[homerhomer]

I'm against live-in vehicles and this life-style choice. On paper it sounds fine but in reality horrible for many reasons. For the most part, people in this situation are in a challenging state and the least of their worries is the environment around them. Is a mother of 2 living in a small RV who relies on donations going to pay for disposal service?

I live in Portland, a city that used to known for being a clean city. In the last 8 years we have had a large increase of car live-in residents and homeless population. I would not call Portland a clean city anymore. In-fact it's far from it. Homeless make up about 3% of the population, but according to a recent article they make up half of the arrests. Personally I've had car camping people outside of my house and we've been afraid of retaliation for call them in and try not to make contact.

I understand that these people have nowhere to go, but cities should create a homeless car shelter of sorts or some other solution other than just hoping for the best of people living on the edge.

2011 article on how clean Portland is(was) - http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/308068

RV issue in Portland -https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-neighbors-fe... Homeless issue -https://katu.com/news/local/neighbors-say-theyre-getting-now... Half of the Police arrests are Homeless - https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/portland_mayor_t...

[save_ferris]

This comes off as super NIMBYish.

The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of rising inequality in our society. Yeah, that mother of 2 living in a vehicle probably has way bigger problems than paying for disposal service. But people utilizing services they can't pay for is what concerns you, not the fact that so many people are in such dire financial straits that living in a car makes economic sense.

[throwawaysea]

Use of the word "NIMBY", which is clearly a pejorative, is not an argument. I don't see why that diminishes the parent comment at all.

The rise of this lifestyle is a direct result of people feeling entitled. Take the musician in the article ("Lily"). She's trying to make a career in indie rock, playing local gigs. That can't be your full-time job unless you are exceptionally talented, to a degree where others value your creation/contributions enough to pay you a lot for it. This takes more than just musical talent - it requires experience, marketing, networking, business, and other skills. And it is of course, a highly-competitive line of work - after all, who wouldn't want their work to also be their passion.

Lily lived in Nashville before, which is a lot more affordable than California cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. San Diego is a full 55% pricier than Nashville (https://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-...). So in effect, Lily made a conscious choice to move to a pricier area without having a plan for how to live there. A responsible way of making that move would be to work for a few years in Nashville, build up savings, identify jobs in your destination that pay enough, and then make the move.

What gives Lily the right to expect she'd be accommodated in whatever city she moves to? If her work is not producing enough earning to pay for housing locally, it is because her work is not valued by society to a great enough extent to live in a very desirable (and thus expensive) area. I don't think the local community is obligated to provide lower-cost housing (either through subsidy or greater supply) to enable her choices, which squarely fall under the realm of "personal responsibility".

[logfromblammo]

Citations of arrest statistics do not distinguish whether the homeless are actually more criminally inclined than the homed, or more targeted by police who may also have some political motivation to encourage them to go exist in someone else's jurisdiction.

As with the lessons learned from public housing projects in big cities, it is better to spread the poverty out more thinly across a larger area of the city than to concentrate it all in one place. A homeless car shelter would be a disaster of epic proportions. Double the number of reserved parking spaces, spread more uniformly throughout the city, would still be burdensome, but far less so.

One Randy Griswold in Clark's driveway is more tolerable than row after row of them, for as far as the eye can see.

[glangdale]

It's been a bit of a problem in parts of Sydney too. A lot of it is just backpackers camping or car-camping in parks. It's one thing to not want to crack down on the homeless or destitute but when it's tourists it seems like plain old freeloading - especially when we're talking about residential neighborhoods not remote areas.