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Apple

Homeless Encampment Grows On Apple Property In Silicon Valley (mercurynews.com) 233

Posted by BeauHD from the problems-that-hit-close-to-home dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: A large homeless encampment is growing on the site Apple earmarked for its North San Jose campus, two years after Apple made waves with a $2.5 billion pledge to combat the Bay Area's affordable housing and homelessness crisis. What started as a few RVs parked on the side of Component Drive has grown over the past year into a sprawling camp of dozens of people, a maze of broken-down vehicles and a massive amount of trash scattered across the vacant, Apple-owned property. People with nowhere else to go live there in tents, RVs and wooden structures they built themselves. At least two children call the camp home.

Apple is trying to figure out what to do, but it's a tough situation. Clearing the camp likely will be difficult both logistically -- it's more challenging to remove structures and vehicles that don't run than tents -- and ethically -- there are few places for the displaced residents to go. Apple is "in talks with the city on a solution," company spokeswoman Chloe Sanchez Sweet wrote in an email, without providing additional details.

The vacant land off Component Drive figured into Apple's $2.5 billion commitment. Apple originally bought the land in a push to acquire real estate in North San Jose for a new tech campus, but so far, the company hasn't done much to develop it. In 2019, the tech company promised to make $300 million of land it owns in San Jose available for new affordable housing -- including a portion of the Component Drive property. But it's unclear when anything might be built.
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Homeless Encampment Grows On Apple Property In Silicon Valley More

Homeless Encampment Grows On Apple Property In Silicon Valley

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  • It was only a matter of time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @03:51PM (#61685413)
    Homeless people will go where they can get the best leeway to skirt the law, which is why California has tens of thousands of homeless from other states that have migrated there. Apple thought it could build in a nice part of Silicon Valley and avoid the problem, but with San Fran basically ignoring sanitation and petty crime now, it was just a matter of time until the homeless crisis grew past its borders. I wonder how Apple will react?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cayenne8 ( 626475 )
      Wow.

      Seems a little foresight to spend a little $$$ on some fencing would have saved them from a lot of this grief, eh?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by spun ( 1352 )

      The district of Columbia, Hawaii, and New York state have higher per capita homelessness than California. California has more total homeless because it has more people. It's also a nice climate.

      Where are you getting the idea that San Francisco ignores sanitation and petty crime? Let me guess, OANN? Fox News? You are being fed a line of propaganda, designed to make you hate your fellow Americans, to divide us so the ultra wealthy can conquer us. It's a vast distortion of the truth at best, outright falsehood

      • Re:It was only a matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @05:01PM (#61685667) Homepage

        If you want to say far-left politics, or "socialism", don't result in massive homelessness, you should find some counterexamples other than DC, HI, and NY, which are three of the most left-wing states (or state-analogue, in DC's case) in the country outside of California.

        San Francisco's poop map and decriminalized shoplifting are excellent examples of what the OP was talking about. You just call it propaganda because you don't want to admit what the local policies led to -- you commit an ad hominem fallacy, complaining about media outlets you want people to hate, rather than engage in the impossible task of disproving those truths.

      • So you're saying it's not just California. The other top 5 bluest states are the same way. Interesting.

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

      • They might have a higher per capita "homeless" rate, but CA wins by a mile when you're talking about transients and street people. Which is what most people think of when they say "homeless."

    • California doesn't really have (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:19PM (#61685507)
      more homeless than anyone else. They're a little more visible because the weather lets them live outside shelters a bit more. Also since it's the bluest of the blue states there's a steady stream of propaganda against it.

      See here [youtube.com] for a good explanation of how that propaganda is shaped.

      Most notably one city claims to have a much bigger homeless problem than the other, when the reason is that a judge ordered both cities to either provide shelter or let homeless people sleep on public property. One city ignored the judge and the other followed the law. So the homeless have moved to the other city. And by "moved to the other city" I mean the local police of the law breaking city picked up their stuff and moved it over the city lines, because they two cities share a border that bumps right into each other.

      We have plenty of homes, plenty of resources and can solve homelessness any time we want. Doing so would also solve any sanitation problems. But then if we did that we wouldn't have the threat of homelessness to hold over everyone, would we?

      As for Apple's property being private (I can already here you furiously typing up a response and i haven't even hit "preview" yet) the city will be happy to clear out the encampment. Apple is holding off because they're worried about bad press. Apple will have them half assedly moved to shelters with a promise of a few million bucks, get a bit of good press, and never actually solve the problem because they too enjoy the benefits that come from lower wages thank the the constant, implicit threat of homelessness, starvation and dying from the elements that anyone with less than $1 million in the bank lives under.

      But all us /.ers are just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires, so it's no skin off our backs, right?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        We have plenty of vacant homes. We don't have plenty of vacant houses in Venice Beach or San Jose. We have lots of vacant homes in Altoona, PA or Pratt, KS or wherever, but the homeless want to live where the begging and social services are good.

        • Build some. Build high-rise apartments. Build large public transportation system so that people who want to go to the beach can go to the beach without living within driving distance or owning a private jet. Stuff like High-Speed rail. All these are solvable problems but there is a group of people with a lot of money and money is powered and they don't want to solve those problems because they benefit from them.

          You're just as much at risk of becoming homeless as anyone else reading this, since I doubt the

          • THis is California we're talking about. You can't build anything there for what wealthy whites like to call "environmental" reasons. Mass housing for the homeless could be constructed in the aforementioned cheaper places, but the homeless would need to be forced to live in a place where they might have to work.

            • you really covered all your bases with this troll. Are you a professional? I mean, I guess it is technically work, I'll give you that. But I think I'd rather pay you to do nothing than to post something as unhelpful and mean spirited as that.

              Anyway the majority of homeless fall into 2 categories: the mentally ill, who until Reagan were housed in state run facilities that while pretty terrible could have just been fixed instead of tossing them out on their asses, and a handful of people who lost jobs to

              • The problem with giving them homes is where those homes are always supposed to go. Not in ghettos, not among the rich ... as always the people who are going to get fucked are predictably the middle class. I'll excuse them for not always voting to get fucked.

          • Build some. Build high-rise apartments.

            That's how we got Cabrini Green.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          Are you sure it's not as much about the weather?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kackle ( 910159 )

        We have plenty of homes, plenty of resources and can solve homelessness any time we want.

        Permanently, or is this another perpetual tax increase which the average person already can't afford (since house maintenance and utilities are expensive)?

        And if there are so many homes available, why have prices recently gone through the roof?

        • It would save money (Score:5, Interesting)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @06:38PM (#61685991)
          because we wouldn't be constantly arresting homeless people, which is very, very expensive. This is similar to how Medicare for All would cost a fraction of our current system and provide better health outcomes without compromising speed of care.

          Home prices have gone through the roof because the gov't doesn't subsidize low and middle income housing anymore, and we've burned through all the inventory that they did subsidize.

          When you and I were growing up (I'm assuming you're over 40 given the bitter tone of your post and the fact that you're still on /.) we were the beneficiaries of a massive, multi trillion dollar housing subsidy program that was done in the form of cheap, guaranteed loans that were too small for luxury home builders, so that home builders were forced to either leave all that sweet, sweet money on the table or build affordable housing. The gov't also graded and prepared the land and ran the utilities (i.e. the expensive part).

          This was done for millions and millions of homes, leading to plenty of affordable housing and low rent prices since you could easily buy. Over time that inventory got used up and in the mid 70s through the 80s all those subsidies were pulled in the name of "fiscal responsibility" (while running up massive deficits for pointless wars and CIA operations used to help certain politicians at the polls).

          Exasperating that problem are companies like Blackrock buying up all the remaining inventory so that they can rent it back to us. They wait for the inevitable economic crashes (which they help cause) to buy up the property on the cheap. The COVID disaster represented a $1 trillion+ dollar money grab by them.

          This all works because of suckers^Xcitizens like yourself who continue to let them do it because you have a certain set of fixed beliefs, and because you enjoy being a right wing troll instead of a left wing one because nobody really gets all that mad at left wing trolls (trust me, I know).

      • Out of sight, out of mind. I think this is really true here. People may think their city has no homeless or poverty problem, but it may just be hidden from them. If the city is proactive iat shutting down all homeless camps as they happen, then the homeless just move away and out of sight, but they're still homeless. For example, finding homeless people in Japan was vary rare, but I stumbled across a hidden camp out of the way of your average residents or tourists. In San Diego, there would be homeless

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spitzak ( 4019 )

          Fact: the homeless were living behind my fence in Los Angeles, in a bunch of highly flammable eucalyptus trees that are only feet from some of my property. Then when the current "homeless crisis" happened they disappeared, most likely because they were no longer being harassed for living more visibly on the sidewalk. Personally the current situation is a LOT better than before. In addition my house was broken into two times 15 and 10 years ago, and has not today despite this "rise in crime". Also despite th

      • Re:California doesn't really have (Score:4, Informative)

        by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @06:06PM (#61685889)

        (California doesn't really have ) more homeless than anyone else. They're a little more visible because the weather lets them live outside shelters a bit more. Also since it's the bluest of the blue states there's a steady stream of propaganda against it.

        Are you sure about that? [usich.gov] Of the states with the top five most homeless people:

        California: 151,278 homeless out of 39,613,493 total population (0.3%)
        New York: 91,271 homeless out of 19,299,981 total population (0.47%)
        Florida: 28,328 homeless out of 21,944,577 (0.13%)
        Texas 25,848 homeless out of 29,730,311 (0.09%)
        Washington State 21,577 homeless out of 7,796,941 (0.28%)

        Look at the per capita statistics. Nobody is trying to make Blue states look bad.

        • I should note I erred and left off a digit. California's percentage of homeless is 0.38%.

      • ...Apple will have them half assedly moved to shelters with a promise of a few million bucks, get a bit of good press, and never actually solve the problem because they too enjoy the benefits that come from lower wages thank the the constant, implicit threat of homelessness, starvation and dying from the elements that anyone with less than $1 million in the bank lives under.

        You know, one would think that Apple would be more worried about bad press coming from those slave plantations they're illegally running in California...I mean damn.

        Wait, what? You mean people aren't forced to work for Apple? Or any other company in California? Wow.

        No wonder Darth Vader turned in his Dark Side card and asked about Jedi training. His weak-ass shit doesn't hold a light saber to California Narcissism.

    • Homeless people will go where they can get the best leeway to skirt the law, which is why California has tens of thousands of homeless

      No, they have homeless because the weather is so nice you can live in a tent. Would you rather sleep outside in Minneapolis, Houston, or San Jose?

    • Squat Different.

    • Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) is 4th highest rate of homelessness in the nation (a of 2019 [psydprograms.org]). The Californian cities hits the top 20 multiples times (L.A., San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento). But NYC, DC, Phoenix, Boston, Philly, Chicago, and Atlanta are also hot spots for homelessness. California holds a quarter to a third of the nation's homeless but only around 12% of the nation's population.

      It's a policy problem that is of national concern, not just a problem California created for itse

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        I'm pretty certain the bottom has dropped out of the pan-handling market, at least in LA. Twenty years ago there was a begger at every light and on ramp. They are not there now, almost certainly because people stopped giving them money. This is despite the obvious increase in how many homeless there are.

        People pushing around carts full of refundable cans have also disappeared.

  • I read journalist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by systemd-anonymousd ( 6652324 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @03:53PM (#61685417)

    I'll tell you what this means:

    >Apple is "in talks with the city on a solution," company spokeswoman Chloe Sanchez Sweet wrote in an email, without providing additional details.

    It means Apple says: "Hey, take care of this shit. It's your city."

    The San Jose officials say: "You're Apple, give us money."

    "No, do your jobs."

    "Sorry, it's unethical for us to remove the homeless unless you give us money."

    "Hmm...if we can figure out how to turn this into a PR win we might give you some money, but only to solve the problem as it affects us."

    "Sure, just let me know before the next election cycle."

    • The city will be happy to clear off the homeless (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:03PM (#61685443)
      always are. Apple doesn't want the bad press. They sell $500 laptops for $2000 and $300 phones for $1200. Image is important for them.

      • San Jose doesn't really clear homeless camps. Unless the FAA forces them to.

      • always are. Apple doesn't want the bad press. They sell $500 laptops for $2000 and $300 phones for $1200. Image is important for them.

        Nobody who lives near a homeless encampment would consider that 'bad press.'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      People need someplace to stay. In my town a good location was under the freeway. Then the white people moved in and gentrification kicked them out. The only complexity is do the homeless in California choose to stay or have to stay. It seems in portland, for example, that the young homeless choose to stay instead of moving and looking for a job. This is what rational people doing. Moving from the Appalachiaâ(TM)s where there are no jobs to the south.

      • They mostly stay. In fact, homeless from other parts of the country often come here. And other states sometimes even "dump" their homeless here with 1-way bus tickets. Nevada even got caught red-handed... and actually had to pay damages to San Francisco and San Diego... emptying out their mental hospitals with those 1-way bus tickets to California. So why do they come? Why do they stay? A couple of reasons:

        1). California has good weather pretty much year-round. So, if someone is living on the street,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Or perhaps the land is zoned for commercial use - even if Apple wanted to create housing there, they couldn't until the land is rezoned as residential. Apple would have to be in talks with the city about rezoning, as well as talking with the city about permits for building on the land.

      So unfortunately, Apple can't really do anything if they require the city to actually issue permits and such other than talk.

      Of course, a potential solution is to pave the area, add basic amenities and then charge rent. But ev

  • and ethically -- there are few places for the displaced residents to go.

    That is true, but what is ethical about letting people live in squalor? Doing nothing and let things stand as they are is not an ethically acceptable choice either.

    The best solution would probably be to tell them people they have to move on and offer them housing elsewhere. If they don't accept it, fine, but either way they have to go, and at least they were given a choice.

    The city of Venice Beach just cleared away a tone of homeless

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      They could send the regular garbage collection around...

      The garbage mounds at shanties and other homeless encampments look very similar to the garbage mounds on the sidewalk when the sanitation workers go on strike.

      • The garbage mounds at shanties and other homeless encampments look very similar to the garbage mounds on the sidewalk when the sanitation workers go on strike.

        The homeless people do not consider a lot of it garbage though so going out to collect it doesn't really clean up that much... and it's extremely dangerous to pick up trash regularly at homeless encampment because of things like needles, and possible assault by residents

        If you watch sanitation workers when they go into clean up homeless areas (look fo

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          That's what happens when you ignore the need to collect trash for months on end. OTOH, it they would put a couple dumpsters out there for the community to throw things away in, it wouldn't be such a problem.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spitzak ( 4019 )

            They do put containers (and portapotties) out, and it helps a *huge* amount. Then some politician says we are coddling the homeless and gets the containers removed (what they actually want is for the camp to look as bad as possible). Then after a few months some other politician puts them back. It has repeated several times here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by spitzak ( 4019 )

          Should point out that the danger is not from "needles", which seems to be a dog whistle in order to make the homeless somehow exotic and different from all us good folks with our "no needles" trash (somehow ignoring people with diabetes).

          The danger is, as you point out, from the homeless themselves, then from rotted garbage (I would estimate more than half the trash is fast food containers), then from human waste (less of this as a good number of them use bathrooms somewhere) and dead animals.

      • And if you take and destroy someone's property, they can sue. And not just hypothetically.
        https://www.dailycal.org/2020/... [dailycal.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        Before COVID they did send out regular garbage collection and pressure hosing of the streets. The homeless very quickly packed up and moved nearby, and then right back after the truck was gone.
        Since then the various politicians put in trash cans and portapotties and take them away, depending the on who is winning an argument. Generally right-wing ones pull those out, claiming it will make the homeless move, but actually because it will make the homeless camp look worse.

    • The best solution would probably be to tell them people they have to move on and offer them housing elsewhere. If they don't accept it, fine, but either way they have to go, and at least they were given a choice.

      Well yeah, but the key part is offering them somewhere else to live. What instead usually happens is some residents or business owners getting mad and have the cops throw them out and make sleeping outside illegal so they're just forced to move to another location.

      Since Apple has more money than they know what to do with, they should just build some apartment buildings to house the homeless.

      • So is your solution to have Apple forget about building an office complex and instead build apartments at the location and pass out keys? Or perhaps buy land in middle of nowhere, build some apartments, bus folks in and drop 'em off?

        There is a reason that lots of the southern and coastal cities have significant homeless population - it is much nicer to be homeless in S. California, or S. Florida, etc. in December than it is to be homeless in Minnesota or Illinois.

  • These areas are Big Tech's 2021 version of the Company Town.

  • Pay them to fuck off (Score:5, Interesting)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:06PM (#61685455)
    No really, it works. There's your solution right in front of you: https://www.vox.com/future-per... [vox.com]

    • Mod parent up.

    • Re:Pay them to fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @05:39PM (#61685777)

      With respect, I'm not sure you realize the scale of the homeless problem on the west coast. If you pay some homeless to leave, then the rest are going to show up looking for their free money as well. Hell, the rest of the country will probably even bus their homeless, on the grounds that they're better off in Cali since they'll be receiving money.

      Which, not-so-coincidentally, is why nothing is getting done in the first place. Everyone is waiting on the Feds to step up, so that no state/municipality becomes a homeless dumping ground.

    • No really, it works. There's your solution right in front of you: https://www.vox.com/future-per [vox.com]...

      That worked, but:

      A) Was in Canada, were living outside is way more brutal than California, creates a lot of desire to find better housing. California you can live outside year round in relative comfort.

      B) They selected participants who had become homeless in the last two years - meaning that the people had much better motivation to get back to a state they remembered well, rather than people who have been hom

  • Tiny compared to the encampment a mile away (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SubmergedInTech ( 7710960 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:12PM (#61685479)

    The homeless encampment just a mile away at the south end of the airport is huge in comparison. Dozens of campers and trailers. Large ramshackle structures, some of which are now working on a second story. Hundreds of homeless. Or unhoused. Or whatever the correct term is today. Unfortunately, it's also in the approach path to the airport, so the FAA is going to withhold funding unless it's cleared...

    ...at which point, the Apple iEncampment is going to get really big, really fast.

  • "The true measure of any society..." (Score:3)

    by ytene ( 4376651 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:17PM (#61685501)
    "... can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."

    Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi.

    Maybe the same is true of companies, too? Come on, Apple. The World is watching.

  • Hand over the spaceship campus to the homeless.

  • when the eviction moratorium ends

  • "dozens"? (Score:3)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @04:30PM (#61685547) Journal

    a sprawling camp of dozens of people

    Are you kidding me? A "sprawling camp of dozens of people"?

    It sounds more like a family picnic than a problem.

  • Spare a moment to think about those cars (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday August 12, 2021 @05:31PM (#61685747)
    that don't run. I'm guessing they weren't towed there. That means there from people who used to have homes (generally you get a home and then a car), were living in their car, and then managed to limp it to the clearing before it broke down completely. And there were enough to be worth mentioning.

    Also, I pointed this out elsewhere, but the vast majority of homeless in California did not come from out of state, and the few who did came looking for work (large swaths of the rust belt are blasted out jobless hell holes, it ain't called the rust belt for nothing).

    I guess my point is, these are the regular druggies everyone likes to look down on (never mind that said "druggies" are mentally ill and using illegal drugs to cope). This is a new(ish) kind of homelessness where people who are otherwise functional find themselves homeless. And once you're in that boat it's hard to get out. Nobody wants to hire you when you're homeless, and the pay in that area isn't going to be enough to rent an apartment anyway.

    And that's before we talk about the eviction crisis brewing (actively being made worse by large property owners, who know the smaller guys can't actually get renters and are counting on it to buy up the property on the cheap when the small guys default on loans.

    We might maybe want to do something. Large swaths of homeless people in a country with this many guns isn't going to end well. Can you say "roving bands of bandits"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      Roving bands of bandits would be dealt with in a matter of minutes, either by armed citizens or by the police. Homeless are allowed to exist because that's essentially all they do...exist.
      • Where we have bandits you won't have the police anymore. At that point the super wealthy will have private enclaves and it'll be every man for himself who isn't a billionaire or at least a multi multi-millionaire. The homeless are almost entirely mentally ill with a small smattering of desperately poor. What I'm talking about is what happens in a country with as many guns as ours when something like 50 or 60% of the population becomes that desperately poor. Don't forget we've also been stockpiling ammunitio

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          Most multi millionaires couldnt afford a house near Apple headquarters where broken down agricultural laborer camps from the 1970s go for 2 million plus. Heck some of those homeless may be millionaires. If you have to live near Apple headquarters and are opposed to 4000 dollar rents for said barracks living in your car is a good option. You can take a shower at the gym if your tech company doesnt have a shower at the office.

    • Not new-ish at all. 1978-82 recession brought many New York and Michigan license plates to Los Angeles, with newly arrived alleyway refuse pickers competing with the locals. Some who I spoke to or overheard, were planning to return to their former region, because opportunities were few, and original family and friends support networks did not travel.

      "Using drugs to cope" is wishful thinking. I have worked on volunteer crews to clean some encampments (shopping cart and tweaker-on-bike, not vehicle) in f

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      A surprising number of those cars actually do run, and they can also tow one with another.

      The homeless living in RVs and cars are surprisingly able to evade street cleaning by moving just in time.

  • a sprawling camp of dozens of people

    Dozens of people? Seriously? That's a problem for Apple? Could be cleaned up in a couple of hours if they weren't so into hand-wringing.

  • and I am soldered to the sidewalk so I canâ(TM)t fix my situation.
  • Finally a corporation which promises to create affordable housing follows through. Nothing more affordable than an RV on Apple land.

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