I get your joke, really and truly, but you might be surprised to know a lot of poor people live on boats. I did it. Down at the marina was the shadiest place I’ve ever been.
We were illegal poopers. However! When you are living so close to nature, you are aware of your “footprint”. And it’s just poop. Chemical cleaners were minimal, which is not something “landlubbers” think about.
You just assume it goes down the drain and the problem is solved. But we knew how often the sanitation plants for civic sewage had “incidents” when they couldn’t operate properly and just dumped it all into the river.
So my poop; just a drop in the bucket; picture it. It isn’t all those chemicals; it’s just poo. Picture my poo, picture my poo, picture my poo.
Anyway, if your local news says something about boaters polluting your water, that is a red flag about civic sanitation because a little bit of poop is a small concern when stacked up to everyone’s poop and chemicals. And don’t even get me started on those macerator things some people have in their sinks; those are the worst.
It’s all there at the marina, mostly. Some people keep the water attached to their boat all the time. We didn’t because sometimes the stop filling the boat with water thingy fails and it doesn’t stop filling your boat with water.
Electricity was there.
Cooking was propane, we had 5 of those 5 gallon tanks that some petrol stations refill; there was one nearby.
Heating was diesel which was also the thing that makes the boat go when wind wasn’t hitting the sails right and you just get that refueled from time to time as well. But yeah, when you are poor you aren’t sailing much, you are living at the marina.
I hope I am satisfying your curiosity. It is a lifestyle most will never know but also in a mundane way. If you are desperate and living in a van, maybe? You get to own a place. The marina fees are same-ish to property tax. It’s a walkable community. You will make a lot of friends who will die in the river, either by accident or nefarious reasons.
It’s a sad place and I don’t want to go back there.
Im residentially impaired and I live in a van when Im not couch surfing. Id choose a van over a boat. There are a lot more parking lots and roads than there are spots on the river. And my van takes 10 seconds to start and drive away when I feel unsafe. Boats take a bit longer, and everything is more expensive.
I just want to point out that the other commenter’s experience isn’t universal. My mom lived on a boat for years and loved it. I couldn’t do it long term as there’s very little space available, but it doesn’t have to be a negative experience.
This particular marina had bathrooms with showers up on land which the majority of, if not all, residents used. There was also a restaurant on the water with bathrooms. Electricity and tap water were available at each slip. Heat wasn’t necessary, because it was Southern California.
I never knew how much it cost, but I know for a while she lived there while working as a waitress at that same restaurant, so it couldn’t have been too expensive.
Funny that you mentioned the public washroom. I avoided bringing it up because we were told (under no uncertain terms) we weren’t allowed to use it. Back in the day, an openly gay couple was not common, I guess. So, apparently, straight people peeing and pooping and showering nakedly was fine; but me doing it was “pornographic”. I apologize to everyone I accidentally introduced to hot gay porn. Sorry; my bad.
Does the sink garbage disposal issue depend on your water treatment facility? Mine claims the following:
biosolids and energy are extracted to be reused. We land apply our biosolids across the region, recycling nitrogen and phosphorous back into local soils. The thermal hydrolysis process used in our digesters generates about 10 megawatts of electricity that we reuse to cut our electricity consumption by a third.
Now hold on. You say “shadiest” but isn’t that a slur on the fact that a lot of those folks are permanently there instead of swanning in on a sunny day to mess around at leisure?
This is an easy fix, just cruise craigslist and get a fixer upper. Put some sweat into it and boom boat owner. It wont be anything fancy, but you could get out on the water.
Okay, this bullshit. It’s not shareholders who would be negatively affected by this, and it’s not shareholders who are actively working against doing something about the problem. Shareholders are just an easy acceptable target to point your fingers at, whether it makes sense or not.
What needs to be done to tackle the homelessness problem (not the only thing, but probably the most important one) is to zone much, much more land inside or directly next to cities for affordable mid-rise multi-family homes. Guess who is opposed to that and has the power to do something about it? Existing property owners. Specifically owners of detached single family homes. Because doing that would negatively affect their property values. Personally, I think that shouldn’t matter, because what good is living in home that is worth absurd amounts of money on paper going to do you if society is falling apart because of it? But home owners are always massively concerned about their property values and will torpedo anything that might threaten it. Of course, pointing your fingers at home owners is much dicier than pointing them at shareholders, because even in a bubble like this one, you are bound to point at some people here who will feel personally attacked by that…
“Shareholders”, on the other hand, aside from those that are also home owners at the same time, don’t really have much reason to care one way or another about effective projects to reduce homelessness.
Have you heard of REITs? Rent-seeking capitalists have been working together for decades to speculate on housing. Wealthy people have billions and billions of dollars invested in the status quo, and they are quite interested in maintaining their position of power.
Residential REITs can hold virtually any collection of residential rental property, from hundreds of single-family homes to mobile home parks, boutique apartment buildings, or huge multifamily complexes.
All I am saying: I don’t think it’s right to say “REITs typically own commercial real estate not SFH”.
Sorry, but its just accurate, its too difficult for a reit to buy SFH because its a bunch of transactions, and they just are not profitable and it becomes a play on interest rates and speculation. Rent on a SFH is much much lower per invested capital to multi families. That is why REITs mainly just do commercial.
The issue with SFH is just how hard and costly it is to build, not competitions with REITs or investors.
Corporations holding residential real estate are a growing part of the problem, but still a small one. The vast majority of single famliy homes are still owned by either their residents or small time, non-incorporated landlords.
Never mind increasing the supply of housing would drive down prices and remove pressure regardless of who owns the existing stock.
the Chinese are corrupting our youth with these TikToks! buying up all the real estate is fine, but we draw the line at people slandering Israel with short-form vertical video.
Hard agree onnmany of your points. Part of the issue with housing is how investment based home ownership is. We need to start looking at those investments as investments - a risk based choice that can be impacted by outside factors because of a change of needs of society. It certainly sucks to be on the loss of returns side if a risky investment… But a society where no one can have a secure place to live is going to eventually destabilize, crash and burn and that need is greater than the need for a profitable portfolio.
One of the many issues with a liberal free market is that we become accustomed to being very callous about the small fry at the bottom and more or less ambivalent or openly hostile about the sharks at the top but it’s the medium sized fish in the middle that nobody wants to hurt. They just “played the game right” not nessisarily taking more than their perceived due and not doing so astronomically better that their plight cannot be empathized with… But if they are the ones who are somehow crashing the ecosystem - even if its through no fault of their own - they will go down with it when it does and if it comes down to eating the costs of keeping everything afloat or everybody loses - well a choice to take everything down with them isn’t a noble one.
When enough people aren’t hitting the very base needs on the Maslow’s Heirachy of needs you start seeing a lot more widespread disordered ability to function and eventually if the course doesn’t properly correct we could see it do so in an abrupt and violent way. That does mean thinking collectively and realizing that the true ethical choice is the one that might hurt you in particular and sacrificing individual gains for the benefits of a community.
Not an easy thing when we have as a society been trained to be fairly misanthopic.
What about the shareholders? … if we deal with homelessness, it will affect the shareholders!
Won’t someone think of the shareholders?!?
Boatless please help
I get your joke, really and truly, but you might be surprised to know a lot of poor people live on boats. I did it. Down at the marina was the shadiest place I’ve ever been.
Now be honest, your pee and poop went into the water, didn’t it?
It’s technically illegal, but we all know everybody out there does it.
We were illegal poopers. However! When you are living so close to nature, you are aware of your “footprint”. And it’s just poop. Chemical cleaners were minimal, which is not something “landlubbers” think about.
You just assume it goes down the drain and the problem is solved. But we knew how often the sanitation plants for civic sewage had “incidents” when they couldn’t operate properly and just dumped it all into the river.
So my poop; just a drop in the bucket; picture it. It isn’t all those chemicals; it’s just poo. Picture my poo, picture my poo, picture my poo.
Anyway, if your local news says something about boaters polluting your water, that is a red flag about civic sanitation because a little bit of poop is a small concern when stacked up to everyone’s poop and chemicals. And don’t even get me started on those macerator things some people have in their sinks; those are the worst.
How often did you have to go back to land to get clean drinking/showering water supply?
I’m fascinated by the boat lifestyle because I live in a van. I think living in a boat would be charming but a little more complicated than van life.
It’s all there at the marina, mostly. Some people keep the water attached to their boat all the time. We didn’t because sometimes the stop filling the boat with water thingy fails and it doesn’t stop filling your boat with water.
Electricity was there.
Cooking was propane, we had 5 of those 5 gallon tanks that some petrol stations refill; there was one nearby.
Heating was diesel which was also the thing that makes the boat go when wind wasn’t hitting the sails right and you just get that refueled from time to time as well. But yeah, when you are poor you aren’t sailing much, you are living at the marina.
I hope I am satisfying your curiosity. It is a lifestyle most will never know but also in a mundane way. If you are desperate and living in a van, maybe? You get to own a place. The marina fees are same-ish to property tax. It’s a walkable community. You will make a lot of friends who will die in the river, either by accident or nefarious reasons.
It’s a sad place and I don’t want to go back there.
Im residentially impaired and I live in a van when Im not couch surfing. Id choose a van over a boat. There are a lot more parking lots and roads than there are spots on the river. And my van takes 10 seconds to start and drive away when I feel unsafe. Boats take a bit longer, and everything is more expensive.
I just want to point out that the other commenter’s experience isn’t universal. My mom lived on a boat for years and loved it. I couldn’t do it long term as there’s very little space available, but it doesn’t have to be a negative experience.
This particular marina had bathrooms with showers up on land which the majority of, if not all, residents used. There was also a restaurant on the water with bathrooms. Electricity and tap water were available at each slip. Heat wasn’t necessary, because it was Southern California.
I never knew how much it cost, but I know for a while she lived there while working as a waitress at that same restaurant, so it couldn’t have been too expensive.
Funny that you mentioned the public washroom. I avoided bringing it up because we were told (under no uncertain terms) we weren’t allowed to use it. Back in the day, an openly gay couple was not common, I guess. So, apparently, straight people peeing and pooping and showering nakedly was fine; but me doing it was “pornographic”. I apologize to everyone I accidentally introduced to hot gay porn. Sorry; my bad.
Does the sink garbage disposal issue depend on your water treatment facility? Mine claims the following:
Yet again the fish are proven to have more rights than me
deleted by creator
Now hold on. You say “shadiest” but isn’t that a slur on the fact that a lot of those folks are permanently there instead of swanning in on a sunny day to mess around at leisure?
I mean, I was living there. I am not putting myself above the shady. That was just life at the time, and still is for people still living there.
I know why people resort to it. I get why desperate people steal. It was where I had to be at the time and I’m not going back.
This is an easy fix, just cruise craigslist and get a fixer upper. Put some sweat into it and boom boat owner. It wont be anything fancy, but you could get out on the water.
Okay, this bullshit. It’s not shareholders who would be negatively affected by this, and it’s not shareholders who are actively working against doing something about the problem. Shareholders are just an easy acceptable target to point your fingers at, whether it makes sense or not.
What needs to be done to tackle the homelessness problem (not the only thing, but probably the most important one) is to zone much, much more land inside or directly next to cities for affordable mid-rise multi-family homes. Guess who is opposed to that and has the power to do something about it? Existing property owners. Specifically owners of detached single family homes. Because doing that would negatively affect their property values. Personally, I think that shouldn’t matter, because what good is living in home that is worth absurd amounts of money on paper going to do you if society is falling apart because of it? But home owners are always massively concerned about their property values and will torpedo anything that might threaten it. Of course, pointing your fingers at home owners is much dicier than pointing them at shareholders, because even in a bubble like this one, you are bound to point at some people here who will feel personally attacked by that…
“Shareholders”, on the other hand, aside from those that are also home owners at the same time, don’t really have much reason to care one way or another about effective projects to reduce homelessness.
Have you heard of REITs? Rent-seeking capitalists have been working together for decades to speculate on housing. Wealthy people have billions and billions of dollars invested in the status quo, and they are quite interested in maintaining their position of power.
REITs typically own commercial real estate not SFH. The big key is that the government props up real estate companies with low interest rates.
https://www.fool.com/investing/stock-market/market-sectors/real-estate-investing/reit/residential-reit/
Commercial real estate includes anything over 4-unit complexes. It really is irrelevant if a individual or a reit owns large apartment complexes.
From the article:
All I am saying: I don’t think it’s right to say “REITs typically own commercial real estate not SFH”.
Sorry, but its just accurate, its too difficult for a reit to buy SFH because its a bunch of transactions, and they just are not profitable and it becomes a play on interest rates and speculation. Rent on a SFH is much much lower per invested capital to multi families. That is why REITs mainly just do commercial.
The issue with SFH is just how hard and costly it is to build, not competitions with REITs or investors.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/02/05/why-are-reits-going-all-in-on-single-family-rental/
Do people hold shares in the private equity firms buying up all the homes and driving up the housing costs? No no it’s all the NIMBYs fault.
Corporations holding residential real estate are a growing part of the problem, but still a small one. The vast majority of single famliy homes are still owned by either their residents or small time, non-incorporated landlords.
Never mind increasing the supply of housing would drive down prices and remove pressure regardless of who owns the existing stock.
Do private homeowners and small-time landlords generally leave their homes vacant?
Vacant homes are patriotic: foreign investors need somewhere to keep all their freedom too
the Chinese are corrupting our youth with these TikToks! buying up all the real estate is fine, but we draw the line at people slandering Israel with short-form vertical video.
Hard agree onnmany of your points. Part of the issue with housing is how investment based home ownership is. We need to start looking at those investments as investments - a risk based choice that can be impacted by outside factors because of a change of needs of society. It certainly sucks to be on the loss of returns side if a risky investment… But a society where no one can have a secure place to live is going to eventually destabilize, crash and burn and that need is greater than the need for a profitable portfolio.
One of the many issues with a liberal free market is that we become accustomed to being very callous about the small fry at the bottom and more or less ambivalent or openly hostile about the sharks at the top but it’s the medium sized fish in the middle that nobody wants to hurt. They just “played the game right” not nessisarily taking more than their perceived due and not doing so astronomically better that their plight cannot be empathized with… But if they are the ones who are somehow crashing the ecosystem - even if its through no fault of their own - they will go down with it when it does and if it comes down to eating the costs of keeping everything afloat or everybody loses - well a choice to take everything down with them isn’t a noble one.
When enough people aren’t hitting the very base needs on the Maslow’s Heirachy of needs you start seeing a lot more widespread disordered ability to function and eventually if the course doesn’t properly correct we could see it do so in an abrupt and violent way. That does mean thinking collectively and realizing that the true ethical choice is the one that might hurt you in particular and sacrificing individual gains for the benefits of a community.
Not an easy thing when we have as a society been trained to be fairly misanthopic.
NIMBYs basically.