At least it’s safe from police brutality. I just watched a video of a police officer breaking grandpas ribs and collapsing his lung for sleeping in his car at a unofficial park. He was driving across the states and got so tired that he couldn’t keep his eyes open, so he pulled over to nap with his fucking bird. He had his pet bird in the passenger seat. So we can’t even sleep in our cars without getting assaulted
I know many people who worked in the capital but lived outside of it and, since traffic makes it basically impossible to get into the city between 8 and 9am, they would arrive at ~7 and just nap for an hour or two in their cars. I can’t, for the life of me, even fathom why that would be wrong in the eyes of a copper. Truly ACAB.
I often sleep in my car while traveling for work. It doesn’t make sense to pay $100 plus, when I’m only going to be in it for 6 hours.
I ALWAYS park in a rest area or a truck stop, and I’ve never had an issue.
If your company is not paying expenses for a hotel, get another job.
Crazy what Americans have to go through
My boss sucks, he’s a cheapskate, and an incompetent boob, and I’d quit, but I don’t know what else to do.
I’m self-employed.
Respect your employee more, let them have a decent night’s sleep.
Fuck him, he’s a bum. My other employees are awesome though.
At a rest stop or truck stop it’s expected that truckers are a sleep. I know Michigan can be full of truck stops while Illinois has maybe one that I know, more like a welcome center. I’m actually impressed that Michigan invested into so many stops. While driving through some parts the country I got a piss into a bottle or behind a dumpster. The dumpster is fun, I can scare the shit out of random employees taking out the trash. I could also end up unconscious, risky
Careful out there.
I don’t have much experience driving through Illinois outside of one trip where on & off ice was the issue. I wasn’t processing rest areas at the time. I like driving in the south.
I hate Illinois nazis.
We’re collectively picking all the worst solutions, aren’t we?
We have sunk to the point where living in your car is an acceptable living option, and the government would rather have that, than address the basic problem of housing affordability.
To exacerbate the issue, many communities and states are “banning” and criminalizing homelessness, arresting people for the crime of being so poor you can’t afford any sort of roof.
The beatings will continue until we learn to enjoy it.
Paraphrasing a quote I head years ago: Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.
Rofl send money to jungle Mexicans or prevent students being homeless…
What are jungle Mexicans? I’m trying to be open minded but it sounds like your talking shit
A drive-in bedroom. How very American.
“We have the money to fix the problem, we really just don’t want to.”
Everyone always says homelessness is a complicated issue due to addiction and mental health and then that’s it. full stop. in many peoples heads those TWO groups are the ONLY groups that make up the homeless population. but after volunteering I know better. you have students, you have women escaping domestic abuse, you have the elderly who can no longer afford rent, you have kids who are LGBTQ+ that have been disowned by their families, you have refugees, and you have people who simply lost their jobs and fell through the cracks.
allowing students to sleep in their cars is not a solution. it’s another band aid applied to a massive gaping wound. And this isn’t just an America issue, several countries are guilty of band aid “solutions”. I mean hell here in Canada the government is talking about investing $1billion into AI for fucks sake. That $1billion could be better served in providing people with homes. There’s never any long term planning here, always short term “solutions”. Wouldn’t it be advantageous to governments to ensure people have homes in order to get them back into the workforce thus paying taxes.
Call me a heart on the sleeve soft liberal all you want but I’m of the firm belief that EVERYONE deserves and has the right to a home and food and if they can’t provide either of those things for themselves than we as a society, as a community, need to provide it for them. And I firmly believe that the majority of our society feel the same and wouldn’t mind their tax dollars going towards that. It’s just that the powers that be don’t want that.
One of the most humane solutions is also the most economically efficient. Early intervention programs like rent/utility assistance are significantly cheaper in the long run than trying to rehabilitate people who have already lost everything and have a litany of health issues because of it. If conservatives really want to save money, they should be embracing “an ounce of prevention saves a pound of cure.” Instead, they’re stuck in wanting to SEE the desperation before even considering helping. Safety nets are major economic stimulus in the long run because it’s much easier to attempt entrepeneurship if you aren’t making a life and death gamble. But something tells me the currently wealthy know this and don’t want competition popping up.
Then of course we also need to fix affordability issues, because unaffordable necessities put everyone at risk.
My point is that even if you mostly just care about efficient government and economic growth, you should still come to similar conclusions as “bleeding heart liberals.” Conservatives don’t come to those conclusions not by economic arguments, but because they fail to see the merit of collective problem solving. They want to have their own little castle with all their stuff that they can defend under penalty of death. We pretend the argument is about feasability and cost effectiveness, but the real issue is that they don’t think that any proposal that would take anything from them or require giving is an option. That’s why you see the economically destitute and ultra wealthy in an unholy alliance. Both of those groups are prone to wanting to circle the wagons and consider only the wellbeing of people in their little circle – the poor out of desperation, and the wealthy out of possessiveness. Everyone not in their little circle is someone else’s problem.
Even efficiency takes a back seat to the[ir] real top priority: Hurting the right people and being seen to do so.
it’s not politically viable though. even liberal voters will revolt at this because it is ‘unfair’ or seem as rewarding laziness.
I’ve seen liberal voters only revolt when it’s in their back yard.
“I want to help house the homeless, but I don’t want to see them.”
i live in boston area. every single person here is like this. they love the homeless, but if they have to see them in public the sudden they start talking about how they need to be ‘removed’ because it makes them feel uncomfortable.
same with schools, housing, healthcare. they support it, until it affects them. Then they are against it.
anf i you say you are for it, they call you evil and heartless and inconsiderate of ‘real people who work for a living’. because homeless people aren’t real people if they don’t have six figure office jobs.
NYMBYs is why politicians don’t have the balls to do anything progressive. Unless you have a wide swelling of support, which thanks to our two party system we never will, Democrats are often stuck keeping the status quo.
most democrats benefit from the status quo and that’s why they want it.
the democrat base is wealthy educated professionals who are making a killing in this economy. it’s not working-class people.
It’s not a solution, but as someone who slept in her car in a college parking lot because her father got pissed at her being around his house while queer, it’s better than we’d had. I was afraid I would get in trouble for sleeping like that. Mind you, the main reason I couldn’t sleep that night was that it was really fucking cold and it’s really hard to sleep in a car.
Housing first is the best solution, but we also need humane solutions for short term homelessness. The “I left in the middle of the night and need a few days to get my bearings because things could go any humber of ways” type stuff. Shelters are so intimidating and have a reputation for being hostile to those that need them.
My college had a food bank, and as I think of this, they really could’ve had a shelter for students as well. Just a few dorm rooms done simple with literature on resources where if you need to stay there a few days you can. Instead I wasn’t allowed to sleep on a student’s couch for more than two consecutive nights.
That last paragraph hits really close to home for me. I’m like super privileged currently, but have been homeless while I was going to college. Sleeping in my car or any friend who would let me crash on their couch or closet floor. It really sucks and it’s taxing physically & mentally.
Like a small jail cell would’ve been preferable to my car on cold nights. And yet I see so many people that have never experienced it properly claim that people need to earn it to feel better about themselves. Like fucking no they don’t Trevor! Tell you what, you go try and sleep in the cold for a few nights and tell me how productive you are the next day!
You are totally correct, but there is something else: There are limits to everybodies agency. If you’re somewhere in a college administration, you can’t reroute those AI billions into housing for students. That’s not going to happen. But you can try to help struggling students with the tools and powers you have and if it’s a parking lot where they can sleep without fear that robbers or police will harass them, that’s good! If you find a way to give leftover food from the cafeteria to hungry students, that’s also great - even if there shouldn’t be hungry students at all.
This college doesn’t have the power to fix homelessness at the societal level, but they did have the power to do this. It’s a pretty awesome story.
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Ew, your hatred of people and desire for others to be suffering or non-existent is showing and it’s gross.
It’s such a 19th century-ass take that it’s on the verge of proposing eugenics and Magdaline laundries.
according to OP we should apparently murder the homeless because nobody below a certain income level should be allowed to live or have kids. i’ve seen this argument before… mostly from people who had wealthy parents and feel like nobody should have kids unless their parents have millions in the bank to pave an easy life path for their children… just like theirs did.
Only the wealthy should be allowed to procreate, huh?
yes. it’s a popular view among the wealthy in particular.
i’ve met many people who have told me i should never have been born because my parents weren’t rich and I had to pay for my college education with loans and scholarships. they argued that people like me are a ‘drain’ and that i ‘stole’ my position uni from a more deserving rich person. they don’t believe in class mobility, just class punishment.
When I was younger i took credit for intelligence and hard work getting a full scholarship to a good school. That’s part of it, but l realize I started in a good place
As I get older I believe everyone who wants to should have a free college education because we desperately need a more knowledgeable and capable society. And it better be ready by the time I’m ready to sit back
in my experience of higher ed, most people in it don’t want to be there. especially the students. they are only there by force of threat of being unemployable.
what educated intelligent hard working people don’t understand is most people aren’t like them. most people want to be dumb and lazy and find learning painful and miserable.
Sure, no one should be forced at that point. But if they want to, everyone should have the opportunity free. And you’re right there would need to be some sort of safeguard against idiots wasting our money.
But we all benefit from from a better educated population. It’s a crime that free public education has remained at high school level when civilization has gotten much more complex.
And part of this should be that college is not “job training”. Yes our society benefits from people learning how to think or better understand many things which are not directly connected to profitability
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The 1930s had hoovervilles.
We have the trump dorms.
Heartwarming! Broke students who can’t afford places to live allowed to stay in their cars in the parking lot!
yeah this is their solution. not the ‘least worst stopgap while we build student affordable housing’, this is it.
What a time to be alive.
This is not a solution it’s a workaround. Sleeping in cars is typically hard sleeping, which is still the problem.
Don’t call it a crisis, sell it as a new hip lifestyle on social media! #vanlife
ugh. Living in vehicles can work-I’ve done so most of my life-but not in a fucking toyota corrola
Yeah but it still sucks and is expensive, unless you own a better motor home: No toilets, no shower, no fridge, no power, must pay at laundry to was clothes, limited cooking without fridge and enough space. Parking in city center is expensive, parking outside the city needs public transport. Parking in a good area and residents call the police on you, park in a bad area and you get your car stolen or broken into.
I was homeless for about 2.5 months and slept in the parking lot of 24 hour fitness in my honda civic.
I would be excited to find any open parking spot at school that won’t get me ticketed and/or towed
Anything but build affordable housing or abolish rent. It’s like that “no way to prevent this” Onion article.
You don’t even have to abolish rent. There are giant predatory companies, small local landlords that got lucky with their timing, and everything in between. They’re getting money for doing nothing, and aren’t going to start contributing to society just because they have to be less wealthy for no effort! Slash rents now to get people homes, and implement rent control and price ceilings.
See? We can have a society in which some people have 10 homes and some have none.
“#BothSides”
10 homes that are each 100 times larger than the average home.
FTFY
WHY are Less people Going to College?
College costs are ridiculous.
Student loans are extortionate.
The ROI on the investment is shitty. IOW you get an expensive degree for a job field that doesn’t pay enough to pay for the degree and living expenses.
There’s a big social media anti-college push. Don’t know whether that’s politically motivated/propaganda, just get rich being a tiktokker or something, or a combination of that and all of the above.
Ive been in and out of college since 2014 and my most recent attempt, specifically one programming course, was the final straw that made me throw my hands up and say fuck it ill teach myself.
On top of paying out of state tuition, i had to pay fees that were meant to support the online learning platform the school used to deliver virtual courses. No biggie, every school ive attended has the same fees. However, this one programming course was integrated with pearson and not just for a few assignments, but for literally everything. Every module, assignment, quiz, etc. was a hyperlink to pearson. My teacher was doing 0 teaching and grading, I was still expected to pay fees for the schools learning platform that was nothing but hyperlinks to pearson, and then on top of all of that i was expected to pay an extra fee to use pearson’s platform. But, wait, it gets better. The hyperlinks to pearson were actually directing to pearson’s in-house built course that they openly sell on their site at a lower rate than what my school tried to charge me and with a longer access period than I would have gotten through my school.
UMGC, university of maryland global campus, essentially tried to outsource my education to a 3rd party and then asked me to front the cost in addition to their own fees. Yeah, no, i withdrew from the school. As much as I want my bachelors, its not worth it if i have to play these games.
There are so, so many shitty schools and teachers out there. It’s a travesty.
Holy shit that’s bad. It makes me feel better about not finishing it it was already kind of bad when I went and got significantly worse since then. I’m not sure I’m missing out on lunch other than whatever healing my brused ego could get from a framed degree.
I definitely think the entire education system, K through 12 and University alike need to be fundamentally rebuilt but employers accepting it as qualification for a job is a necessary precondition. If the federal government were competent they could simply certify Alternatives as equivalent to high school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees enforced by heavy fines for violators with sting operations to catch them. Unfortunately that’s not going to happen so going to have to figure out the education to employment Dynamic some other way
Yeah the professors dont teach shit but having a structured course telling me what order to learn things in and forcing me to do exams, projects, etc. is pretty helpful for learning. Self teaching sht based off whats freely available is hard. There are many paid courses out there for anything online tho. Some ppl do well without structure and they might as well not goto college, learn it all on your own, I do not.
That’s a great idea, I would almost suggest that as the default if only for one glaring problem, namely that employers will demand a bachelor’s degree to hire you. The reason why education is a focus has nothing to do with the actual education everything you do with the certification which is demanded for employment in good paying jobs. Everything else is Downstream of that. If it wasn’t for that 90% of students wouldn’t even go to the university anymore since you can just pirate textbooks.
it’s an easy message when they already turned college into a scam. I went 10 years ago and I felt like I was getting ripped off. I ended up flunking out and now my student loans I’ll never pay off are in default. we need to make employment less dependent on credentials
I think it can be. The problem is colleges and student loan businesses pushing the idea that (expensive student-loan available) college is necessary for a job.
Only certain jobs really need a degree, like medical, engineering, aviation, finance, etc. and probably in the arts it could be helpful, but anything that a proficiency that can be demonstrated with a certificate and/or skill like programming, welding, whatever… yeah. Degrees shouldn’t really be a thing.
Everything in America just doesn’t work right. It’s either falling apart from lack of Maintenance or it’s corrupt
Higher education is necessary. Most kids coming out of high school are incapable of almost anything except basic labor jobs. As our industries get more complex, skilled trained people are more and more necessary.
Certificates/degrees are incredibly valuable.
There are base skills everyone learns from an associates degree regardless of the focus.
Like adult skills. Managing time. Being responsible. Learning how to interact with others professionally. Learning to write better. And some better math skills.
Yes, but everything you listed is the kind of crap we should be teaching in high school, and aren’t. That’s because America has a fascination with transforming our middle and high schools into tiny little prisons and disciplinary systems rather than places where education happens.
In a theoretical correctly functioning modern society, college absolutely should not be necessary to earn a living except if you wish to enter a specialized field where a significant degree of additional training and accreditation is required in order to, among other things, ensure public safety. If you want to be a doctor or dentist, lawyer, architect, critical infrastructure engineer, etc., then yes. Absolutely, there should be a degree for that.
No one should be attempting to demand with any kind of straight face that it should be “required” to have a nonspecific bullshit degree to get a job in sales, marketing, retail or even retail management, graphic design, programming, etc. In fact, the vast majority of both white collar and blue collar jobs in reality have absolutely nothing to do with getting a degree other than showing employers that you’re Willing To Play The Game.
I mean yeah I agree. High school is a good place to learn adult skills. But it’s not been used for that in a long time.
I think college or tech school is still incredibly valuable. I think people need more education than k-12.
If a job can be done by someone with a high school diploma only, it can be done by a machine or a computer.
Human minds are capable of so much more. I genuinely believe most people are capable of being experts at something. Of being exceptional at something. But they don’t get the chance to find out what that is when higher education is unavailable to them.
I think most people need higher education past high school. It’s not just for specializing either.
It’s the skills of self discipline and using tools. Resources.
Navigating professional interactions. And of course, critical thinking which is something that needs to be fostered for longer periods of time.
This isn’t taught in k-12. It’s actually discouraged in k-12.
Talk to 18 year olds. They are practically babies. They can’t do anything. They need more time to develop.
Also you should question why people like the GOP and heritage foundation really really want to keep people from getting a higher education.
Dont align yourself with their agenda. There are very good reasons why restricting higher education will make us more easily manipulated and submissive.
There are reasons why higher education is related to being a socialist and in support of equality. And against fascism. And it’s not indoctrination.
I’d argue school has always been prisonlike but it’s gotten more overt. It’s a complete mess. The Game is rigged so hard that it’s not worth playing. I cannot in good faith tell a young person to focus on school work and getting into a good college because it didn’t work for me. If I was 14 again I’d coast through high school getting mostly Cs and learn stuff on own time. (Remember kids you gotta do Both, not just The former)
they can’t afford it and a college education no longer guarantees you a good wage outside of very specialized and difficult fields of study. also fewer and fewer people are prepared for college, as our secondary and primary education systems have gotten worse.
in the 1990s you could major in English from a cheap state school and walk off to a 40K job. You maybe had 5-10K in college debt. in the 2020s you major in English from a top tier school and you’re lucky to get a job that pays you 30K a year, if you can find one at all. Your debt is more like 20-40K. This is pretty much true of other majors as well, even basic technical ones.
Meanwhile the COL from the 90s has tripled or quadrupled. So your purchasing power is even effectively been dropped to like 1/6 of what it was in the 90s.
My no name company hires data entry workers for about 45K to start. We only hire people from top tier universities with specialized degrees, and we have an over abundance of applicants, that’s why we can be so picky. Our mid tier employes have to have Masters degrees from top 10 uni and are only making 50-60K to start. if you went to a state university we throw your resume in the trash.
Boys are being fed that college degrees are useless, and women are starting to attend college at slightly higher rates. From a realistic perspective, the costs are just crazy.
If I were a kid today, I’d totally go to vet school in Europe.
Out of interest I looked up the price difference.
Typical fees per year in the EU range from zero up to around 3K euro (about $3500) with most being below 1K.
US starts at around 12K for in state public and goes well over 40 for private or out of state.
That’s debt for life levels depending on the earning potential of your course.
Crazy financial gamble to have to take at 18.
It’s worse than that. The fastest track to veterinarian is 7 years (typical 4 year degree + 3 year accelerated veterinary degree at the university of Arizona). In Europe, my research yielded 5 years total.
I lost that gamble. Life’s miserable
Sorry to hear that. It’s a terrible burden to place on someone just starting their adult life.
All for the crime of doing what everyone always told you was the smart and responsible decision. In retrospect I wish I ignored that one skip class more. Smoking weed behind the bleachers was better than trying to get into a college or I’d leave with no degree and unpayable debt
The millennial generation was called the echo boom generation because it is significantly larger than Gens X & Z. There was also a massive expansion in the percentage of millennials going to college over previous generations.
So millennials were the largest generation and had high college rates that Gen Z can’t match.
Because in earlier schooling they never learned the difference between “fewer” (used with a noun that can be counted) and “less” (used with noun treated as a mass or volume or level)
“Entrepreneurs” will soon be snapping up parking lots and charging rent for a space. Capitalism!..yay?
They already do. Paid parking is a thing in pretty much every city in America. In many places, parking lots are wildly profitable. Each parking spot can often earn upwards of $50 per hour during surges.
Paid parking lots in Dallas average somewhere around $8 per hour. That’s with some people paying like $30 for three hours, or $60 for all-day parking. Assuming a ~50% occupancy (busy during the day, emptier overnight) will have a 100 spot lot taking home around $9600 per day.
That’s a number that many coffee shops and convenience stores could only dream of… And the lot doesn’t even need to worry about things like maintaining inventory or hiring cashiers. Their overhead costs are basically nonexistent. They just plop a sign with a QR code at the entrance for people with Apple/Google Pay, and have an automated card reader for the people who don’t have phones. A pair of minimum wage attendants can watch multiple lots in a few city blocks, golf carting between them every ~20 minutes as they make the rounds to scan license plates and make sure people are paid up. Maybe give the attendant who calls in the most tows an extra vacation day each quarter to keep them “motivated”.
Security cameras make limiting your security liability easy. Hell, in many cases tow truck companies will even pay the owner to be allowed to tow from their lots. Because the tow company makes money every single time they snag a car, so they’ll pay a percentage of that to be allowed to tow cars from their lots. So towing enforcement actually makes you money instead of being an expense.
busy during the day, emptier overnight
Ah, so THAT is the problem they’re looking to solve here.
My college roomate’s father got really rich owning parking lots in the downtown business district. Just simple ground level lots, no multi-floors. He bit the bullet and bought the first one, then kept buying them. By the time my roomie was in college, his dad owned about ten of them, and they had serious dinero.
They already do this? Where do you live with free parking?
A parking spot makes more than I do…
This reminds me of those stories of old England where there were warehouses filled with coffins and you could rent a coffin to sleep in if you were homeless. Or even better, if you are too poor for the coffin there were those houses where you can rent your place on a rope tied between two wooden beams, so you can hang ober the rope and have a good night’s sleep until in the morning the owner wakes you up by cutting the rope.
“Orphan-crushing Machine”
Maybe they can finally pay off their school lunch dept
With each new headline like this I hate my country just a little bit more.
time to organize. be a revolutionary optimist, and NOT give in to counterrevolutionary doom and gloom. seriously!
They threw tea in the ocean for less than what’s happening to us right now!!! And Americans are letting it happen while stealing own HARD EARNED money to line the pockets of everyone elected… it’s savage!
I am saying that it’s savage that these college students are paying thousands of dollars a year if not hundreds of thousand dollars for a degree yet a parking lot is a solution for housing for them because they clearly don’t have enough money. Where is this money going in the pockets of the elected and college officials? When college students can’t even afford housing what does that mean for everybody else?! These elected officials have no interest in helping anybody but themselves in the fact that we are trying to normalize college students paying thousands of dollars to live in their cars is not OK. Something has gotta change with these officials. That’s what I mean and if we normalize sleeping in cars in college, nothing will change.
what do you mean by that?
