<story><title>Life Inside the RVs of Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.topic.com/life-inside-the-rvs-of-silicon-valley</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Mz</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Their precarious living situation became a catch 22: while the truck allowed them to live near the hospital, when the social worker found out Isidoro was living in a truck, the hospital kicked Isidoro off the transplant list: he needed to live indoors to recover from a potential surgery to be eligible for a transplant. Luckily, after weeks of looking, Silvia’s sister in nearby Milpitas rented her a bedroom for $700&amp;#x2F;month this fall, where they’ve been staying since. The last she heard, they had to stay inside for a year for Isidoro to get back on the list.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well, I think I officially feel ashamed to be an American now.&lt;p&gt;I slept in a tent for nearly six years to work on getting healthier, but I was not seeing a doctor. I was doing my own thing. That was frustrating enough, what with not getting taken seriously by a lot of people and facing classism online, etc. But, I kind of understand why I get given so much flak: people genuinely think what I am doing simply cannot be done. They have no mental framework for effectively engaging with me.&lt;p&gt;But to have a specialty hospital someplace so expensive and a requirement to live near it to get treatment and no help for complying with this expectation, then delist them for sleeping in a truck, it just seems monstrous. The hospital has to know that normal, healthy people can&amp;#x27;t afford housing here. They should also be fully well aware that people with health problems face the double whammy of high medical expenses plus reduced earnings.&lt;p&gt;America needs to fix both the medical system and affordable housing. It doesn&amp;#x27;t really deserve to be seen as a civilized, first world nation as things stand currently. I don&amp;#x27;t care what our GDP is. We are failing to take care of our people and it is monstrous.</text></comment>
<story><title>Life Inside the RVs of Silicon Valley</title><url>https://www.topic.com/life-inside-the-rvs-of-silicon-valley</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SwellJoe</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s worth noting that even for folks who have enough income to afford an RV park, there are effectively none in the Bay Area. The ones that exist are either: Booked solid with a long waiting list, don&amp;#x27;t allow old RVs (I found this out when I passed through the area with my 34 year old Avion travel trailer), or are so far from everything as to be useless for most of the folks covered in the article. Or, most likely, all three. Also, among the most expensive RV parks in the country.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m pleasantly surprised the city of Palo Alto isn&amp;#x27;t ticketing or arresting or towing these folks. They passed a law against sleeping in vehicles a few years ago, as I recall. It&amp;#x27;s deeply troubling, to me, that the solution to homelessness (or near homelessness) is often to make mere existence illegal.&lt;p&gt;I spent a couple of weeks parking around the University Ave.&amp;#x2F;Downtown area in Palo Alto a few months after I moved into my first RV (a nice&amp;#x2F;newish motorhome), about eight years ago, to visit with a friend who lived on University, and I didn&amp;#x27;t have any trouble with police or neighbors, even parked among multimillion dollar homes (it certainly helped that the RV was nice...I got questions from residents but they were of the form &amp;quot;Where&amp;#x27;ve you been?&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Where are you going next?&amp;quot;), but I&amp;#x27;d read there&amp;#x27;d been a crackdown on it. I haven&amp;#x27;t been back in an RV since then.&lt;p&gt;Last time I was in the area earlier this year, I parked &lt;i&gt;way&lt;/i&gt; outside of the valley (about a 1.5 hour drive away, which was literally the closest I could get) and rented a car to drive in (rather than driving my very large F250; the fuel savings paid for the car rental), but I saw that there were little RV villages in a few locations in Mountain View and Palo Alto. If I&amp;#x27;d been in a motorhome and didn&amp;#x27;t have a girlfriend that liked having limitless power and water with me, I would have spent a night or two on those streets just to avoid making that ridiculous drive several times. But, with a trailer, it&amp;#x27;s just not a great idea to park on streets. Even in places that tolerate motorhomes and vans, they might not tolerate a truck and trailer, and its length often makes it subject to other street parking laws.</text></comment>