Homeless migration to RVs creating problems

[Durb]

There seems to be a trend for the homeless to get an old RV and live on the streets. County officials admit their hands are are tied as they do not have proper laws in place to deal with the problem. Nor do they have the proper funds. Our county estimates it costs $3,000 to tow and salvage an abandoned RV. Private landowners with RVers squatting on their property are also having problems. Towing companies will not remove the rigs as they know they won't get paid.

It looks to be a growing problem without an easy financial solution. Will we start seeing salvage taxes on our RV registration renewals?

[fj12ryder]

"but for the last 40+ years the rich have been winning."

What in heaven's name gave you the idea it started 40+ years ago? It's always been that way, check out Carnegie, Astor, Fisk, Rockefeller, and even earlier. It's the Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules".

[TomG2]

When we had our Florida based construction company back in the 1980's, I noticed that there were a lot of poor people in that state and a few rich people. That is now the case in most of the other states. Telling them that they can "Live the RV life on less than $800/month" is a common Internet message. So, why should we be surprised to find $2,000 rigs parked next to the $200,000 RV's at Walmart? For all the reasons previously mentioned and a few more, there are lots of people trying to get by on the cheap.

[JRscooby]

westernrvparkowner wrote:

But a quick internet search found many apartments in Independence Missouri in the $600 a month range. A frugal single person can afford that on minimum wage. A couple where both are making even the minimum wage wouldn't even have to be frugal. Housing costs are not the cause of homelessness in your world.

I do not think housing prices in this area have outpaced inflation near as much as west coast.
Ok, what percentage of your income do you (or people in your income range. I don't know you, but if somebody is making house payments I figure they are renting from bank) spend for rent? In my court ordered personal money management class we where told it should not be over 30%. So that means a income of over $1800 a month, or 240 hours of minimum wage work. And the add the idea most employers in this area that pay minimum wage do not allow anybody to get close to 40 hours a week. And most minimum wage workers understand they are unlikely to work the same hours day to day let alone week to week. This makes it hard to take a 2nd job. ("Sorry, I can't work these hours, I have to work...)
Fact is over a decade ago, lots of people that had middle class jobs lost their jobs, houses etc. And at that time, a couple of graduating classes came into a labor market where jobs that paid enough to pay the loans where rare. Most of the people that lost the high paying jobs went back to work, but took a pay cut. So they are in lower priced housing, crowding out the lower income. This will be a issue for a generation.

True, I don't live in your world. In my world all the homeless are not college grads. The police are not lurking around every corner looking to violate my rights and steal my money. And the rich aren't out to get me, they just don't care about me one way or the other. However I understand that is how you see things in your world.

Are the worlds different? Not all homeless are collage grads, but unexpected decisions can cause homelessness. The wrong health insurance policy can put even somebody pretty well off into bankruptcy. That may not take your house, but if you get sick again before the time limit between bankruptcy?
The police? Under civil asset forfeiture rules you have to prove you did nothing wrong, not the "innocent until proven guilty" we were taught to expect. And a large percentage of the population do not know the laws are in force. Many when you try to explain ether start waving the Constitution saying it can't happen. Others say "good, crime did not pay" without understanding that if the criminal did not need to be convicted, then you would not need to be convicted to lose your stuff.
Rich don't care about me? Not as long as I pay my taxes, and can be manipulated into voting for the people that will keep them from paying theirs. Fact is class war has gone on since the start of capitalism, but for the last 40+ years the rich have been winning.

[TechWriter]

time2roll wrote:
'homeless' is a group of problems. Need a separate solution for each.

Amen.

According to the most recent annual survey by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (2018), major cities across the country report that top causes of homelessness among families were: (1) lack of affordable housing, (2) unemployment, (3) poverty, and (4) low wages, in that order.

The same report found that the top four causes of homelessness among unaccompanied individuals were (1) lack of affordable housing, (2) unemployment, (3) poverty, (4) mental illness and the lack of needed services, and (5) substance abuse and the lack of needed services.
Source

[colliehauler]

Grit dog wrote:
However, the homeless crisis is less about all that, IMO. IDK what the causes are. All the mentally ill congregate in certain cities??
People getting lazier? IDK
It's sure as heck not the economy and hasn't been for a long time.

The recent phenomenon of old RVs becoming urban homeless shelters is, every year there are more/newer RVs that still are "useable" but not road worthy. (Back in the whatever 70s-90s, there weren't the number of RVs that were old, because it was a newer industry.)
Makes sense, I'd live in a leaky RV with a bad engine before living under a bridge!

Maybe you can get them a job at Les Schwab's or AAA Transmission.

[magicbus]

goducks10 wrote:
Still no solutions.

I wasn’t going to get the involved but this has been an amazingly civil thread (of course I haven’t seen what’s been deleted 🙂 )

To me this quote:

The homeless problem began in the late 70's early 80's when the ACLU sued several states and eventually petitioned the supreme court to rule on whether or not it was unconstitutional to keep someone against their will in mental institutions, providing they were not a threat to themselves or others.

Is spot on for the root cause of our problem today. I came into adulthood in the 70’s in a big city and watched it happen firsthand when Philadelphia had to empty Byberry State Hospital. Keeping someone against their will has become practically impossible, even for potentially life prolonging drug intervention.

Society simply won’t allow the rest of society to correct the problem in the near term, I think it will take a generation.

Dave

[goducks10]

Still no solutions.

[lots2seeinmyrv]

lakeside013104 wrote:

lots2seeinmyrv wrote:
If people want housing, they can get roommates.

I could not afford California and had to have a roommate. I left that abyss a long time ago.

One parent can work days and one work nights. Parents can babysit each others kids. People have no will to solve their own problems. Why keep having kids they cannot afford? Because they can sign up for the free stuff. These programs need to be gutted. But they sure manage cigarettes, alcohol, cell phones, nails and hair.

Blame drugs, blame Corporate, blame student debt, blame the Man in the Moon, but not themselves for their poor decisions in life. Then expect good old U.S. taxpayers to bail them out and pay their bills. I am sick of paying for peoples bad decisions in their lives and WE suffer the consequences for it.

I do not want to spend billions of our hard earned dollars for more welfare housing, that people do NOT appreciate or take care of. Generations of families live in that housing and that vicious cycle never ends. Breeding will not get them out of poverty. I am sick of paying for other people's romp in the sack, it is disgusting, and irresponsible. And WHO gave the authority to take our money to pay for this nonsense! Taxation without representation.

Where there is a will there is a way. We live in a "you owe me" society with too much free stuff handed out like candy and now we have millions of foreigners who do not belong here and thousands on the way to get on the Gravy Train. That needs to be shut down immediately, no free stuff for non-citizens from anywhere. Send them home. We have our own problems, just like they do. And it is getting worse by the day.

This train wreck is at full speed ahead, we all lose if this continues.

Somebody had better get tough and tackle this monumental problem and stop adding to it by importing MORE foreigners and illegals here.

We cannot continue to spend billions of dollars on people who have no right to be in our housing, our schools, our medical care system, our jobs, our roads.

We have neglected our own, we have thrown them in the streets, and it is pitiful.

I read an article on Refugee Resettlement Watch that these 60+ year old refugees are on OUR social security and getting everything handed to them for FREE while our Seniors are suffering! This has got to stop, we are bankrupt.

Well said. I could not have stated it better.

WORAH............

Lakeside

THANK YOU!!!

They keep saying our Social Security will go bankrupt. Then WHY award our benefits to foreigners who have never paid a dime into it and no right to come here! That is OUR money we paid taxes and our employer matched those funds...it is ours. Go read the articles, it will blow your mind.

We have no money for Medicaid, Medicare, but people who do not belong here can waltz into our hospitals and not pay one dime! This is infuriating. We cannot afford our own prescriptions let alone pay for the rest of the world coming here uninvited.

We are giving away our citizenship like a Pez Dispenser! Our schools are overcrowded. End birthright citizenship. Their countries laws state if they give birth on foreign soil, then their child IS a citizen of their country. Give them a Certificate of Child Born Abroad and go home.

People apply for Student Visa to attend our schools, they why the heck are foreign students, who are not our citizens, in OUR schools with no authorization and we foot the bill for $15K, per year, per student in our public schools? No money in the local budgets, but let's raise taxes and stick it to the American people. Baloney! Shut this down too.

It is EXPENSIVE to live here and we should not be forced to subsidize or pay the bills of every foreign person on the planet dreaming of coming here. There are billions!

We have NO housing for ourselves, how the heck do they "find" housing for over a million refugees, a million illegals, millions of asylum liars, thousands of TPS, millions of people coming here legally every year, year after year?

And people wonder why we have no housing, cannot afford it, and are 22 trillion in debt with no end in sight.

It is out of control. There is NO housing boom to house ourselves let alone 2 billion people on the planet. There are no new schools popping up all over the place. These foreigners have land, they have resources, they have oil and they NEED to go home and build up their own countries, not take our housing and throw US in the streets.

Our jails and prisons are FULL of foreign criminals. There goes your local budget that is reserved for our citizens and our communities.

Our children and their children are in for a rude awakening if this does not stop and get REVERSED and cleaned up.


NO WONDER PEOPLE ARE RESORTING TO LIVING IN RV's. OUR QUALITY OF LIFE IS GOING DOWN THE TUBES AND WE ARE BEING THROWN OFF THE CLIFF. FOR WHAT???? THIS IS OUTRAGES.

[zigzagrv]

The homeless problem began in the late 70's early 80's when the ACLU sued several states and eventually petitioned the supreme court to rule on whether or not it was unconstitutional to keep someone against their will in mental institutions, providing they were not a threat to themselves or others.

The outcome was that thousands of State Hospitals across the country were forced to release countless 'inmates' if they were deemed safe to be released into society. Some had family that could care for them, but many did not. As wards of the state, they had been cared for and treated for their illnesses, sometimes cruelly unfortunately, at the expense of the taxpayer, and most taxpayers had no problem with that or knowledge that their tax money was being used for that purpose.

At the start of this problem there were non-profits such as churches and the Salvation Army who would provide food and shelter for these people, but they soon were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

As these mentally ill began to be a 'blight' on city streets, especially in the winter months as they slept on sewer or steam grates on the sidewalks to keep warm, the northern cities began to bus many of them to other, warmer states. It was a temporary solution to that cities' homeless problem, but the beginning of the problem to the cities where they were being bused.

Fast forward to today and we now see homeless people with many different reasons for why they are homeless, drugs being the main reason, with politicians without a clue as to what to do about it. We have had a cultural shift in this country where we feel we are no longer 'our brother's keeper' and expect governments to take care of the problem. We casually walk around the person sleeping on the sidewalk and basically refuse to acknowledge that person exists.

The solution back before the 80's was the state hospital. The solution for today's crisis has yet to be discovered, though Rhode Island has made a great start in their program to get help for the drug addicted. As RI does, cities/states must get tougher on drug and other crimes and provide facilities, like RI, to properly treat the offenders and not let them continually go through the 'revolving door' of our criminal justice system.

[lakeside013104]

lots2seeinmyrv wrote:
If people want housing, they can get roommates.

I could not afford California and had to have a roommate. I left that abyss a long time ago.

One parent can work days and one work nights. Parents can babysit each others kids. People have no will to solve their own problems. Why keep having kids they cannot afford? Because they can sign up for the free stuff. These programs need to be gutted. But they sure manage cigarettes, alcohol, cell phones, nails and hair.

Blame drugs, blame Corporate, blame student debt, blame the Man in the Moon, but not themselves for their poor decisions in life. Then expect good old U.S. taxpayers to bail them out and pay their bills. I am sick of paying for peoples bad decisions in their lives and WE suffer the consequences for it.

I do not want to spend billions of our hard earned dollars for more welfare housing, that people do NOT appreciate or take care of. Generations of families live in that housing and that vicious cycle never ends. Breeding will not get them out of poverty. I am sick of paying for other people's romp in the sack, it is disgusting, and irresponsible. And WHO gave the authority to take our money to pay for this nonsense! Taxation without representation.

Where there is a will there is a way. We live in a "you owe me" society with too much free stuff handed out like candy and now we have millions of foreigners who do not belong here and thousands on the way to get on the Gravy Train. That needs to be shut down immediately, no free stuff for non-citizens from anywhere. Send them home. We have our own problems, just like they do. And it is getting worse by the day.

This train wreck is at full speed ahead, we all lose if this continues.

Somebody had better get tough and tackle this monumental problem and stop adding to it by importing MORE foreigners and illegals here.

We cannot continue to spend billions of dollars on people who have no right to be in our housing, our schools, our medical care system, our jobs, our roads.

We have neglected our own, we have thrown them in the streets, and it is pitiful.

I read an article on Refugee Resettlement Watch that these 60+ year old refugees are on OUR social security and getting everything handed to them for FREE while our Seniors are suffering! This has got to stop, we are bankrupt.

Well said. I could not have stated it better.

WORAH............

Lakeside

[lots2seeinmyrv]

If people want housing, they can get roommates.

I could not afford California and had to have a roommate. I left that abyss a long time ago.

One parent can work days and one work nights. Parents can babysit each others kids. People have no will to solve their own problems. Why keep having kids they cannot afford? Because they can sign up for the free stuff. These programs need to be gutted. But they sure manage cigarettes, alcohol, cell phones, nails and hair.

Blame drugs, blame Corporate, blame student debt, blame the Man in the Moon, but not themselves for their poor decisions in life. Then expect good old U.S. taxpayers to bail them out and pay their bills. I am sick of paying for peoples bad decisions in their lives and WE suffer the consequences for it.

I do not want to spend billions of our hard earned dollars for more welfare housing, that people do NOT appreciate or take care of. Generations of families live in that housing and that vicious cycle never ends. Breeding will not get them out of poverty. I am sick of paying for other people's romp in the sack, it is disgusting, and irresponsible. And WHO gave the authority to take our money to pay for this nonsense! Taxation without representation.

Where there is a will there is a way. We live in a "you owe me" society with too much free stuff handed out like candy and now we have millions of foreigners who do not belong here and thousands on the way to get on the Gravy Train. That needs to be shut down immediately, no free stuff for non-citizens from anywhere. Send them home. We have our own problems, just like they do. And it is getting worse by the day.

This train wreck is at full speed ahead, we all lose if this continues.

Somebody had better get tough and tackle this monumental problem and stop adding to it by importing MORE foreigners and illegals here.

We cannot continue to spend billions of dollars on people who have no right to be in our housing, our schools, our medical care system, our jobs, our roads.

We have neglected our own, we have thrown them in the streets, and it is pitiful.

I read an article on Refugee Resettlement Watch that these 60+ year old refugees are on OUR social security and getting everything handed to them for FREE while our Seniors are suffering! This has got to stop, we are bankrupt.

[westernrvparkow]

True, I don't live in your world. In my world all the homeless are not college grads. The police are not lurking around every corner looking to violate my rights and steal my money. And the rich aren't out to get me, they just don't care about me one way or the other. However I understand that is how you see things in your world.
But a quick internet search found many apartments in Independence Missouri in the $600 a month range. A frugal single person can afford that on minimum wage. A couple where both are making even the minimum wage wouldn't even have to be frugal. Housing costs are not the cause of homelessness in your world.

[JRscooby]

westernrvparkowner wrote:
Unless your definition of employed includes begging on the street corner or collecting large amounts of cans for the deposit the vast majority of homeless are unemployed and unable to be employed. The family burdened by student loans living on the streets makes for great TV, so that is what the news seeks out. Making them the needle to look for in the giant homeless haystack. there is no interest in putting the actual poop in the street, mentally ill, aggressive panhandling, street person on television. It doesn't draw viewers, doesn't elicit sympathy and doesn't raise funding for the homeless activists. It just hardens public opinion against the homeless.
Such situations as you described are a tiny percentage of the homeless population.

Well excuse me, I apparently lack your experience. I could only spend a few days a week for few weeks as a volunteer at a shelter, before the idea this is happening in what is advertised as the richest country in the world was just to depressing.
Yes, many I met had drug and mental issues. But many that I met, and all that had kids with had job working for some corporation, some more than one. In this Metro area, is about the same as the nationwide average.
BTW, I spent some time without doors in the early '80s. For me, it was self-inflected. I refused to let work interfere with my drinking. Back then, most of the people in my condition where homeless because of some kind of drugs. Now I think that for many the do drugs because they are homeless. Or because of the war on drugs, they can't get into housing.
And sure, the "Help wanted" signs we walk past every day make some think homeless do not want to work. Just for ships and grins, next time you have a few minutes, ask for a app and fill it out. Most times the 2nd line will be no issue for you.

[goducks10]

Lots of complaining and no solutions.

[westernrvparkow]

JRscooby wrote:

westernrvparkowner wrote:

Grit dog wrote:
However, the homeless crisis is less about all that, IMO. IDK what the causes are. All the mentally ill congregate in certain cities??
People getting lazier? IDK
It's sure as heck not the economy and hasn't been for a long time.

The recent phenomenon of old RVs becoming urban homeless shelters is, every year there are more/newer RVs that still are "useable" but not road worthy. (Back in the whatever 70s-90s, there weren't the number of RVs that were old, because it was a newer industry.)
Makes sense, I'd live in a leaky RV with a bad engine before living under a bridge!

I think you may have hit the nail directly on the head. It is probably made even worse by the fact that disposing of a used RV usually involves a cost. You can take a car or truck to a wrecking yard and get a few bucks. An RV, not way. They don't want it. Take it to a landfill operation and they are going to have both requirements and conditions (no paper inside, No refrigerant in the refrigerator or AC units, only take them on the third Wednesday of certain months, etc) and will charge a fee, which in my experience is in the hundreds of dollars. Better to give it away and it eventually makes it way to the homeless communities usually by someone who thinks they are doing a good thing.
The homeless problem is one without a solution. Like others have said, most are either mentally ill, highly addicted to drugs and alcohol or just plain willing to live that life. Our society is not willing to involuntarily commit the ill and addicted. We can't suddenly make someone want to work and pay rent. We increasingly decide as a society to not rigorously enforce vagrancy laws and the like and when we do, it just moves the problem, it doesn't provide a solution. Even giving people housing doesn't work, our history with public housing proves that.
For most communities that have severe homeless problems the actually driving force is climate. It's more pleasant to be homeless in San Francisco than it is in Chicago. And once again society has decided that changing climate is also bad public policy, so homelessness in cities such as LA, San Francisco, Portland etc. will continue without an answer.

I think you are overlooking the large percentage the homeless that are employed, but with low pay, student loans, high cost child care for unpredictable hours, rent is out of their budget.

Unless your definition of employed includes begging on the street corner or collecting large amounts of cans for the deposit the vast majority of homeless are unemployed and unable to be employed. The family burdened by student loans living on the streets makes for great TV, so that is what the news seeks out. Making them the needle to look for in the giant homeless haystack. there is no interest in putting the actual poop in the street, mentally ill, aggressive panhandling, street person on television. It doesn't draw viewers, doesn't elicit sympathy and doesn't raise funding for the homeless activists. It just hardens public opinion against the homeless.
Such situations as you described are a tiny percentage of the homeless population.