Skellig Gra
Member
On the one hand thy are getting paid a very high wage relative to other people in their profession. On the other hand, if your company has so many resources you shouldn't have employees living in poverty.
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FB worker living in garage to Zuckerberg: challenges are right outside your door
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The problem is the suburbs are now overpriced and regulated to hell so they can't build more housing. So now being are having to like 1.5 and 2 hours away from the city to get livable rent. And even then they are starting to run into problems.
They have three children so they probably pay no taxes. However it seems healthcare costs are a major problem for them since they don't qualify for low income options and the company plan is to much for a family of 5. I assume the unionizing will help with the healthcare costs which should help this family a bit.
SF and Silicon Valley are textbook examples of why the tech industry needs to be broken up as far as locations. Yes it is convenient for them all to be in one area to poach off each other non stop but when you have such a concentration of wealth into one area especially one that goes out of its way to deny expansion it creates unsustainable conditions for everyone else.
A Family bringing in almost $80,000 a year should not be pushed into conditions where they have to live in their parents Garage. But then San Francisco is more concerned about not allowing an upward expansion because it would ruin the cities views. Other areas do not want to have "poor" people in their areas.
Something has to be done
A Family bringing in almost $80,000 a year should not be pushed into conditions where they have to live in their parents Garage. But then San Francisco is more concerned about not allowing an upward expansion because it would ruin the cities views. Other areas do not want to have "poor" people in their areas.
Something has to be done
Zoe
Member
She is a realtor and a council member! No conflict of interest there.
On the third hand, it is a political problem.
Especially since, as cafeteria workers, there is no way their skills would translate to a 20/hour job somewhere else. They are kinda trapped by both their relative success and their skillset, which is a terrible place to be in for them.
The real deal is that the whole area is just unsustainable in it's current form for middle class families. Can't really imagine what my life would be like with those added expenses. If you're a single person or a couple living on a combined 35 an hour, you'll be fine. It's just that there is no way that you can ever think about things like having children, or buying a home within an hour or two of where you work.
Additionally, a huge issue in the Bay (really nationwide, but it's really apparent in the Bay) are these contracters, who work for companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, but aren't officially part of the company. The reality is this creates a 2nd tier of workers within these companies -- the higher class employees and the lower class contractors.
Mysterious
Banned
their situation would barely be alleviated, now you're throwing not-insignificant travel costs on top of it, as well as increased child care expenses.
Adam_Vania
Banned
yes this seems key. they live in one of the most expensive places to live in the country. move to a different state and get work there. janitorial work is kind of in demand everywhere why limit yourself to the most expensive place in the US.
No it's not. Part time and Full time describe the hours worked. Contractor is the type of employment contract they have.
Oh believe me I understand I commute to work as well. But it is getting to the point were you live that far away and still don't have a 3 bedroom apartment much less a house. Also the longer commute means increased child care cost since they have to leave their children alone for hours at a time. They are caught in a grey area where they are making too much to get some needed assistance but too little to cover everything.
KissDaRing
Banned
That's life though. a lot of us have been in the same boat where the cost of living is too much close to work. There are plenty of places on the outskirts that they can live. 1.5 hours away isn't the end of the world. I make a similar commute for work and now I can afford to live in the city but still choose to live outside of it. Sometimes we got to make sacrifices to add the right kind of balance and comfortable living for our families to function instead of complaining.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
lol they are making nearly $40 an hour which is $83k a year for flipping burgers. That just makes me angry at the poor parenting more than anything. go and live outside the city like every other middle class earner. Travel an hour each way/ if you have to. my brother did that for 3 years. give your kids a fucking bedroom FFS.
KissDaRing
Banned
They would be in a better living situation though wouldn't they? We all got to make sacrifices to get what we want. What makes them any different.
Frozenprince
Banned
Charming.
KissDaRing
Banned
Exactly.
Mysterious
Banned
No at these companies. There's a type of employment, and it's almost always one of those three.
Full-time != Contractor
At Google, when it says FTE Only, it means no part time, no contractors working 40h/week, etc.
California is a politically broken state, the problem is anything within 2 hours of SF or LA.
johancruijff
Banned
why is allowed living in a garage though
ghostofsparta
Member
You are definitely not from the Bay Area. Pray your area doesn't become like this, but if it does think of this thread
Frozenprince
Banned
Because it's A) more than 1.5 hours away to find an area near FB's corporate headquarters that's livable on that wage for a family of five. And B) you assume they haven't already thought of that.
Anything within driving distance of the city is going to cost the same general cost of living for a family of five. And if you make it a 3+ hour commute both ways, you're paying more for child care so really you're no better off.
It's probably both but a contractor can be full time and part time as well. A part time contractor would be working less then 32 hours per week.
It's their parents garage.
KissDaRing
Banned
So how would Zuckerberg fix that? What are they realistically expecting him to do? Setup a campus for employees? That opens the door to a whole other set of problems and criticism. They're already getting paid well for their profession.
Kaepernick is officially a socialist fave so you should probably change your avi if you're gonna be so capitalistic bootstrap-y
aspaceman55
Member
[]
The billionaire that supplies most of the wealth directly and indirectly to the area could easily speak out against racist zoning policies and the fuck you got mine mentality of these "liberal" enclaves.
See the shit head City council member I loved to earlier.
Employee subsidized healthcare would probably help alot.
My wife and I make a combined $45 an hour. I make the majority at $33 an hour. We have a nice house, finished basement, finished 2 car garage, 2 1/2 bath 1 full, 3 br and two cars, but I live in NW Illinois where a nice 3 br house is 100k-150k. The cost of living in some places just boggles my mind. Of course they would probably only make $10 hour and probably work 32 hrs a week as cafeteria workers here.
That's not TOO bad.
Frozenprince
Banned
http://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/california/menlo_park
Cost of living for the entire bay metro area is comparable to where they are now.
Living 2.5-3 hours commute both ways outside your place of employment isn't something we should be advocating. That's ridiculous. Especially when their employer has the ability to rectify this for them and every other service level employee they have.
Cost of living for the entire bay metro area is comparable to where they are now.
Living 2.5-3 hours commute both ways outside your place of employment isn't something we should be advocating. That's ridiculous. Especially when their employer has the ability to rectify this for them and every other service level employee they have.
Vital Tundra
Member
I will never understand how a company has health insurance options their employee's can't afford. Fuck that.
Don't see how it could be NIMBY land and politically broken if in the last year LA voters shot down a NIMBY ballot measure and voted for separate measures to require and give bonuses to developers to include affordable housing, to spend billions on public transit and to build more housing for the homeless.
KissDaRing
Banned
I'm just being realistic. I see both sides of the fence here and I just don't think it's as big of an issue as the complainants are making it. They live in a garage. Like they can find a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment for around the same price they rent the garage space for if not less and still live much more comfortably than they are now. That's the reality of it.
Just because your brain has normalized it doesn't make it "not too bad."
Frozenprince
Banned
3 hours both ways with 3 kids for both parents?
That's ludicrous, at that point you're paying more monthly in child care than you're saving by commuting and they're right back in the same position.
Day care is easily $4K+ a month in that area for 3 kids.
Earthanoid
Member
Their salary isn't the only problem, the bay area has a housing and cost of living issue in general. Even if Zuck doubled their pay they would barely make enough to get a small apartment in that area, assuming they could even find one. There is a shortage of affordable housing in the bay area, and it is a lot worse on the peninsula where they are currently living and where FB HQ is. Housing in the area wasn't built or planned for the population growth that has happened, and the current homeowners and cities don't want to build more apartments and affordable housing even though all the companies in the area do. The current owners and cities want to remain as burbs and don't want to turn into urban centers, even though they want the jobs and housing. Everyone is hoping that the neighboring cities will bite the bullet and do it.
This is the same reason that stuff like BART extensions (that's the local train system) has taken so long. Everyone wants BART to go farther out but no one wants it going through their area.
If you go farther south or east the housing gets cheaper and the neighborhoods are fine, but the commuting gets worse. Facebook runs buses if you live on the outskirts, so you are not driving and paying for gas, but they're probably looking at 1-2 hours on a bus each way every day. Although I've heard the FB buses are pretty nice.
This is the same reason that stuff like BART extensions (that's the local train system) has taken so long. Everyone wants BART to go farther out but no one wants it going through their area.
If you go farther south or east the housing gets cheaper and the neighborhoods are fine, but the commuting gets worse. Facebook runs buses if you live on the outskirts, so you are not driving and paying for gas, but they're probably looking at 1-2 hours on a bus each way every day. Although I've heard the FB buses are pretty nice.
Mammoth Jones
Member
Tell me about it...
Yup. I was ok with a two hour commute ten years ago before the wife and kid. Now? It's starting to wear me down. 2-2.5 hours each way. A studio near my job is 3.1k per month. LMAO.
I read it as they are renting the garage of their grandparents neighbors. They wouldn't need to go outside in the rain to use the bathroom/kitchen if it was their parents garage.
Frozenprince
Banned
Housing isn't even the biggest issue here, they can't afford healthcare.
They don't actually work for Facebook. Instead they work for some company that Facebook hires to do the work that they don't want their employees doing. That's actually part of the problem here -- companies often do that so they have cover when something like this happens.
Yep. And that's why the Peninsula is stuck with Caltrain, even though it's objectively worse than BART and causes huge traffic issues on the Dunbarton (which, coincidentally is right next to FB HQ, to loop it all back to the starting conversation).
the article also says that they live next to their parents. I don't know if that means they're living free, but the system has to be broken if they're living rent free and still struggling from health care, child care, and food/utilities.
Jmanunknown
Member
Your not being realistic your being naive about their situation or you honestly just feel like putting them down because how can you realistically look at their situation where they can barely afford to pay for food to eat and say they should just move. How can they afford to move?
LucidMomentum
Member
Yeah, I understand people saying they need to "make sacrifices" but when you're making payday loans to cover rent in a garage because there's no where else to live in town and the same situation would come up no matter where they move in a 1-2 hour radius, that's already a "sacrifice" by any means.
$20 an hour sounds like a lot but if you lived in that area of Cali you'd know it's not by comparison. There's a reason I turned down Silicon Valley engineering jobs when I graduated, I get to live like a king in Cen Cal. But, I'm in Cen Cal so that's its own punishment.
Salary is a smaller factor in the Bay Area. Doesn't matter if you increase everybody's pay by $100K if they're all chasing the same limited housing. The major problem is that housing construction is dictated by local municipalities that are all too happy to add more employers and jobs but won't allow for additional housing construction. The solution is simple but politically a mess. I don't see it changing until things start failing or tech workers have to clean up their own shit.
It's crazy how a family of 5 living in a garage isn't "sacrificing" enough to some people. Like honestly the rhetoric ITT is insane.
Osukaa
Member
Damn I wish I was back to making that kind of $$$. If I was the family id consider moving to where it would be cheaper to live. Im thinking itd probably be an hour or 2 drive to work but id do it if I was stuck in a garage with my 3 kids. Hell I knew a lady who drove 3 hours to work each day cause the wages were good and the place she lived she was able to afford a nice 2 bedroom place with her kid. I asked her one day how she does it and I remember her answer was "You gotta do what you gotta do" LOL She said " I can save a bit of money each check and eventually have a nice nest egg" She would carpool with others who did the same thing lol. Bottom line is that I believe the family should look for options regarding moving to somewhere cheaper and making the commute or save their money to be able to move and get things on track to live more comfortably. Just my opinion.
Zoe
Member
The person I was responding to was implying they're not working 40 hours because they're contractors.
I mean, is it better? You're seeing your kids much less often, you have to bump up your child care and travel expenses to the point the move probably isn't a net profit, and now you take on all the stress that comes with a longer commute.
I doubt the solution to this situation is as simple as "move."
Frozenprince
Banned
I mean there's also costs you can't factor in if you move, proximity to family, the kids social and support networks, the schools, the local hospitals and doctors being better, the area being better for their kids etc etc.
They shouldn't need to move 3 hours away just to be able to live, and even then, only barely.
They shouldn't need to move 3 hours away just to be able to live, and even then, only barely.
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