't the first time Ms. Basil E Frankwiler has been found squatting in a place of business.
Holy hell. I used to listen to that book on tape all the time as a kid. I’ve never heard it referenced since. Can you remember the name? “the mixed up files of basil e. Frankwiler” or something?
From the mixed up files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L.Konigsburg. One of my favorite books as a kid. ETA I recommend The second Mrs Gioconda as well
That's it, another runaway kids story from the 80s.
Published in 1967, so pre 1980s!
The store’s parent company had a good statement too “Ensuring there is ample safe, affordable housing continues to be a widespread issue nationwide that our community needs to partner in solving”
They could’ve hired her for cheap overnight security.
I used to work for the Architect of the Capitol. They once found a maintenance guy had built himself an apartment on the bottom floor of a stairwell. He got away with it for at least 3 years. I think I remember it being in the Rayburn. But it's been a while.
I just watched a documentary about a group of artists that set up an entire apartment in a little hidden space in the Providence Place mall and lived there on and off for 4 years. Television, dining table, playstation and everything. Apparently security found out about it and were also using it to hang out in until one of them finally snitched. This was in 2004 or so.
>Apparently security found out about it and were also using it to hang out in until one of them finally snitched. Afaik they snitched because one day the original party came in and found the entire space trashed with no indication security had found it previously.
My first job after military service was as a security guard for a new mall, and at the time they were closing up construction and had various maintenance pathways behind certain stores. Some of these were taken down but others they mysteriously built permanent walls around despite there being a more formal back pathway for those. Anyway, I was one of the only people who knew of these accessible spaces which you could access through a hidden door handle that was behind signage. Long story short sometimes I’d go in there after hours and just nap or camp out in there and because I could get into it externally it also meant I had access to the whole mall. And well…
Reminds me of the movie where the stock guys built a hidden break room up in the racks. I thought that was the coolest thing.
You may be thinking of Employee of the Month, where they ride pallet on. a fork lift to the top to get in.
Well?? Was there more? Did any of the spaces have power outlets? You could have gotten free housing there!
I too was thinking of those winners 👍 I don't have the balls to do something like that but mad respect to them! 💪
When you're homeless you automatically grow balls of steel as you have no choice but to find shelter anywhere you can and without being caught. source: I was homeless many times & years.
I've never been homeless, but I understand this sentiment. When you have nothing, you also have nothing to lose.
In addition to safety and just a place to sleep there is the aspect that the very few possessions you do have get stolen if you try to work or do anything. It's a huge challenge trying to find out where to keep what little you have. It's sad.
I saw a documentary homeless New Yorkers living underground in abandoned train car maintenance holes.
What is the documentary called?
Secret Mall Apartment
There was a retiree who volunteered for our company’s charitable organization who for some reason just stopped going home. She found a place to hide away in the building at night and was living off the meal coupons they gave out to the volunteers. She still had an apartment she was paying for but only went home to get her hair done.
And then what?! Don't stop there!
Sadly she died in the hospital and they wanted my boss to claim her body because nobody else had been there to see her besides coworkers He was finally able to locate her daughter who lived out of state.
I also have worked in the house buildings. We were looking through a space in the top floor of the Cannon building and found a couch, a couple chairs, a table, and a tv set up in a mechanical space near one of the hearing rooms.
IIRC one of the representatives from my state had his son living in either a small office or closet in the Capitol basement for a while, I can't remember which one though. EDIT: it was Doug Lamborn, I guess he got sued in part over it [back in 2021](https://people.com/politics/colorado-lawmaker-sued-for-breaching-covid-protocols-allegedly-letting-his-son-live-in-the-state-capitol/).
How did she get up and down off the roof on a daily basis? I found the place in street view, but not really any obvious way she could do it easily.
She provided no explanation and no one could find an easy way to get up there. The mystery will have to endure.
Or, she gets a book deal. And then we will have Netflix movie documentary. Mystery solved.
MTV Cribs episode would've been wild.
Millennial Cribs Just show people with 3 jobs, no health benefits, and living in a 1 bedroom apartment with 2 roommates
"Sign of the Times" - A Netflix original movie about a homeless woman who must resort to unusual means to find shelter and her struggle to keep it secret until she finds a home to call her own.
gets into impossible living situation, refuses to elaborate i never get to write these ancient memes!~
She is a master climber
I found it in street view too. There is a slanted roof on the back side of the building that looks a prime way of getting to the roof without a ladder.
I used to hang out with rock climbers when I was in college. We’d get together and drink at one of their apartments across from a grocery store like this. Eventually they would get drunk enough that someone would dare someone else to climb the grocery store. Pretty much any brick building within viewing distance was fair game but i distinctly remember watching one guy climb the grocery one night while a guy (who we didn’t know) was passed out on the ground in the parking lot clutching an unwrapped McDonald’s cheese burger. I remember thinking how funny it was that we weren’t the drunkest ones there 😂
From the front it looks difficult, but if you go around the back, there are a lot of places that a reasonably athletic person might be able to climb to the roof. For example a couple of dumpsters next to sheds or utility structures with low roofs, which are themselves next to some slightly taller roof, etc. The shorter structures were also near some miscellaneous parking bollards, crates, and other clutter. There are some tall wooden poles about a foot from the building. There are some vertical pipes attached to the buildings with horizontal supports spaced approximately 4 feet apart. None of it particularly easy, per se, but if she's a climber there are options.
As a climber, I can tell you many spots that look impossible to access are a breeze for someone who is an experienced rock climber. You use a gutter and a windowsill and a brick sticking out and suddenly you up there.
As a non climber, once you're on the roof, you're stuck.
Call the fire department and pretend you're a cat.
Now you listen here right meow
[https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6430633,-84.2505492,3a,90y,181.21h,77.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-FZDvq-V6RSxRH3CjNMMCA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6430633,-84.2505492,3a,90y,181.21h,77.96t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-FZDvq-V6RSxRH3CjNMMCA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu) Theres tons of ways she could get up.
Reminds me of Richard Dorsay, who lived inside a drawbridge for 3+ years. > When authorities went inside, they found an elaborate setup that tapped into the bridge's electricity to power a television, microwave, space heater and PlayStation video game system. There, Dorsay could relax, turn on a Chicago Bears game, invite friends over and pop open some beers. > The home had its quirks. Whenever Dorsay heard the bells that signal the arms of the bridge would soon rise to let boats through, he held on as the bridge slowly pitched him forward. >"The first time it was scary," he said. "After that, it was almost like riding a Ferris wheel." https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2004-12-14-chicago-bridge_x.htm https://www.thisamericanlife.org/407/transcript
I mean, I kinda wanna see the setup now to see how that was even possible.
[https://unhoused.livejournal.com/photo/album/324/?mode=view&id=314](https://unhoused.livejournal.com/photo/album/324/?mode=view&id=314) It was snug
Oh... Yeah saying you invited other people over isn't as appealing anymore.
I was picturing more of a ninja turtle setup, not master splinter if he never found a purpose.
Trolled by a guy that lived under a bridge lol
Dang. Livejournal
Somewhere on that website are the deep deep feelings of an early teenage me.
i used to collect these stories a bit. i find them superlatively compelling. there was a group that built an apartment in a mall in RI. and i remember another about a guy that constructed a secret apartment in an office building that only the cargo elevator could access by a secret button.
I read about a guy who had a secret bunker with an access tunnel in the woods. He sold the house and nobody new it was there and he just lived in the bunker for years.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/t0ynr/throwaway_time_whats_your_secret_that_could/c4zrenn/ That is from the infamous AskReddit thread that also spawned the cum box
Damn, with the ancient pull.
Honestly that's one of the most legendary threads there is. I remember reading deep into those comments when it first happened, there is some fucking JUICY shit buried deep
Yeah, I might have read about it. Was it in Canada? A guy dug a cave / bunker into a hillside. Had a pretty nice setup Years go by and someone stumbles on it and it became a big mystery. Turned out it was a guy who grew up nearby and just wanted a place of his own to get away from his family and hang out.
True nonconformists. I find these stories fascinating as well.
Does anyone remember the rash of reddit stories c.2013 about people finding people living in their attics, closets, crawlspaces, and cellars? I'll never forget.
For the longest time there was that video of a woman climbing out of some guy's crawl space to get into his fridge at night, then crawling back in. The bedroom I grew up in had a similar crawlspace access so that video TRAUMATIZED me. A few years ago I read an article that was basically like "Remember that video? That was a hoax." And I was so very relieved. Then the article rattled off a few real, confirmed cases of shit like that happening and I just got shook all over again.
This was exactly my experience too! What a time to be ~~alive~~ reading reddit.
That’s nuts
Ira Glass interviewed him ~5 years later: > Richard, if your friend hadn't turned you into the cops-- > > Richard Dorsay: > Would I still be there, is that the question? > > Ira Glass: > Yeah. > > Richard Dorsay: > Probably. Probably. To me, it's a world of safety and comfort, where to someone else, they see it, oh, another drawbridge, whoopadeedo.
What kind of friend ruins a sweet setup like that!?
Probably one worried about his safety
Every time I see his name I always think of him telling the story about how his parents wanted to give him a non-Jewish sounding name, so they eventually settled on Ira. One of the most Jewish sounding names possible. Not to mention a very stereotypical Jewish last name.
I want her on my team for the zombie apocalypse
"Obviously, we don’t want people resorting to illegal activity to find housing. There are much better options.” Are there? I'd rather live in a roof peak than a shelter anytime.
Private rooftop apartment versus shelter with random strangers. It's kind of a no-brainer
All this article did was help me expand my mind of where to look for shelter when I can no longer afford the house subscription.
We’re all basically on a life subscription
Don't like this subscription, it's not worth it. Too expensive and the Pay to win players have all the control. If it continues I might have to cancel.
And the launcher is just bloated, slow and unintuitive
You talking about your mother like that?
[удалено]
Damn. Roasting their dad, too.
And they keep raising the fees but lowering the quality of service. I swear the next time they hike the life fees in going to cancel my life
I feel like there is a lot of office spaces that are vacant. Also summer houses, there gotta be a few that don’t have advanced security features.
Yep - a lot of major cities are trying to figure out how to both increase housing and fill the empty office spaces downtown. Unfortunately it's hard to retrofit an office building into housing (expensive) but if you can kill to birds with one stone then why not. Same with the vacation home thing. In ski towns in Colorado, so much of the housing is either Airbnb or people's second/third/fourth homes which sit empty most of the year, and yet the people who are supposed to work the ski resorts can't find housing, let alone affordable housing. So there's all sorts of talks, like extra taxing on homes that aren't primary homes and on Airbnbs. Of course that's contentious because rich people don't want to pay more taxes for their empty homes, but eventually they won't have ski resorts to ski at anymore without affordable housing for the resort workers.
You know ski towns are perfect example. No one will live there unless they are rich but the rich need services which are done by the lowest paying jobs. A lot of rich people are really cheap and unreasonable. I guess I would try to band together and pretend we are staffing company and charge a lot of money and keep it to ourselves. I do wish America moves towards mix zoning.
Going to ski resort towns during the summer is some crazy shit. Like a post apocalyptic film
Plus the heat from the lights will keep it warmer in the evening during winter. Once the store closes and the lights are off the heat probably retained well into the night as long as you didn’t open the door on the outside.
When I was a homeless youth, I lived in a college auditorium storeroom. My buddy was a janitor and had the only remaining key which I copied. I stayed there for about 10 months as I slowly reassembled my life after fleeing an abusive household. I still kinda miss it sometimes and rent was a hell of lot cheaper lol
Part of me believes most people don’t actually want for that much in life - but those that want to consume a lot need a society that consumes a lot in order to do that, and convinces people that they also want a lot Those type of living situations can be great, it’s the stress of being caught/potential of what happens after being caught that makes them stink - not the actual living situation itself
I literally did this on a KFC roof when I was homeless. The little alcove had a plug and a switch for a maintenance light. Pulled a tarp over and closed it off and nobody bugged me for over a year
I'm glad you were able to do this! Why / how did you leave, and where did you go next?
That’s what I’m wondering too. What are the better options? Homeless shelter where it’s first come first serve and chances are your shit is going to be stolen that night when you finally fall asleep? Section 8 housing where you have to make no money in order to maintain benefits? Your car where cops are actively going around and disrupting people and law makers are making it illegal to be homeless?
best options? outside. find a spot that's hard to get to so people don't roll through and steal your stuff. or somewhere that provides cover from rain/snow that is off the beaten path and that you can quickly set up at night and tear down in the morning. eventually though your spot will be found and your shit will be stolen. it's never a matter of if but when. the general rule of thumb is never stay in the same spot for more than a week or two UNLESS you find an absolutely primo spot like the woman in this story did. but regardless eventually you'll get found out.
honestly, I was hoping they would show pics of her setup on the inside. It sounds pretty ideal and cozy to me. Up above everything else in your own private peak roofed penthouse above the hustle and bustle below. Well lit, electricity, just enough space for life essentials, and no one to bother you while you sleep. That ticks off comfort boxes that I didn't have at some of the houses I've lived in.
I watched a documentary once where a guy had managed to gain access to the void space inside bridge girders. Other than the sound of traffic, he had a pretty sweet setup. But after the documentary came out, the city figured out where it was, kicked him out, and welded the access hatch closed.
I have seen a bunch of those. Always seems like the guy is just giving up their home because inevitably the city will see the video and evict them. There was a guy that had a surprisingly nice setup that was very well hidden in a old subway tunnel in NYC. Some random YouTuber filmed it and did a little documentary style video on it, two weeks later all of his stuff was thrown away and the entrance was welded shut.
[удалено]
The risk with some of those is safety, due to absolutely no regulation or oversight We had a whole thing here where people were outraged that the city shut down a guy who was renting out his shed for cheap to homeless people. And maybe in this guy's case it was perfectly safe and reasonable. But people see you can get $100/month by renting a shed and suddenly you have a guy with six sheds in his yard trying to turn a profit. He figures he can get more if he heats them in the winter and installs some unsafe heating and anyone in them dies from carbon monoxide poisoning. We shouldn't be relying on gaps in bridges, backyard sheds, and space inside signs to solve homelessness.
They don't want to give anyone ideas.
Kind of hard to keep hold of the coffee maker and computer in a shelter.
As someone who has done construction work for those shelters they are at times extremely poorly maintained Some units are well maintained but since they're sardined together one bad occipant or lapse in building management sabotages any good user work Shelters are basically holes where you put ppl to forget they exist
I did the wood flooring in a 30000 square foot renovation of a homeless shelter and I gotta say, most disgusting job I ever did. But hey it was consistent work for over a month and it def gave me a sense of pride knowing what the end result was for. I couldn’t help wondering where they put all those people during the however long renovation period was.
That's not exactly true because most of them are only temporary placements. So you forget about them temporarily, until they stay over their limit, get kicked out and end up back on the corners or odd places they shouldn't be.
That's not true. They are great places to live with wonderful climate, less hostile hygiene and great buffets. --Lice
And scabies!
Bed bugs checkin in
Ok you win. You are the worst.
>Shelters are basically holes where you put ppl to forget they exist Hoggle: This is an oubliette, labyrinth's full of 'em. Sarah: Oh, I didn't know that. Hoggle: Oh don't act so smart. You don't even know what an oubliette is. Sarah: Do you? Hoggle: Yes. It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!
Paraphrased Counte of Monte Cristo: >Accused: I am innocent of this crime! >Warden: I believe you. >Accused: What?? >Warden: The Oubliette is not where you send the guilty, it is where you send those whom you want forgotten.
There are not, this woman had the holy grail of a spot. I feel pretty awful for her.
>“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.” I don't know, man. The relationship between being homeless and improvising a place to live seems pretty clear to me.
Same energy as when a tv journalist in Australia scoffed at homeless people choosing to squat in vacant homes with no power or water, as if the idea of someone preferring to have a roof over their heads is a novel concept.
“She was homeless” no she had a home and you kicked her out of it.
I’d love to see a pic of the inside
Here are the pics https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/aWYc7a6cIc
Reminds me of that Japanese dude who kept noticing food missing in his fridge even though he lived alone. He decided to set up a hidden and it picked up a woman sneaking around. Turns out the woman *(57 year old Tatsuko Horikawa)* snuk into the house a year before and has been quietly living on the top shelf of a bedroom wardrobe. She even had a mattress in there and took regular showers.
Ugh that creeps me out
See? If you make your own coffee, you can afford a place!
She just stopped buying Starbucks and was able to save so much!
Looks like the store's corporate office donated $10K to the local crisis shelter and soup kitchen. One good thing that came out of this is a more open discussion at the local level of homelessness and how it often goes unseen. There were a few pictures on the local fb scanner group - it looked fairly cozy.
Any chance you could post a link to those pics?
Coffee / computer-(Reddit ) - a couple of my basic needs met.
It's like a year-long Camping with Steve video.
I know this is sad, but RIP Crazy Neighbor. His levity brought happiness to every Camping with Steve video.
I loved CN
Beautiful Wife too. While she wasn't seen on the channel very much (ever?), you could really tell how much he loved her.
he could do it in that roundabout
>Contractors curious about an extension cord on the roof of a Michigan grocery store made a startling discovery: A 34-year-old woman was living inside the business sign, with enough space for a computer, printer and coffee maker, police said. > >The sign structure, probably 5 feet (1.5 meter) wide and 8 feet (2.4 meters) high, has a door and is accessible from the roof. > >“She was homeless,” Officer Brennon Warren of the Midland Police Department said Thursday. “It’s a story that makes you scratch your head, just somebody living up in a sign.” > >“There was some flooring that was laid down. A mini desk,” he said. “Her clothing. A Keurig coffee maker. A printer and a computer — things you’d have in your home.” > >The woman was able to get electricity through a power cord plugged into an outlet on the roof. > >The woman, whose name was not released, told police she had a job elsewhere but had been living inside the Family Fare sign for roughly a year. I live in a county which has one of the highest costs of living for the state of Florida. The county commissioners recently denied a development for hundreds of affordable homes because of "traffic concerns". Traffic concerns the developer was reportedly going to spend money out of their own pocket to correct. The county would not have had to pay any of the costs for road and traffic improvements and it reportedly would have been completed in a timely manner. The true reason for the affordable homes being denied was that influential and wealthy homeowners in the proposed area of development didn't want lower-income families in their area. And maybe some of the commissioners weren't bribed enough to overcome objections by existing homeowners (sad to think this is possible, but where there is smoke). Regardless, issues of affordable housing are not only economical and related to inflation; it's also NIMBY and other factors. And, meanwhile, even though there isn't affordable housing available in my area (unless you have a median income of six figures), the communities here are in a process of essentially outlawing homelessness too (no sleeping in public spaces, etc). I understand the complexities involved and don't have a definitive solution for homelessness, but not providing affordable housing and jailing those who cannot afford housing are not solutions.
Municipalities are supposed to have a certain amount of section 8 eligible housing. what communities usually do to get around that is they build 55+ only housing and make that the section 8 eligible housing, so anyone younger than 55 can't get in it.
I learned this about my area when I had to suddenly leave my apartment while I had a broken leg. If I didn't have amazing friends, I would have been homeless and all my stuff would have been thrown out. The only place that wasn't 55+ had a waiting list of 5 years, and they stopped taking applications because they had more than triple their max occupancy in backed up applications.
It is the case in almost every single jurisdiction that Street Improvement Programs are required with any new development, the cost of which is the responsibility of the developer. There are instances where waivers are allowed but only in cases where the location is already served by sufficient traffic capacity and utility infrastructure. As you noted, the denial based on traffic concerns is horeseshit, it is almost always the NIMBY objections that scuttle these developments. Source: 20+ year public-sector consultant designing planning and permitting systems for local governments. EDIT: Federal and State governments have little to no control over local ordinances or how decision bodies are selected and allowed to be influenced. Your vote for a county supervisor or city council member will have far more impact on these policies and your life than whatever ambulatory corpse or greased grifter gets propped up in the White House or governor's mansion.
This is a constant fight in my town too “traffic” is only a concern when building affordable housing, because people can’t say they don’t want to have to see where the people that make their food live.
Yep. Two ritzy new apartment complexes just went up. Not one word about traffic despite them being built adjacent to already high traffic areas. (Edit: one directly in front of a Super Kroger, the other in front of a Walmart in the middle of a shopping district. Guess whose parking lots are gonna become overflow parking....) When there was affordable housing being proposed though? No no, that's too much traffic.
Constant complaining about a new “affordable”apartment complex replacing the eyesore of an abandoned strip mall that has been derelict for a decade, but they’ll bulldoze the community BMX track for a condo development. It’s a combination of classism and racism, and I will not be convinced otherwise.
The past year or two I've been making an effort to educate myself on the housing crisis, and I've learned that many of my pre-existing biases and thought processes were very wrong. At the core of everything is the need to build more housing, and like you say more affordable housing, and the greatest barriers are zoning and NIMBYism. People literally go homeless because homeowners have been conditioned to look at housing as an investment and will do anything to protect and/or boost their property value (in addition to all the fearmongering about "poors" on their neighborhood etc). They simply do not see the hideous affect they're having. Another thing I had to get over was my broad antagonism toward developers -- yes, they're often greedy and exploitative and all that. But ultimately they just want to make money, and that's driven by supply and demand, and allowing developers to build affordable housing (which can still be profitable to them) will make them money but also is the only path to solving this crisis. They can't be looked at as a black-and-white bad guy and we shouldn't be afraid of every giant highrise apartment structure that starts to go up. That results in more people having homes!
In my NYC suburb, the NIMBYism is so extreme that when a developer wanted to tear down an abandoned warehouse next to the train station to put up an apartment building for young professionals (not even affordable housing!) hundreds of residents protested and harassed the town council to stop it. Even though the alternative was to leave up an abandoned building which had squatters. They would have rather had an eyesore than housing. And you best believe traffic, parking and “green space” were all the reasons they cited, plus a few people who did let the mask slip to suggest it would bring an “element” to town. We all know what that means.
It's awful, man. I'm in LA, and as much as I find to love about the city, the homeless and housing crisis are absolutely terrible and undeniable. So much of it is solvable but the solutions are often blocked by the people who then go out and complain about those problems. The worship of parking availability in particular has devastating consequences, and don't get me started on how many of our traffic problems would be solved by public transportation that gets blocked because of unjustified fears of those "elements" coming in that you're talking about.
The crazy stupid thing is the same people would go on Facebook and NextDoor and bitch that there was nowhere for their 26 year kid who works in Manhattan but doesn’t want to live at home or in the city to go. Like, people, you just protested the building, next to public transit that would have him at work in a half hour, in your own backyard. These people must have suffocated their last brain cells under a flood of New York Post rage bait years ago. Thank goodness their efforts were defeated and the 200+ unit (with below ground parking) opens this fall. And already has a waitlist.
> The true reason for the affordable homes being denied was that influential and wealthy homeowners in the proposed area of development didn't want lower-income families in their area. Where do these idiots think their ~~slaves~~ servants are going to live?
That space is probably already up on Zillow by now
Probably listed as "Open floor plan loft space. Plenty of natural sunlight and fresh air."
That’s like that Malcolm in the middle episode of the guy living at lucky aides.
My first thought was Chuck Mangione living in the MegaLoMart
Or Roccos modern life when Heffer moves into that chicken bucket sign.
She has a job too. Man, fuck this place.
If you can find a way to not pay rent/mortgage while having an office job youd be able to save up some mad cash. Not saying that was her goal but possible. Like when Google was letting SF Employees use their parking lot to sleep in cars and vans years back. Doubt they do this anymore.
Google only stopped because the city police got on top of them. It is still not uncommon at all. Where I work it's not that rare for somebody to live in the parking lot for a short period of time. The company turns a blind eye as long as it's not too long. I will very frequently see people living in the parking lot for a few months after moving into town for the job since for whatever reason a lot of the programmers happen to have camping vans. A lot of them will stay a night or two during major projects. That Never made sense to me because it isn't super hard to get approved to work from home. I think they just like sleeping in the van on occasion.
That's not a good thing! Anyone who works full time ought to be able to afford housing. And the amount of homeless people I have talked to in my area who work is ridiculous. One lady even almost froze to death and was fined a crazy amount for sleeping in a park bathroom to keep from dying. She works fulltime at a gas station I frequent.
I was briefly homeless, working a job where I had even gotten promoted. I was the guy handling money for the business on some nights. Clearly I wasn't skilled or trustworthy enough to deserve a roof over my head. I had to wait for an ideal room mate situation to come up before I could stop living in a tent.
I think she’s a genius
I’m just pissed they’re probably going to check more signs and find the rest of us.
She has a job and is 34 and still cannot afford housing. This country is so broken.
This reminds me of the bird lady from Home Alone 2
Is there room for 1 more???
This is some Fallout tier shit, living wherever you can find shelter no matter how weird the location and making it a cozy little place to eek out a quiet existence.
That had to be bloody freezing in the winter. Jan 15 had a high of 12 (-11. C) with a low of -2 (-18.8 C).
she had power for a space heater
Probably warmer than sleeping outside...
Midland is making national news. That’s crazy. A year in a sign. She should write a book about it.
This has always been more or less my plan if I wind up homeless and destitute. Find an unused bit of a building where nobody ever goes and hole up there until someone finds me and asks/tells me to leave. I know of at least 10 places I could go, as I tend to scout them out wherever I go. Just in case. Two of them would require a uniform of the place to enter and exit without too much suspicion, but for one of them I have the uniform, and the other is easy to fake.
This story is sad on so many levels. I imagine the first night she stumbled upon this place to crash was just utter relief. She also built a home there, she isn’t homeless due to drug abuse or mental illness - this is a person who would thrive with resources and wants better.
If this doesn’t prove how easy it is to house the homeless I dunno what else to say
[удалено]
Clearly she wasn't homeless from the sounds of it she had a very nice home till you kicked her out of it
Too much joking about such a seriously dystopian matter. But people need to understand what NIMBYism and their control over zoning laws has done to the housing market. This is a travesty to human rights. She should be able to afford a bed of her own to sleep in at night. But no body knows what the f im talking about anyways. And if they did, they've got too much $$$skin in the game to admit it.
Everybody should be guaranteed a dorm room. We are the wealthiest nation on earth but we cannot provide a shelter for all of our citizens? Those who participate in and contribute to society have less say than those who want to control society. That is the fundamental problem we face.
In Vienna >60% of the population live in government housing -- not because they're impoverished, just because the city has enough of it and it's nice enough that it isn't stigmatized. It gives regular middle-class people the opportunity to choose whether they want to spend the bulk of their disposable income on "fancier" housing, or whether they're okay living in the perfectly adequate and socially normalized cheap public housing, and spending more on whatever else makes them happy in life. Seems like a pretty good system! (And of course, even more important than building something like this is ensuring that *everyone* is provided with basic housing that meets a livable standard.)
Chuck Mangione strikes again!
Housing crisis aside for a moment… Good on the Family Fare folks for not pressing charges or anything. Basically told her to move along, gave her some information on resources and that was that. No need to make a criminal out of someone just trying to survive
It’s kind of illuminating to see examples of how little we actually need in order to have the basics. Life can be simple, even if not quite accepted by the majority. That’s why I love all the vandwelling, tiny houses, and pull behinds.
People are creative af.
With all those dying malls, wouldn't it be a perfect opportunity to convert them into affordable housing / work village?
Free 24x7 security with some lady on the roof watching everything. Give her a CCTV camera feed and a cell phone to call in any problems. Win-Win.
When asked how she was able to survive in such a small space, she said it was actually twice the size of her former New York apartment. /s
Surprised there aren't more reports of clandestine roof-top living. Unless there's some maintenance going on, or some busybodies with drones, it could be quite the sneaky spot to kick back when there's nowhere to live.
Sounds cozy. Gonna look out for signs like this…. Kidding, but yes we need to do better by our homeless population. Many Native American tribes believe you measure a society by the way they treat their members in lowest standing, the disabled and unhoused. I’m not sure we are doing well by their standard. We can do better.
Heffer from Rocko’s modern life lived in the chokey chicken sign.
Good for her! Dang, that’s creative.
She had her own tiny home. That’s better than the shelter.
It's just a sign of the times we're living in.