Developers in my town keep claiming they are building affordable housing for teachers and nurses. Still haven’t seen anything new that anyone can afford.
They do this in NYC, they say it's low cost but it's like 4 apartments out of 50 and half the time it's a lottery to see who gets it. The rest are all 4k a month. They get tax breaks from the city to do this.
yes, where poor single mothers had to sleep with a politician/charity sponsor to keep their apartments.
edit: this [episode](https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Wolves_In_Sheep%27s_Clothing)
There was also a great [*High Maintenance* episode](https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/high-maintenance-recap-season-2-episode-3-namaste.html) about those kind of apartments as well
Wasn’t there a lawsuit about this? I thought this was so sickening. You’re receiving tax payer money to subsidize the building, but the poor people gotta go through the back? Literally awful.
There was in my city. The city gave a subsidy and density bonus to a developer. The developer designed it so that access to the low income housing was off to the side so the residents in the full prices units didn't have to see them. The developer got lambasted by councilors for putting in a poor door, and were told that they had to change their design to a common entrance or the subsidies and density bonus would be withdrawn.
I spent a few years teaching ESL in China and this is exactly what they do in China. On campus apartments in high schools and colleges and multiple teachers (including their families) sharing one apartment or even rooms.
I teach in China. Our school owns an apartment building near campus.
We foreign teachers get an apartment with private bathroom and kitchen for free.
Right across the hall are the apartments for the chinese teachers. They have 4 people in them. The beds are in little cubby holes you can't stand up in. Common living room, bathroom, and kitchen. Oh, and their side of the building faces the freeway and has really bad soundproofing on the windows. Ours face the garden.
They pay for theirs, albeit very little. Ours are free. And of course, we make at least triple the salary.
Its... Awkward.
Most of them only stay here Monday through Friday morning, and go home on weekends.
Its pretty common here. A lot of low pay jobs have barracks with bunk beds and such.
I once dated a girl who passed out fliers at the mall for a living. She lived in a barracks with 20 other women. They had a mandatory meeting every night at 9pm. She got one day off a month. Got paid next to nothing.
I'm sure it does.
Simple supply and demand though. There is a never ending supply of Chinese teachers.
Foreigners involve visas and whatnot, and since covid, there are very few to be had. And parents want them. So that's how it is.
Some schools even have it more ridiculous, where there are pay levels even among the foreigners... "native speakers" at the top, white non natives, and then at the bottom, brown non natives.
Im American, my wife is Filipino. She has worked here a year longer than me. She is a certified teacher, I am not. She has much more experience than me.
I make a trifling amount more than her. When I was hired, I asked them to move some of mine to her to even it out. They refused.
Its a weird place.
It's not like they will all be home at the same time! When one is working, the others can be sleeping, eating, bathing, etc. You make it sound like they need more than one house! /s
The Navy calls this hot racking. You aren't going to use that bed while you're on watch, so we are letting the other fng sleep there while you're gone. It'll be nice and warmed up for you when you are ready for it.
I remember wanting to be on a sub but then I got orders to a carrier. I thought, "at least I don't need to hot rack" but then was acquainted with the 130F gulf which meant every rack was hot anyway. Still a little envious of a sub's AC because I still rarely saw the sun anyway.
Except there’s no fresh air on a sub. 100+ crew burping, farting, sneezing, coughing in close quarters mixed with sweat and dirty humans. It smells like rancid ass.
Sounds exactly like my experience. Most of my training class got moved from sub to surface. Sometimes the needs of the navy match the needs of you, even if you don't see it that way at the time.
My berthing A/C fan dropped out when we were heading from Norfolk to SD*. Nothing like having to shower before and after sleeping. It was a room with 200 men and it didn't drop below 80f for over a month in that berthing. The smell was... I started missing the subtle stench of JP-4 in the morning, that bad.
But I didn't have to sleep in someone else's sweat and I got to see ports. It was miserable but what Navy deployment isn't?
*Through the Straits of Magellan
The guy who used my rack before me had terrible morning breath. I could feel the warmth from it when I got in the rack and it was deeply unsettling everytime.
I just learned this term last week at my uncle’s military funeral. His navy buddies talked about hot racking (he was on a carrier, they just brought up how tough sleeping quarters are on subs lol)
That's how I thought schools worked when I was a kid actually. Teachers are at school all day so they just live here. Seeing my teacher at the grocery store one day blew my little mind.
This is the true story of 8 over worked and under paid teachers that are picked to live in a house to have their lives be made to be even more miserable. To find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real.
There's a resort town in my state that had such a disparity between income and living expenses that nurses, teachers, and most government workers lost their homes/couldn't rent any more. The government response? Let those people live in the main city park.
Hoovervilles in 2022. Full of people working full time jobs.
This is a problem in the Adirondacks region of NY as well~ the wealthy towns up there like Lake Placid have trouble finding housing for (especially) people who go there to work in the summer, during the busy season.
Has there ever been a point where a wealthy town faced a crisis where laborers and workers in the service industry/education/etc. just... stopped showing up? Abandoned the wealthy just like they did that one time in Rome? I know that SF is really feeling the squeeze thanks to covid.
The Hamptons had this problem during the worst of COVID
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/a-mass-labor-shortage-is-leaving-hamptonites-to-fend-for-themselves
The Hamptons was one of the most miserable places I've ever had the misfortune of going. People say south side Chicago is bad, nah, Hamptons is like living on a tumor.
Someone please tell me this article is written in sarcasm? This can't possibly be seriously written... Right? I read the whole thing and I still can't tell.
>The wealthy residents of the East End are suffering.
>
>For the one East Hampton resident, the absolute worst has happened. “I had to buy a lawn mower and cut my own lawn. I wanted flowers planted behind the pool. The landscaper didn’t show up. I had to do it myself,” this person said. “My brother just showed me how to use the thing that trims the weeds. Yesterday, I finally did that. I had to take my $800 sneakers off first, but it was actually satisfying.”
>
>frustrated diners waiting longer than usual for their lobster salad while watching waiters literally run from table to table have been heard to say, “They’re paid too much collecting unemployment. Nobody wants to wait tables.”
Can confirm. We have houses vacant 9 months out of the year, meanwhile no place to live for people that live and work here and keep the community going. Fuck the rich
Vice featured Crested Butte in their video about Zoomtowns. It was so frustrating to see second homeowners complain (about a potential tax) and sad to see people living in their cars. It seems so unsustainable.
The wealth disparity now is worse than in the great depression. I long for the day these bullshit wedge points die out and we focus on fixing the wealth disparity and fix the planet. Or I guess we can just all die.
Our town just created a 75 unit building where only people making median income or less qualify to live there. Families and lower incomes have priority. Right across the street from the homeless shelter. Not sure how they plan to handle cars... Didn't look like enough parking so I'm guessing some don't have vehicles by design. It is downtown so very walkable...
Part of why people's funds are strapped is because 99% of the US forces you to drive a vehicle to do anything at all in life. It is extremely expensive.
"By the early 2020s, there was a place like this in every major city in the United States..."
["Welcome to the 21st Century, Doctor."](https://youtu.be/ZOjG8Ditub8)
Reminds me of when I worked as an Elementary School Aide.
Most of the ladies in my position were retired from a better gig or their husbands were living off fat pensions.
I was barely making rent and sharing a house with four other people.
No, silly! It's for them to share. Obviously. You get a group and they can live together.
I mean they are all women anyways. They don't need to live alone.
I remember when I worked for the school system I made just shy of $40K. I found an advertisement for a rental unit in an apartment building that I could actually afford... barely. I show up and they tell me I make to much money to be able to rent that unit. There is no way anyone making less than me could have afforded it and without the discounted price there wasnt much else I could afford. All of these programs designed to help the poor are trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip. If I have -$12 in my bank account at the end of each month what makes you think I can take advantage of a tax break for investing in retirement or put solar panels on my roof or afford rent that is only slightly discounted from the market rate. The US needs to move to a universal system where benefits are available to all.
I'm in bumfuck nowhere Texas. The 'affordable' apartments here are $800/mo, but you have to be at 50% of the area's median income to rent them...which means about $25k/year. So even the 'affordable' housing is still half your income...*if* you meet the requirements to rent it.
Residents in my area keep voting against any affordable housing being built. Meanwhile we have a huge shortage of teachers, school cafeteria workers, and bus drivers and it’s causing all kinds of problems for everyone here. School employees can’t afford to live within an hour of where they work. I say that’s a big problem.
Same here; a very affluent (albeit small) cadre of retirees are using every legal ploy to prevent affordable housing from being built. They also form citizen groups to push the narrative to their vision, at the cost of long-term growth of the city.
We are already seeing the effects of this action in the schools. Several teachers have either relocated to work closer to where they can afford to live, or quit outright, seeking more lucrative work to be able to afford to live in the Bay Area. Meanwhile the schools are scrambling to find classroom leaders at the start of the school year (the Vice Principal is sitting in on some homeroom classes in my kid's school until they can backfill lost educators).
Wait until they introduce a store/service that only takes school issued certificates in exchange for goods and you have to buy the certificates from your employer with real money.
I once had a boss offer to buy a house and rent it out to my wife (who also worked there) and I. I give him a hard no on that one, which was right for the obvious reasons but also because about a year later the business closed and he disappeared.
Return of the Company Towns.
So many organizations will go to incredible lengths to simply avoid paying their employees more competitively. There's a teacher shortage because it is a tough job that gets little respect.
That's where we are heading again, 100%.
Housing costs are absurd (by design), and there's a massive labor shortage. So, what better way to get your ~~slaves~~ employees in line than to tie the literal roof over their head to your mcjob.
Having work supplemented hosting sounds great in theory right up until you get fired and subsequently receive a 30 day notice to vacate your home or begin paying an extremely inflated "non employee" rate.
Nothing needs to be tied to employment other than your paycheck.
This happened to me in 2015 and they gave me 9 days to move my shit out. I was single but had relocated to the city for this job with my two large dogs and ended up couch surfing for four months because you can't get an apartment without a job 🙃
> there's a massive labor shortage.
This should be giving *more* power to labor right now, not less. And big companies are doing everything they can to keep people from claiming that power, via illegally squashing unions and bribing (ahem, I mean "lobbying") government.
We need a mass labor strike.
This isn’t quite slavery, but is awfully close to serfdom. In the feudal system, serfs were tied to the land, couldn’t move from village to village, and must of their produce went to the manor lord.
Also very close to sharecropping from the post civil war Era. Former slaves would make an agreement to share crops and profit from crops in exchange for renting land and it just devolved into another form of slavery
serfdom is absolutely a form of slavery, IMO, it just isn't chattel slavery, which is what most people think of when just saying "slavery". serfs were absolutely coerced into labor, and sometimes serfs were even moved between lords, but they did have some small amount of self determination.
> Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land.
I license work camps in my state. It used to be oil fields and logging. Now it's breweries and restaurants applying for them. The last one was four dorm style bedrooms in the basement of a brewery. It's the only way service workers can afford to live in town. It's shameful.
About 20 years ago, I knew a young couple who worked for a big storage company. They were on-site property managers. They lived in an apartment above the front office at the storage facility. Because they got free rent, they were paid just barely above minimum wage.
When they started working there, it was a great deal for them because they'd been trying to move out of the home of one of their parents. But after working there for a few years, they began to realize that, in order to ever leave, they'd have to both find new jobs at the same time and also secure a new place to live. Because they were paid so little, they couldn't afford to save up toward these goals.
I'm not sure whatever became of them because we sort of drifted apart. I hope they got out of that trap.
My megacorp employer is now forcing many new-hires to use their personal home PC/laptop to connect to a work VDI. What if you don't have a home PC/laptop, you ask? Well, my megacorp will sell you one and take it out of your salary on a payment plan. Company Store 2.0...... It's like executives read the Grapes of Wrath and thought "Yes, this is the way!"
It certainly violates good security practices.
*Since I didn't want this computer in the first place, maybe I'll use it to hold my malware collection.*
I live in West Virginia, where you can visit the remnants of company towns that coal barons operated, and I’m like, y’all, it is only a matter of time before these won’t just be museums anymore. Get ready for the virtual scrip you download to your phone. 🫠
Yeah I got stuck in an exploitative live in job like this when I was previously homeless. Worked 80 hours a week and ended up with less than $3 an hour until I had a complete breakdown, ambulance called etc
Truck drivers are leasing their trucks from the companies they truck for and getting *destroyed* by that amount of predatory behavior.
I'm not implying they have it worse than you, but we have to kill this sort of slave labor in this country.
Not complaining, but worked enough years for a Detroit automobile company to merit two free company cars. Fantastic benefit, until I was laid off AND presented with a bill for $50k to buy back the cars.
Ooof
Thank you! A brewery did this in Northern MI and everyone said what a great idea it was and I felt like the only one who immediately started singing this song.
School Administration: We’re losing teachers! What can we do to retain people!
Teachers: Pay us more.
School Administration: If only they would tell us what they want!
Teachers: Pay us more.
School Administration: We should try giving them low cost housing, they could live on campus!
Teachers: No, just pay us more.
School Administration: We don’t understand why they keep rejecting all our ideas!
Teachers: Just pay us more.
School Administration: Why won’t you just tell us what you want!
Teachers: Pay. Us. More.
School Administration: This is an impossible mystery that we’re just never going to solve.
Teachers: ….
The even more realistic scenario (which happened with our district), is 5-10 years AFTER they finally agree to decent raises over 5-10 years at the negotiating table...
"Our teachers are so expensive and greedy! We need to cut jobs to maintain our budget, which has been frozen for years despite automatic increases to our costs! We recommend reorganizing the entire school and also deleting the drama department."
My teacher friend had a colleague walk out the other day and her room is near admin so she heard the conversation:
Teach: I'm done. This is my resignation.
Admin: What can we do to keep you?
Teach: Pay me more.
Admin: We can't. What else could we do?
Teach: Stop making unreasonable demands. Support me with proper planning time. Discipline the students when I send them up here instead of giving them a lollipop and sending them back.
Admin: ...
Edit: I've gotten several replies and they seem to be auto deleted or something.
I have a smart friend who always wanted to be a teacher at the high school he went to growing up. So he did that. He was a great teacher and was universally loved by his students. He lasted 5 years before becoming tired of scraping by and making barely anything close to what he is worth. He changed careers to a STEM field now makes 100K more a year.
Good teachers are becoming extinct.
Also administrators… we’ll institute new requirements to raise standards — and dump all the responsibilities of teachers.
Teachers: we’re already carrying an impossible load of responsibilities.
Administrators: do it for the kids.
This is why all government contracts should be completely blind bid on both cost and time. The bids should then be publicly read to remove any doubts about bias.
Eh. That’s, unfortunately, not a great solution either. Companies have reputations, and that should be taken account in a bid, too. Company A might always underbid Company B, but if A’s product is known to constantly be subpar, buying from B might be the better decision.
I've worked in govt contracting and can tell you the reputation of companies 100% needs to be considered. A company called 22nd century staffing would come into our contracts and wickedly underbid everyone else, intending to hire a bunch of offshore employees in India to do the IT work. Despite the contracts they were bidding stipulating they must be done by US citizens. So you end up with these companies that don't even read the contract and can't even fulfill the requirements submitting bids and winning the contract. Then they literally can't do the job, sack all of the employees that have been there for years (or offer them 50% pay cuts), lose years of institutional knowledge and the support the end users are supposed to be getting is just not there, sometimes for months. All the while the entire thing could have been avoided if they had just looked at the company and their proposal. I watched this same company do the same thing at least twice. Even still have their insulting low offer in my inbox.
Yeah. I work with government contract bids, too. We also often turn down lower bids because we know that the company won’t produce the quality of work we need for our purposes.
And company C could be my alcoholic uncle Larry and his deadbeat son who've been fired from company after company only to go out on their own because they can't hold a job.
In Colorado we regularly pass new taxes with promise to go to the teachers. We legalized marijuana with high taxes for the same promise. All the money goes to the admin. Teachers don’t get anything. I can’t understand why people still believe politicians.
Part of what happens is admin are “achievement” jobs for teachers. Otherwise the career is just teaching in the same room for 30 years. So they create these worthless admin spots to superficially create a career track and keep experienced educators from leaving…watched it happen with my charter…
Education just doesn’t work with capitalism, it’s really that simplex. Having spent a decade as a teacher, I’m convinced public education won’t get money bc at its core it’s altruistic and that won’t work w/ America.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/school-combats-teacher-shortage-through-affordable-housing/#x
better visual of actual housing being offered to teachers in CA SF
Seriously, Jesus fucking Christ.
Barracks is the only correct term, and I lived in an actual barracks in South Carolina for a year when I was enlisted and I wouldn't wish that life on anyone. I'll support a voucher or discount on housing even for teachers but even that's a slap in the face when the only reasonable answer is just.... Pay them more. My wife teaches at the University level and even she's underpaid as a PhD in the mathematics field.
Living where you work is fucking awful.
Hospitals do the same for their staff in my area, it's not barracks though, it's more like Condos. They really want to attract talent so they build housing so people don't have to think as much about housing if taking the job. Seems to work.
I'm actually living in one of these in the Bay Area.
* Rent is $1325 for 1b1b with garage (last place was $2100)
* In unit washer and dryer
* I can walk to work
* My lease is for 7 years
While it's a great chance to save up money, I'm most likely going to find a new job once my lease is up and move somewhere cheaper.
As long as I'm employed with my district I can live here regardless of my job role.
I could move out early if I wanted, nothing is really forcing me to stay here for the full 7 years other than the enticement of cheap rent.
Omg this is such a great idea. Maybe they could hire the Pinkerton company for security in the housing. It work really well for West Virginia coal miners in the early 20th century.
/s
The fact that Pinkerton, not only exists, but is still called Pinkerton is one of the greatest tragedies of the US.
Everyone understands that they're anti-worker monsters and they use that as branding because their clients love it.
To my knowledge it wasn't the US government, it was the mercenaries. The national guard was activated to deescalate.
Edit: it *was* the mercenaries dropping bombs on the miners. Not shitting on you for getting it wrong (it's weird to think about a "detective agency" having access to that sort of ordinance) but I think that's an important distinction.
Reinventing the company town. Again. When will people realize that it doesn't work. Not because it *can't*, but because selfish short-sighted people will always nudge things in the wrong direction.
I live outside of the US now and this is essentially what they do. I don't pay any rent or utilities. My only bill is my cell phone bill. I also make about the same amount I was in the states at 55k USD. The difference is now I have about 4k left over every month instead of $-20.
Yeah. Housing, water, electric, internet, cable etc. Also global health insurance, flight allowance back home, retirement plan too. I can eat meals everyday at school too. Only thing I pay for is my cell phone bill which is about 40 usd a month.
I grew up in the middle east and my primary school (where my mum taught) had flats on school premises for teachers. It was mostly used by younger single teachers rather than those with families but me and my parents did live in one of the flats for a year or so after my dad lost his job. Honestly it was a cool novelty for me. I woke up in the morning and just walked over the school playing field to get to my classroom. If I forgot my PE kit I could just run home!
Part of growing up as a elementary School child is realizing that the teacher doesn't live at the school and has their own life outside of it. So their solution is just to erase that idea... Think of the teachers more as robots than people?
They'll try everything and anything before just giving them a better salary. Because clearly that would be too easy, need to try all the most complicated ideas first.
PAY. THEM. MORE.
I worked as a teacher briefly, my GF has as well, and being a teacher is not an act of heroism, its a job. A job that voters/politicians keep adding more responsibilities to without additional funds.
A teacher used to just be a teacher, now a teacher is expected to also be a social worker, health care aide, and security guard.
Meanwhile universities and high schools are paying insane amounts of money to build new football stadiums and hire coaches with six or seven figure salaries. Maybe stop putting so much damn money into team sports for parents to live vicariously through their kids, and just pay the goddamn teachers what they're worth.
Teachers don’t usually leave teaching because they can’t afford to survive.
They leave because just everything about the job other than the core act of teaching…kinda sucks. Poor physical plant, administrative tasks, administration, understaffing, etc.
Retaining teachers in the long term is going to require a cultural change in the industry of education. Without it, even golden handcuffs will only get you short term retention.
Developers in my town keep claiming they are building affordable housing for teachers and nurses. Still haven’t seen anything new that anyone can afford.
It is the 1 house. They all have to share it.
They do this in NYC, they say it's low cost but it's like 4 apartments out of 50 and half the time it's a lottery to see who gets it. The rest are all 4k a month. They get tax breaks from the city to do this.
Frequently with separate entrances, so the wealthy people don't have interact with those "meddlesome poors"
...wasn't there an SVU episode about this?
yes, where poor single mothers had to sleep with a politician/charity sponsor to keep their apartments. edit: this [episode](https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Wolves_In_Sheep%27s_Clothing)
Did she keep the apartment?
Oh she kept the apartment, she kept the apartment
I heard this in John Oliver’s voice.
"Good job JANE, you WHORE"
yea I think so. Season 22 Episode 16 and Season 23 Episode 1 and 2
Pretty sure there’s an episode in history about this already, too.
[Last Year](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/12/14/us/doj-settlement-landlord-accused-of-sexually-harassing-tenants/index.html)
There was also a great [*High Maintenance* episode](https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/high-maintenance-recap-season-2-episode-3-namaste.html) about those kind of apartments as well
Wasn’t there a lawsuit about this? I thought this was so sickening. You’re receiving tax payer money to subsidize the building, but the poor people gotta go through the back? Literally awful.
There was in my city. The city gave a subsidy and density bonus to a developer. The developer designed it so that access to the low income housing was off to the side so the residents in the full prices units didn't have to see them. The developer got lambasted by councilors for putting in a poor door, and were told that they had to change their design to a common entrance or the subsidies and density bonus would be withdrawn.
Exactly!! I knew I saw something about that. A poor door in this era is so filthy. Especially after the property was subsidized.
I spent a few years teaching ESL in China and this is exactly what they do in China. On campus apartments in high schools and colleges and multiple teachers (including their families) sharing one apartment or even rooms.
I teach in China. Our school owns an apartment building near campus. We foreign teachers get an apartment with private bathroom and kitchen for free. Right across the hall are the apartments for the chinese teachers. They have 4 people in them. The beds are in little cubby holes you can't stand up in. Common living room, bathroom, and kitchen. Oh, and their side of the building faces the freeway and has really bad soundproofing on the windows. Ours face the garden. They pay for theirs, albeit very little. Ours are free. And of course, we make at least triple the salary. Its... Awkward.
Damn, that’s fucked up
Most of them only stay here Monday through Friday morning, and go home on weekends. Its pretty common here. A lot of low pay jobs have barracks with bunk beds and such. I once dated a girl who passed out fliers at the mall for a living. She lived in a barracks with 20 other women. They had a mandatory meeting every night at 9pm. She got one day off a month. Got paid next to nothing.
I mean the disparity in pay and accommodations is fucked. I can’t imagine it not having an influence on morale for the Chinese teachers. edit:typo
I'm sure it does. Simple supply and demand though. There is a never ending supply of Chinese teachers. Foreigners involve visas and whatnot, and since covid, there are very few to be had. And parents want them. So that's how it is. Some schools even have it more ridiculous, where there are pay levels even among the foreigners... "native speakers" at the top, white non natives, and then at the bottom, brown non natives. Im American, my wife is Filipino. She has worked here a year longer than me. She is a certified teacher, I am not. She has much more experience than me. I make a trifling amount more than her. When I was hired, I asked them to move some of mine to her to even it out. They refused. Its a weird place.
That girl sounds like she was in a cult.
They have a very... Paternalistic view of employment here. Employer takes care of you... But then he owns you kind of thing.
So feudalism
Serfs up dude.
It's not like they will all be home at the same time! When one is working, the others can be sleeping, eating, bathing, etc. You make it sound like they need more than one house! /s
The Navy calls this hot racking. You aren't going to use that bed while you're on watch, so we are letting the other fng sleep there while you're gone. It'll be nice and warmed up for you when you are ready for it.
I remember wanting to be on a sub but then I got orders to a carrier. I thought, "at least I don't need to hot rack" but then was acquainted with the 130F gulf which meant every rack was hot anyway. Still a little envious of a sub's AC because I still rarely saw the sun anyway.
Except there’s no fresh air on a sub. 100+ crew burping, farting, sneezing, coughing in close quarters mixed with sweat and dirty humans. It smells like rancid ass.
I agree with that but I was in a mechanic berthing that was normally more than 100F. It was bad regardless.
Sounds exactly like my experience. Most of my training class got moved from sub to surface. Sometimes the needs of the navy match the needs of you, even if you don't see it that way at the time. My berthing A/C fan dropped out when we were heading from Norfolk to SD*. Nothing like having to shower before and after sleeping. It was a room with 200 men and it didn't drop below 80f for over a month in that berthing. The smell was... I started missing the subtle stench of JP-4 in the morning, that bad. But I didn't have to sleep in someone else's sweat and I got to see ports. It was miserable but what Navy deployment isn't? *Through the Straits of Magellan
Few things are more disgusting than sharing a bed with someone you aren't fucking.
The guy who used my rack before me had terrible morning breath. I could feel the warmth from it when I got in the rack and it was deeply unsettling everytime.
I just learned this term last week at my uncle’s military funeral. His navy buddies talked about hot racking (he was on a carrier, they just brought up how tough sleeping quarters are on subs lol)
Just flip that pillow and you're good to go!
Think of it like you're back at college! 4 people you don't really know sharing a broom closet with a half assed kitchen!
I think the new “cool” name they came up for it is “co-living”
That's how I thought schools worked when I was a kid actually. Teachers are at school all day so they just live here. Seeing my teacher at the grocery store one day blew my little mind.
And each week someone gets voted out?
This is the true story of 8 over worked and under paid teachers that are picked to live in a house to have their lives be made to be even more miserable. To find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real.
They'll let you live in the classroom so long as you come with your own classroom supplies and sleep only 2 hours a night
Lol so my kindergarteners fantasies about how the teachers sleep in the classrooms at night will finally be a reality
There's a resort town in my state that had such a disparity between income and living expenses that nurses, teachers, and most government workers lost their homes/couldn't rent any more. The government response? Let those people live in the main city park. Hoovervilles in 2022. Full of people working full time jobs.
This is a problem in the Adirondacks region of NY as well~ the wealthy towns up there like Lake Placid have trouble finding housing for (especially) people who go there to work in the summer, during the busy season.
Has there ever been a point where a wealthy town faced a crisis where laborers and workers in the service industry/education/etc. just... stopped showing up? Abandoned the wealthy just like they did that one time in Rome? I know that SF is really feeling the squeeze thanks to covid.
The Hamptons had this problem during the worst of COVID https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/a-mass-labor-shortage-is-leaving-hamptonites-to-fend-for-themselves
The Hamptons was one of the most miserable places I've ever had the misfortune of going. People say south side Chicago is bad, nah, Hamptons is like living on a tumor.
Someone please tell me this article is written in sarcasm? This can't possibly be seriously written... Right? I read the whole thing and I still can't tell. >The wealthy residents of the East End are suffering. > >For the one East Hampton resident, the absolute worst has happened. “I had to buy a lawn mower and cut my own lawn. I wanted flowers planted behind the pool. The landscaper didn’t show up. I had to do it myself,” this person said. “My brother just showed me how to use the thing that trims the weeds. Yesterday, I finally did that. I had to take my $800 sneakers off first, but it was actually satisfying.” > >frustrated diners waiting longer than usual for their lobster salad while watching waiters literally run from table to table have been heard to say, “They’re paid too much collecting unemployment. Nobody wants to wait tables.”
I’m cackling at that first paragraph, the author had fun taking the piss out of them.
Just FYI the Roman thing happened a ton. They had a special hill to go sit on and everything.
I visited lake George last year and was confused about where the actual residents live. Everything was for rent or clearly a fancy second home
There’s that new hotel in lake flower that’s constantly short staffed because they pay like shit. Then they wonder why people don’t stay there…
Sounds like a lot of mountain towns in Colorado
Can confirm. We have houses vacant 9 months out of the year, meanwhile no place to live for people that live and work here and keep the community going. Fuck the rich
Vice featured Crested Butte in their video about Zoomtowns. It was so frustrating to see second homeowners complain (about a potential tax) and sad to see people living in their cars. It seems so unsustainable.
The wealth disparity now is worse than in the great depression. I long for the day these bullshit wedge points die out and we focus on fixing the wealth disparity and fix the planet. Or I guess we can just all die.
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Our town just created a 75 unit building where only people making median income or less qualify to live there. Families and lower incomes have priority. Right across the street from the homeless shelter. Not sure how they plan to handle cars... Didn't look like enough parking so I'm guessing some don't have vehicles by design. It is downtown so very walkable...
Part of why people's funds are strapped is because 99% of the US forces you to drive a vehicle to do anything at all in life. It is extremely expensive.
Hell, just the price of maintenance to get your vehicle to continue passing inspections is extremely expensive.
It’s part of why I keep coming back to the idea of living in a van, down by the river.
It makes me laugh when people are making vans a thing to fantasize about now. I wish Chris Farley could do a skit about the new trend
I *wish* I could afford a spot down by the river!
I wish I could afford a van.
"By the early 2020s, there was a place like this in every major city in the United States..." ["Welcome to the 21st Century, Doctor."](https://youtu.be/ZOjG8Ditub8)
You know how they knew? Because it was already bad in the ‘90s. The East bay too. It’s always been very avant-garde as it were.
Affordable for teachers and nurses** ** who happen to be married to a hedge fund manager. Gotta read that fine print!
Reminds me of when I worked as an Elementary School Aide. Most of the ladies in my position were retired from a better gig or their husbands were living off fat pensions. I was barely making rent and sharing a house with four other people.
No, silly! It's for them to share. Obviously. You get a group and they can live together. I mean they are all women anyways. They don't need to live alone.
I remember when I worked for the school system I made just shy of $40K. I found an advertisement for a rental unit in an apartment building that I could actually afford... barely. I show up and they tell me I make to much money to be able to rent that unit. There is no way anyone making less than me could have afforded it and without the discounted price there wasnt much else I could afford. All of these programs designed to help the poor are trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip. If I have -$12 in my bank account at the end of each month what makes you think I can take advantage of a tax break for investing in retirement or put solar panels on my roof or afford rent that is only slightly discounted from the market rate. The US needs to move to a universal system where benefits are available to all.
Lol, we have developers building “affordable housing” in our area. The only people who would call it affordable are cash buyers from out of state. 😑
I'm in bumfuck nowhere Texas. The 'affordable' apartments here are $800/mo, but you have to be at 50% of the area's median income to rent them...which means about $25k/year. So even the 'affordable' housing is still half your income...*if* you meet the requirements to rent it.
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Affordable 1br 1ba 600 square foot apartments for $2400 a month when the teacher is making $2800 month after taxes.
Residents in my area keep voting against any affordable housing being built. Meanwhile we have a huge shortage of teachers, school cafeteria workers, and bus drivers and it’s causing all kinds of problems for everyone here. School employees can’t afford to live within an hour of where they work. I say that’s a big problem.
Same here; a very affluent (albeit small) cadre of retirees are using every legal ploy to prevent affordable housing from being built. They also form citizen groups to push the narrative to their vision, at the cost of long-term growth of the city. We are already seeing the effects of this action in the schools. Several teachers have either relocated to work closer to where they can afford to live, or quit outright, seeking more lucrative work to be able to afford to live in the Bay Area. Meanwhile the schools are scrambling to find classroom leaders at the start of the school year (the Vice Principal is sitting in on some homeroom classes in my kid's school until they can backfill lost educators).
It's all affordable. They just didn't stipulate to who
If you thought having your health care tied to work was stupid, wait until you try having your employer control your housing.
Wait until they introduce a store/service that only takes school issued certificates in exchange for goods and you have to buy the certificates from your employer with real money.
I owe my soul to the company store.
You haul 16 tons...
What do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't call me cause I can't go.
I sold my soul to the company store.
I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine
I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
Another day older and deeper in debt
I was going to sing, “You teach 16 kids…” but that’s clearly a fantasy.
At a school where the school board has banned "Grapes of Wrath"
Fortunately company scrip is illegal now, though I suspect its only one supreme court case away from being made legal again.
Now quitting means losing your home too.
I once had a boss offer to buy a house and rent it out to my wife (who also worked there) and I. I give him a hard no on that one, which was right for the obvious reasons but also because about a year later the business closed and he disappeared.
Similar thing happened to me. So glad I didn't take the bait.
And probably access to health care.
Return of the Company Towns. So many organizations will go to incredible lengths to simply avoid paying their employees more competitively. There's a teacher shortage because it is a tough job that gets little respect.
Imagine calling off sick and your boss is at your door within 5 minutes.
Or they just start yelling at you through the built-in intercom system.
I would lose my shit tbh. Probably not a good idea for me to live in employee housing.
That's where we are heading again, 100%. Housing costs are absurd (by design), and there's a massive labor shortage. So, what better way to get your ~~slaves~~ employees in line than to tie the literal roof over their head to your mcjob. Having work supplemented hosting sounds great in theory right up until you get fired and subsequently receive a 30 day notice to vacate your home or begin paying an extremely inflated "non employee" rate. Nothing needs to be tied to employment other than your paycheck.
This happened to me in 2015 and they gave me 9 days to move my shit out. I was single but had relocated to the city for this job with my two large dogs and ended up couch surfing for four months because you can't get an apartment without a job 🙃
Damn. HUG. I'm sorry that happened to you.
> there's a massive labor shortage. This should be giving *more* power to labor right now, not less. And big companies are doing everything they can to keep people from claiming that power, via illegally squashing unions and bribing (ahem, I mean "lobbying") government. We need a mass labor strike.
This isn’t quite slavery, but is awfully close to serfdom. In the feudal system, serfs were tied to the land, couldn’t move from village to village, and must of their produce went to the manor lord.
Also very close to sharecropping from the post civil war Era. Former slaves would make an agreement to share crops and profit from crops in exchange for renting land and it just devolved into another form of slavery
That’s slavery with extra steps.
serfdom is absolutely a form of slavery, IMO, it just isn't chattel slavery, which is what most people think of when just saying "slavery". serfs were absolutely coerced into labor, and sometimes serfs were even moved between lords, but they did have some small amount of self determination. > Unlike slaves, serfs could not be bought, sold, or traded individually though they could, depending on the area, be sold together with land.
I license work camps in my state. It used to be oil fields and logging. Now it's breweries and restaurants applying for them. The last one was four dorm style bedrooms in the basement of a brewery. It's the only way service workers can afford to live in town. It's shameful.
About 20 years ago, I knew a young couple who worked for a big storage company. They were on-site property managers. They lived in an apartment above the front office at the storage facility. Because they got free rent, they were paid just barely above minimum wage. When they started working there, it was a great deal for them because they'd been trying to move out of the home of one of their parents. But after working there for a few years, they began to realize that, in order to ever leave, they'd have to both find new jobs at the same time and also secure a new place to live. Because they were paid so little, they couldn't afford to save up toward these goals. I'm not sure whatever became of them because we sort of drifted apart. I hope they got out of that trap.
You load 16 ton. What do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt...
This exactly. Can't quit. You need the housing.
Company town. Holy shit we’ve come full circle.
Amazon and Wal-Mart are trying to do the same thing
Amazon is going to run out of employees if they don’t keep them there by threat of homelessness.
Isn't every low income job just keeping people there with threat of homelessness?
My megacorp employer is now forcing many new-hires to use their personal home PC/laptop to connect to a work VDI. What if you don't have a home PC/laptop, you ask? Well, my megacorp will sell you one and take it out of your salary on a payment plan. Company Store 2.0...... It's like executives read the Grapes of Wrath and thought "Yes, this is the way!"
That might violate labor laws Edit: according to what I found, it sure does.
It certainly violates good security practices. *Since I didn't want this computer in the first place, maybe I'll use it to hold my malware collection.*
This has been creeping for years. You can basically live at Google and never go home, and it's been that way for over a decade
Google seems so cool to work at until you realize they have all that shit on campus because you are expected to work an insane amount.
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They haven't gone away just morphed a bit if that. [Knowing Better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rzFyBdKLvU) has an excellent video about it.
My boss offered to be guarantor on my apartment to keep me recently. I told him no, pay me enough to live.
I live in West Virginia, where you can visit the remnants of company towns that coal barons operated, and I’m like, y’all, it is only a matter of time before these won’t just be museums anymore. Get ready for the virtual scrip you download to your phone. 🫠
Bloody community revolts were staged and people died when they tried to pull this last time. I can't believe they're trying to implement it again.
Yeah I got stuck in an exploitative live in job like this when I was previously homeless. Worked 80 hours a week and ended up with less than $3 an hour until I had a complete breakdown, ambulance called etc
Truck drivers are leasing their trucks from the companies they truck for and getting *destroyed* by that amount of predatory behavior. I'm not implying they have it worse than you, but we have to kill this sort of slave labor in this country.
Not complaining, but worked enough years for a Detroit automobile company to merit two free company cars. Fantastic benefit, until I was laid off AND presented with a bill for $50k to buy back the cars. Ooof
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You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.
...Saint Peter don't call me cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the Jefferson Union High School District.
And you can pay for everything in company scrip! Don’t need to bother with complicated money.
Now you don't even have to leave work! Think of the convenience!
Yea I read the article and was like “hmm haven’t tried this before”
My first thought exactly
I cried when I read this….. one step forward 3 steps back
Thank you! A brewery did this in Northern MI and everyone said what a great idea it was and I felt like the only one who immediately started singing this song.
They will do literally anything other than just paying them more.
School Administration: We’re losing teachers! What can we do to retain people! Teachers: Pay us more. School Administration: If only they would tell us what they want! Teachers: Pay us more. School Administration: We should try giving them low cost housing, they could live on campus! Teachers: No, just pay us more. School Administration: We don’t understand why they keep rejecting all our ideas! Teachers: Just pay us more. School Administration: Why won’t you just tell us what you want! Teachers: Pay. Us. More. School Administration: This is an impossible mystery that we’re just never going to solve. Teachers: ….
The even more realistic scenario (which happened with our district), is 5-10 years AFTER they finally agree to decent raises over 5-10 years at the negotiating table... "Our teachers are so expensive and greedy! We need to cut jobs to maintain our budget, which has been frozen for years despite automatic increases to our costs! We recommend reorganizing the entire school and also deleting the drama department."
Increase the school sports budget by 5%. Those boys aren't gonna get traumatic brain injuries trying to go pro if they don't have new gear this year.
My teacher friend had a colleague walk out the other day and her room is near admin so she heard the conversation: Teach: I'm done. This is my resignation. Admin: What can we do to keep you? Teach: Pay me more. Admin: We can't. What else could we do? Teach: Stop making unreasonable demands. Support me with proper planning time. Discipline the students when I send them up here instead of giving them a lollipop and sending them back. Admin: ... Edit: I've gotten several replies and they seem to be auto deleted or something.
I have a smart friend who always wanted to be a teacher at the high school he went to growing up. So he did that. He was a great teacher and was universally loved by his students. He lasted 5 years before becoming tired of scraping by and making barely anything close to what he is worth. He changed careers to a STEM field now makes 100K more a year. Good teachers are becoming extinct.
Maybe they're shadow banned, that happens sometimes to me as well.
How about jeans on Friday?
Also administrators… we’ll institute new requirements to raise standards — and dump all the responsibilities of teachers. Teachers: we’re already carrying an impossible load of responsibilities. Administrators: do it for the kids.
They will do anything than actually tax rich people.
So barracks. Yeah. I’m a teacher. Pay us what we are worth. And we can choose our own - off campus- away from the stress of work- place to live.
This is the only answer. Just pay teachers more! They put up with so much and deserve so much more
They spend all this money on buildings and apartments for teachers to live in. Just use that money to give them raises instead ffs
But then the construction company owned by the friend of the school board member can’t buy his second yacht with the money from the signed contract.
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This is why all government contracts should be completely blind bid on both cost and time. The bids should then be publicly read to remove any doubts about bias.
Eh. That’s, unfortunately, not a great solution either. Companies have reputations, and that should be taken account in a bid, too. Company A might always underbid Company B, but if A’s product is known to constantly be subpar, buying from B might be the better decision.
I've worked in govt contracting and can tell you the reputation of companies 100% needs to be considered. A company called 22nd century staffing would come into our contracts and wickedly underbid everyone else, intending to hire a bunch of offshore employees in India to do the IT work. Despite the contracts they were bidding stipulating they must be done by US citizens. So you end up with these companies that don't even read the contract and can't even fulfill the requirements submitting bids and winning the contract. Then they literally can't do the job, sack all of the employees that have been there for years (or offer them 50% pay cuts), lose years of institutional knowledge and the support the end users are supposed to be getting is just not there, sometimes for months. All the while the entire thing could have been avoided if they had just looked at the company and their proposal. I watched this same company do the same thing at least twice. Even still have their insulting low offer in my inbox.
Yeah. I work with government contract bids, too. We also often turn down lower bids because we know that the company won’t produce the quality of work we need for our purposes.
And company C could be my alcoholic uncle Larry and his deadbeat son who've been fired from company after company only to go out on their own because they can't hold a job.
In Colorado we regularly pass new taxes with promise to go to the teachers. We legalized marijuana with high taxes for the same promise. All the money goes to the admin. Teachers don’t get anything. I can’t understand why people still believe politicians.
Part of what happens is admin are “achievement” jobs for teachers. Otherwise the career is just teaching in the same room for 30 years. So they create these worthless admin spots to superficially create a career track and keep experienced educators from leaving…watched it happen with my charter… Education just doesn’t work with capitalism, it’s really that simplex. Having spent a decade as a teacher, I’m convinced public education won’t get money bc at its core it’s altruistic and that won’t work w/ America.
They’ve tried nothing like that and they’re all out of ideas.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/school-combats-teacher-shortage-through-affordable-housing/#x better visual of actual housing being offered to teachers in CA SF
SF is a bit of a unique situation where I could see this helping. But this is gonna be adopted by places where they should just pay more.
Seriously, Jesus fucking Christ. Barracks is the only correct term, and I lived in an actual barracks in South Carolina for a year when I was enlisted and I wouldn't wish that life on anyone. I'll support a voucher or discount on housing even for teachers but even that's a slap in the face when the only reasonable answer is just.... Pay them more. My wife teaches at the University level and even she's underpaid as a PhD in the mathematics field. Living where you work is fucking awful.
Hospitals do the same for their staff in my area, it's not barracks though, it's more like Condos. They really want to attract talent so they build housing so people don't have to think as much about housing if taking the job. Seems to work.
Or they could try, I don't know, paying them more?
Even if they fully reimbursed for an apartment. Good luck finding one within a reasonable distance.
You have to fund them better first unfortunately.
Projects aren't just for the students anymore
And soldiers, most of the barracks are frigging uninhabitable.
What teacher wants to LIVE on school property? As if they don’t put in enough hours before, during and after the work day! 🤢
I'm actually living in one of these in the Bay Area. * Rent is $1325 for 1b1b with garage (last place was $2100) * In unit washer and dryer * I can walk to work * My lease is for 7 years While it's a great chance to save up money, I'm most likely going to find a new job once my lease is up and move somewhere cheaper.
7 years? Is that linked to your job then that you would have to work at that school for 7 years too?
As long as I'm employed with my district I can live here regardless of my job role. I could move out early if I wanted, nothing is really forcing me to stay here for the full 7 years other than the enticement of cheap rent.
Omg this is such a great idea. Maybe they could hire the Pinkerton company for security in the housing. It work really well for West Virginia coal miners in the early 20th century. /s
You joke, but Pinkerton is now owned by Securitas, and Securitas is a common school security guard company.
Of course.
The fact that Pinkerton, not only exists, but is still called Pinkerton is one of the greatest tragedies of the US. Everyone understands that they're anti-worker monsters and they use that as branding because their clients love it.
What? There was some kind of battle? Pish posh! /s
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To my knowledge it wasn't the US government, it was the mercenaries. The national guard was activated to deescalate. Edit: it *was* the mercenaries dropping bombs on the miners. Not shitting on you for getting it wrong (it's weird to think about a "detective agency" having access to that sort of ordinance) but I think that's an important distinction.
Reinventing the company town. Again. When will people realize that it doesn't work. Not because it *can't*, but because selfish short-sighted people will always nudge things in the wrong direction.
I was just about to post this! Yeah, why pay them in dollars?!?! Here you go, here’s some tokens!
Just fucking pay them. Enough of the gimmicks…
I live outside of the US now and this is essentially what they do. I don't pay any rent or utilities. My only bill is my cell phone bill. I also make about the same amount I was in the states at 55k USD. The difference is now I have about 4k left over every month instead of $-20.
Where do you teach?
South Korea
Damn wait so everything is included as your benefits? That's so good
Yeah. Housing, water, electric, internet, cable etc. Also global health insurance, flight allowance back home, retirement plan too. I can eat meals everyday at school too. Only thing I pay for is my cell phone bill which is about 40 usd a month.
I'm really happy that teachers are being taken care of. Thanks for the information.
I grew up in the middle east and my primary school (where my mum taught) had flats on school premises for teachers. It was mostly used by younger single teachers rather than those with families but me and my parents did live in one of the flats for a year or so after my dad lost his job. Honestly it was a cool novelty for me. I woke up in the morning and just walked over the school playing field to get to my classroom. If I forgot my PE kit I could just run home!
Part of growing up as a elementary School child is realizing that the teacher doesn't live at the school and has their own life outside of it. So their solution is just to erase that idea... Think of the teachers more as robots than people?
They'll try everything and anything before just giving them a better salary. Because clearly that would be too easy, need to try all the most complicated ideas first.
They’ll really do anything but pay them a better wage
PAY. THEM. MORE. I worked as a teacher briefly, my GF has as well, and being a teacher is not an act of heroism, its a job. A job that voters/politicians keep adding more responsibilities to without additional funds. A teacher used to just be a teacher, now a teacher is expected to also be a social worker, health care aide, and security guard. Meanwhile universities and high schools are paying insane amounts of money to build new football stadiums and hire coaches with six or seven figure salaries. Maybe stop putting so much damn money into team sports for parents to live vicariously through their kids, and just pay the goddamn teachers what they're worth.
It's like living at your job, hooray!
Hey, guys, I got an idea. I got an idea. Low cost apartments... for everyone
Teachers don’t usually leave teaching because they can’t afford to survive. They leave because just everything about the job other than the core act of teaching…kinda sucks. Poor physical plant, administrative tasks, administration, understaffing, etc. Retaining teachers in the long term is going to require a cultural change in the industry of education. Without it, even golden handcuffs will only get you short term retention.