44 replies
1d12h
I think most of us can acknowledge that what they did was wrong, but it still is an impressive amount of devotion, and cost effective work.
28 replies
14h57m
Construction cost a mere $50k? These guys should be promoted to top management in SF public servants, with that kind of money management they could house all the homeless.
17 replies
14h44m
Bringing them into the system would only bring costs in line with existing costs now. It's not that construction labor and materials are overly expensive, it's that union construction labor, materials, permits, inspections, lobbying, and community meetings, are expensive.
Plus they didn't pay for the land either.
12 replies
14h5m
More people need to know about the role unions play in obstructing new construction.
From locking up permits in CEQA reviews to blocking pre-fabricated structures, they are one of the driving factors behind a housing unit costing $700k at the very minimum. This puts housing out of reach for anyone making less than $150k/year.
It’s a 3rd rail issue for anyone in the democratic machine, which is why we won’t see meaningful progress in housing or homelessness under the current incumbents.
I’m actually pro union in most other contexts, especially when workers are underdogs. But in CA there are some unions which are quite powerful, exclusionary, and have negative effects on society.
4 replies
13h30m
I bet the unions are seeing pre-fabricated structures the same way actors and writers are looking at AI, technology taking away jobs. I’m sure we’ll see much more of this in the future.
3 replies
13h18m
Apparently the city was outsourcing to prefab firms outside of SF and many of the projects had safety violations that couldn’t be inspected because everything was already put together on arrival.
1 replies
13h0m
Put aside for a moment that this is a classic tactic to ban something. Tear through a bunch of them looking for any imperfections whatsoever, ignoring any equivalent imperfections in the status quo, then exaggerate the issue and propose prohibition as the solution.
Even if the problem is real, why is the solution prohibition? Put liability on the manufacturer for regulatory non-compliance, the same as we do for cars or appliances or any other prefabricated product.
0 replies
8h7m
Even if the problem is real, why is the solution prohibition?
Because the problem for the union isn’t the safety concerns, it’s the fact that labor from outside was used to make it.
0 replies
4h9m
Another tactic in the bay area is for a union to demand the environmental impact assessment until they are put on the job, then they withdraw their objection.
3 replies
12h44m
I’m actually pro union in most other contexts, especially when workers are underdogs. But in CA there are some unions which are quite powerful, exclusionary, and have negative effects on society.
The premise of unions is "bargaining power". Bargaining power comes from having alternatives. Nobody can make you take a deal worse than your next best alternative, so the way to get a good deal is to have a lot of alternatives. The best way to get it for labor is to have lots of prospective employers for people with your skill set, i.e. for your industry not to be a monopoly.
Unions nominally do this the other way around. Instead of giving employees more options, they try to give employers less. But most of the time that doesn't work. You can unionize some baristas or something, but then you go on strike and the company hires different baristas and doesn't care.
By contrast, if the employer is a monopoly, then they often have to hire most of the people with that skill set. If they're all in the union, the employer can't just replace them because there are no more. This is when unions can behave like a monopoly themselves and dictate terms.
But monopolies are bad. When a union has a monopoly, they do exactly the sort of things which are happening in this case, which is terrible for society and especially anyone who needs the product the union makes.
The correct solution isn't unions, it's to break up monopolistic employers so that individual workers -- and customers -- have bargaining power. Which is to say, alternatives, not their own adversarial monopoly.
2 replies
2h44m
it's to break up monopolistic employers
Indeed. And the primary method employers use to gain monopolistic leverage is limiting competition by barring new entrants through government regulation, licensing, permitting, etc. Anytime we give government bureaucrats power to regulate, license, permit, etc, that power becomes a highly desirable target for crony capture, either legal through lobbyists, campaign donations etc or illegal through bribes and revolving-door influence peddling.
Like you, I have no problem with unions in concept. Employees should be free to organize and choose who to work for (or not to work for) as they see fit — as long as employers also have the corresponding freedom to choose who to hire (or dismiss) as they see fit. When everyone is free to opt-in or out, everyone has an incentive to find mutually agreeable terms. This creates a naturally sustainable market-driven balance between the parties.
The problem comes in those states which don't have "right to work" protections. In those states a union can legally force an employer to hire only union members (or the government sends police to shut the business down). It can also force an existing employee to join the union (ie give the union part of their paycheck) or they lose their job, even if the employee sees no benefit to joining the union (which happened to a friend of mine). As you'd expect, once any party in a transaction loses their freedom to choose, this imbalance is eventually exploited and abused.
1 replies
2h9m
I won't say that Unions don't have issues or can't be corrupt, but I also have a hard time buying the idea that employers and employees can have symmetrical relationships under "right to work". Employers have far more resources at their disposal than individual workers typically do. The terms look symmetrical on the surface, but in practice the they clearly favor capital.
Maybe what you mean is that we need better unions.
0 replies
19m
Employers have far more resources at their disposal than individual workers typically do.
But how does that help them?
Suppose a corporation needs a mechanic to service their vehicles. There are a thousand such corporations and they each have a billion dollars. Meanwhile the individual mechanics have no resources whatsoever. But what they do have is a thousand different employers they could work for, so they pick the one offering the best compensation and working conditions.
How is a corporation supposed to use its billion dollars to gain an advantage here? Anything they do to make themselves less attractive to workers would just cause the workers to pick one of the other thousand prospective employers. To do otherwise would require some kind of deception or collusion, which are illegal.
Maybe what you mean is that we need better unions.
This is like saying "maybe we need better corporations". The reason the cable company sucks isn't that their leadership is uniquely malevolent -- I didn't even have to specify which cable company it is. The reason is that they don't have enough competition to keep them in check, and that's what happens then. Unions are not exempt.
Meanwhile the remaining "good" things a union is supposed to do can be served just as well by e.g. hiring an agent or buying certain types of insurance, which anybody can do individually regardless of what anybody else is doing.
1 replies
12h26m
If not the unions, there is always someone else that drives the prices up. In Sweden we don't have this problem with the Unions but it's still very expensive with housing.
0 replies
12h3m
The same problem can have different causes. Forgive me, but this sounds like rationalized fatalism. I’m genuinely curious, what keeps Sweden from building more cheap housing?
0 replies
6h21m
This puts housing out of reach for anyone making less than $150k/year
Then more labor sectors should unionize! Make the wealthy pay the true cost for living in their communities. Not live with all this government protection and regulations, then outsource production to a free state a thousand miles away. If regulation and taxes are the problem, then fix the problem. You can't have it both ways.
3 replies
14h2m
Do you have any numbers showing labor driving the price of housing in cities like San Francisco? It seems like almost certainly the #1 cost is the price of the land by a wide margin.
2 replies
12h13m
You can build an arbitrarily tall building on a piece of land, allowing the price of the land to be split between arbitrarily many housing units.
Suppose that land is extremely expensive. A single acre of land is ten million dollars. How much is a housing unit? An acre is 43560 sq ft, so a building that allocates half the size of the lot to housing units could have at least 10 housing units of 2000 sq ft per floor and a 50 story building would have at least 500 units making the land cost per unit $20,000.
You can't get a 2000 sq ft condo in San Francisco for anywhere near $20,000. The difference is attributable to zoning and construction costs.
But it's worse than that, because if building tall buildings wasn't inhibited then the land wouldn't cost as much because the inability to make space-efficient use of the land drives up its scarcity.
1 replies
7h56m
An acre in the mediocre parts of Palo Alto is ten million, an acre near anywhere it makes sense to put a 50+ storey building in SF is much closer to 100 million.
Plus at most only about 2/3 of the floor plate is saleable square footage.
So $300,000 of land cost per 2000 sq ft condo.
Realtor fees, taxes, surcharges, local improvement fees, etc., and everything else legally mandated is another $250k on top. Builder overhead, insurance, interest on the bank loan, a margin for delays, etc., is at least another $200k.
So even if construction cost was zero and the zoning process flawlessly smooth, the builder would need to charge at least $750k per unit to break even.
Even if land cost was zero as well, it would still be at least $450k per unit to break even.
0 replies
38m
in SF is much closer to 100 million.
The cost of land in SF is less than $10 million/acre:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376626/land-price-in-se...
an acre near anywhere it makes sense to put a 50+ storey building
What is "makes sense"? Are condo units available in Palo Alto for anywhere near $20,000? It makes sense anywhere that the cost of land is high.
Plus at most only about 2/3 of the floor plate is saleable square footage.
So actually more than the 1/2 used in the numbers above.
Realtor fees, taxes, surcharges, local improvement fees, etc., and everything else legally mandated is another $250k on top. Builder overhead, insurance, interest on the bank loan, a margin for delays, etc., is at least another $200k.
Half of these aren't part of the list price and the other half are just other words for "zoning and construction costs".
Even if land cost was zero as well, it would still be at least $450k per unit to break even.
You now seem to be arguing that the land isn't the primary cost.
5 replies
14h12m
They didn’t construct shit.
For a mere $42,000, Navarro allegedly installed a kitchenette, shower, plumbing and security cameras [to an existing office].
Doesn’t sound cheap or impressive when you are doing it yourself instead of hiring someone and still managed to spend $42k.
2 replies
4h22m
$42k and just a little bit of time for a functional mini-apartment, complete with plumbing/kitchenette/etc.
“Doesn’t sound cheap or impressive”
Let me introduce you to the glory of construction experience in San Francisco[0] and how ridiculous it gets.
Direct quotes from the article:
* “It takes 523 days, on average, for a developer to get the initial go-ahead to construct housing — and another 605 days to get building permits.”
* “And after spending five years and more than $500,000 to design bespoke trash cans — with the prototypes costing more than $12,000 apiece — the city has shelved a plan to put 3,000 of them on street corners because of a budget deficit.”
* “The toilet project broke down the minute taxpayers realized the city was planning an event to celebrate $1.7 million in state funds that local politicians had secured for the lone 150-square-foot structure. That’s enough to purchase a single-family home in San Francisco — with multiple bathrooms.”
What I am getting from this is that the whole mini-apartment cost the construction workers in the OP about as much to build as it cost for the city to produce 4 trash cans (that all got shelved anyway). Or about 2.9% of how much it cost the city to build a single 150sqft public bathroom (or, in other words, you could build around 34 of those mini apartments for the cost of 1 public bathroom).
Not going to lie, at this point, I would much rather see the people responsible for those spending decisions to be charged, as opposed to two random construction dudes who dont even own that mini-apartment they built.
0. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/us/san-francisco-toilet.h...
0 replies
2h51m
I would say a deputy director (making 200-300k a year, so not “priced out”) embezzling funds to furnish his personal accommodations is part of the problematic culture that leads to the kind of crap you described. People simply embezzle funds at all levels, much of it completely legal.
0 replies
1h55m
Did the guy with the laundromat ever get to build housing or is SF still up in arms over shadows?
edit omg it didn't. that city is so f'n corrupt that a guy trying to build affordable housing was eventually forced to sell to a hotel magnate. That's hilarious.
1 replies
13h45m
Trust me SF's office can spend $4.2M on the exact same shit.
0 replies
12h30m
Well, salaries must be paid.
3 replies
13h17m
This story is just another data point on the enshittification of SF, along with fentanyl dealing on streetcorners and feces on the sidewalks.
2 replies
4h47m
enshittification of SF
Does "enshittification" just now mean "I don't like it"?
Even some of the more broad usages wouldn't seem to involve a municipality.
1 replies
4h7m
I generally take this word to mean "I'm a redditor and I want everyone to know it".
0 replies
3h44m
I post on the orange website, unlike you, who posts on the orangered website.
22 replies
15h45m
to clarify, they're not being charged for building apartments without a permit, or trespassing on the train station, or anything like that; they're being charged for embezzling public funds to construct housing for themselves. the location of the apartments is relatively irrelevant
16 replies
13h32m
they're being charged for embezzling public funds to construct housing for themselves
Did they actually "construct housing for themselves" though? They never owned said housing, I think at all times it remained the property of their employer, and I assume all their use of it only occurred while they remained employees. Now they are no longer employees, they no longer have access to that housing, whereas their employer is free to use it as they see fit.
If they'd used public funds to pay for the renovation of their own privately owned residence, that would be a very clearcut case of what you are talking about. I think this case is not clearcut.
8 replies
13h2m
The public is damaged in nearly identical fashion regardless of whether the housing is used by a specific person/family forever, is handed down to some remaining employee, is on public land, is on private land, or is ripped out and tossed in the trash. In all cases, the public paid for something that returns no value to them, and the party responsible should make the damaged party whole.
6 replies
12h49m
Plenty of employers build apartments for their staff. For example a little bed and kitchen so the on-site security guard can sleep overnight but still be on site. Many jobs require a human nearby all the time, but there is no need for them to be actively working.
If someone else was on duty at that site next week, then that person would be staying in the apartment.
I suspect that is what these were.
So the only real crime is violation of zoning laws.
2 replies
11h55m
I suspect that is what these were.
This is not the case. They did this without anyone else's knowledge or approval. They were used only by the conspirators.
1 replies
11h43m
They did this without anyone else's knowledge or approval. They were used only by the conspirators
But now the employer knows about it, they should be able to make these facilities available to any of their employees or contractors who might be able to use them, in a way which could benefit the employer.
For example, if someone has to work overtime in an emergency, allowing them to stay the night in one of these apartments could allow them to save commuting time and be better rested for the next day, which could improve performance (and reduce safety risks due to tiredness). Or, if someone needs to be rostered on-call to respond to unexpected events, having them stay in one of these apartments may improve their response time if they are called in
0 replies
7h17m
The hurdles to get over to reach this logic path is amazing.
They used employers funds without approval to build something that benefited themselves. Sure, it happened on employer property but without any type of approval. That is theft, let us not try to come up with complicated explanations to say its not theft.
0 replies
11h30m
So the only real crime is violation of zoning laws.
Caltrain is a government agency – it is incorporated by its three member counties under the California Joint Exercise of Powers Act, which enables two or more public agencies to agree to create a new jointly controlled agency, and delegate some of their powers to it. As such, do zoning laws actually apply to Caltrain? I don't know the answer to that question, but I wouldn't assume the answer is necessarily "Yes". Zoning laws are primarily targeted at private actors (private corporations and individuals) and government agencies are not always bound by them.
It is true that the work these Caltrain employees were doing was not authorised by upper management, but they were making improvements to Caltrain property and using Caltrain funds to do so, so most likely they still legally count as acts of Caltrain.
0 replies
5h54m
No, the crime is still embezzlement. It does not matter what they were intended for if they were constructed with public funds taken without approval.
0 replies
11h55m
I can't imagine this would violate zoning laws if the employer did it and declared it it as a temporary structure for construction staff. And the expense wouldn't have raised an eyebrow for the agency reviewing the construction contract. Maybe some permitting laws - should someone have signed off on the kitchenette being properly vented, etc.
This is an employee slacking off to build a side project that will be owned by to the company, but mostly has value for himself. Which wouldn't normally be a criminal matter, but the laws are (correctly) stricter about doing this kind of thing with public funds.
0 replies
12h18m
Public got in exchange well rested worker closer to their place of work, and thus probably more efficient because of that.
How is that worse than the management having too much space in their office than needed or leather covered office chair?
3 replies
5h8m
Embezzle (verb) - steal or misappropriate.
You do not need to steal money from your employer and deposit it into your savings account to embezzle.
Anything that is a misuse of company money is technically embezzlement.
If you use company money meant to upgrade your computer to build a fancy aquarium on your desk instead, that's technically embezzlement.
So would using company money to build a kitchen in your office - even if that's technically improving the company's property.
2 replies
4h15m
Anything that is a misuse of company money is technically embezzlement.
If you use company money meant to upgrade your computer to build a fancy aquarium on your desk instead, that's technically embezzlement.
I knew this (now retired) public agency executive who couldn’t get enough money in her budget to keep the lights on, but the board was much more willing to fund new projects. Her solution? She’d get funding for all these new projects, use that to hire all these contractors, and quietly direct them to spend 50%+ of their time on “keeping the lights on” but bill 100% to the project. For example, funds appropriated for an identity management project paid for a network engineer who was supposed to configure the firewalls and load balancers for that project, but the project also paid for the weeks he spent upgrading outdated network switches in office buildings even though that had no logical connection with identity management. To my knowledge she never got in any trouble; on the contrary, I’m led to believe that “budget hacks” like hers are common in the public sector, and a lot of public agencies would just utterly collapse without them. Whereas, one of her underlings ended up in prison, because (apparently unbeknownst to her) he was awarding sham contracts to a company controlled by his friend. I think a big difference is the enterprise actually benefited from her redirection of funds, whereas it got absolutely zero out of his.
I think these employees do have a problem in they appropriated company property such that the direct immediate benefit was solely to themselves. If they’d appropriated it in a way which benefited other employees as opposed to just themselves personally, I think that would have made it much harder to prosecute. The same public agency, there was an internal dispute over whether it was appropriate to use public funds to pay for expensive (>$1000) coffee machines for staff break rooms - other divisions were doing it, she insisted hers couldn’t because it would be a misuse of those funds. But as far as I know the divisions which did do that never got in any legal or other trouble. The managers who requisitioned these expensive coffee machines shared the benefit of them with their teams. I think she was more afraid of the press and politicians than the law but the press and politicians never found out (or else maybe they did but just decided they had bigger fish to fry than coffee machines)
1 replies
3h12m
Speaking with Federal government experience, I'm 99 percent certain that what you describe is go-to-jail illegal to do with Federal funds absent explicit authorization. There is some ability to move funds around to do different things, but generally only related things and only with a paper trail of sign-offs from the proper authorities. Congress programs a budget, and that budget is expected to be spent as designed in Federal land. If there's X dollars allocated for, say, sending reservists on travel for training, you can move that money around to send a different group of people to a different base, but you can't use it to renovate the office.
0 replies
2h40m
It was state not federal, plus it wasn’t in the US.
Maybe it is different in the US, but my experience is legislators generally don’t want to micromanage agency budgets - they’ll give the agency a bucket of money to spend but will leave it up to senior management to decide exactly how to spend it. Whether the agency spends $1 million on new LDAP servers or $1 million on new network switches is not the level of detail they want to drill down to, to them it is just “$10 million for X agency IT”. But for her, although she was responsible for proposing and delivering those projects, it was the level above her which had to approve carving them out of the overall budget, and that level was much more enthusiastic about paying for sexy stuff like identity management than boring stuff like replacing ancient network switches, even if the enterprise actually had a much more urgent need for the latter. So she just quietly redirected some of the sexy budget to help pay for those boring necessities
0 replies
11h37m
yes, i agree
0 replies
5h15m
Embezzling is the important word in that sentence. If the money wasn't specifically meant for this, it could be proven to be embezzlement & what you're talking about would have no bearing on that.
0 replies
6h31m
A common legal synonym for the concept of theft is "conversion" which is illustrative. The act of stealing doesn't require the property to be consumed or destroyed.
Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(law)
1 replies
15h39m
The funny part is that when the government does it, they give themselves a pat on the back for spending 500k - 1M for a 700square foot space for 1 homeless person.
0 replies
13h55m
Or over $1M for a modular toilet
https://www.silive.com/news/2023/03/1-million-for-a-toilet-i...
1 replies
10h49m
This reads like something out of HBO's Silicon Valley.
0 replies
9h40m
There was the guy that entered an incubator at AOL and used the access to move into their offices and stay there.
Also I once had dinner with a Netscape dev back in '99 who told me about a guy who had just been fired after he was found to have moved into the office.
There are quite a few instances of this kind of thing.
0 replies
13h42m
Oh, yeah, that’ll do it. As Chris Rock said, never commit two crimes at the same time.
13 replies
1d9h
Endearingly amateur work next to Untergunther, the people who built an apartment and a workshop behind the clock of one of Paris' most famous buildings, repaired it, and left.
https://urban-resources.net/untergunther.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/26/france.artnews
3 replies
13h4m
But why does a French project have such a Germanic sounding name?
0 replies
9h37m
It really has a ring to it. Untergunther. Un. Ter. Gun. Ther.
0 replies
12h4m
The land of the Franks and germanic influences? I would never!
0 replies
12h39m
Contrary to rumour, the Parisiennes and Parisiens are not obligate monoglots?
3 replies
13h57m
Or there's Van Allen, who built himself a 14x10 concrete bedroom under part of London's Hampstead Heath...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22493078
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/05/invisible-city-...
1 replies
10h2m
This is a great read, thank you for sharing. Van Allen comes across as capable and making the best of things after being dealt a bad hand of cards in life and being continually let down by interactions with state bureaucracy while trying to obtain secure housing. When he gets the message the state isn't going to help, he figures out how to look after himself. Then years later the state finally notices him and gets all stirred up about perceived terrorism/drug threats and gaols him for five years.
0 replies
5h33m
's/perceived/hallucinated/'
The law enforcement & security org leaders who went ballistic over one elderly homeless man, who dug himself a little dirt cave to live in, should have been forced to undergo psychiatric evaluations. What's next? Arresting poor kids for chewing gum, because "what if the gum was plastic explosives, and they were actually suicide bombers!"?
0 replies
9h16m
There's a lively discussion on that thread regarding whether the alleged "pipe gun" is actually a gun (the general agreement seems to be "no") and there are many comments praising his ingenuity.
I wanted to check how Mr. Van Allen is doing these days. From what I can gather he escaped an open prison less than a year into his sentence [1] and is mostly known in the media as "man jailed for stashing homemade gun". He was in the list of Sussex's "most wanted" [2] in 2021, but that's about it.
I wish someone would write a book about his life, but I guess they would have to find him first and I kinda hope they don't.
[1] https://news.sky.com/story/police-hunt-for-prison-escapee-pu...
[2] https://www.sussexlive.co.uk/news/sussex-news/sussex-most-wa...
1 replies
15h18m
Ohhh this tops my first thought:
https://collider.com/secret-mall-apartment-jesse-eisenberg-j...
I gotta say fixing a clock is way more impressive than a secret mall apartment.
0 replies
6h6m
Any idea where you can watch that? All I can find is the SXSW event
0 replies
8h28m
"Unter und Gunther Winter Kneipe" - this must be subtle Gallic humor.
0 replies
3h28m
What an interesting group including their parent org. I can’t really find anything about them post when this article came out other than a single reference to the clockmaker getting an official position in 208 maintaining that pantheon clock due to his experience fixing it in the first place.
I wonder if they fell apart, all the details on them on the internet are only in French, or they actually practice good opsec and don’t talk about their shit online
0 replies
14h17m
Are they still active? Can't find anything much later than this 2012 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99z-GT8y1jA
10 replies
1d12h
I wish there were pictures. I am having a hard time imagining what "apartment in a train station" actually means.
3 replies
1d11h
They are converted offices, I imagine something akin to resting rooms for rescue workers. I wonder what the plan was. They could never profit from this. They risked so much just to have a hidden sleepover place between commutes?
2 replies
1d11h
Well, given the prices in Bay Area, perhaps they were simply priced away so far that it saved them several hours per day? Or perhaps it was closer to family?
1 replies
14h0m
One of them, the deputy director, received $270k in pay (before benefits) in 2021. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/san-mateo-co...
0 replies
7h14m
Thank you for sharing this. I hate all the hoops everyone is using the justify why it was ok what they did. These were not some sort of sleep area for all employees, these were private accommodations for these two individuals.
3 replies
1d11h
The Daily Journal had pictures. I go by the Burlingame station, which is a nice Spanish-revival station from the Southern Pacific days.[1] SP built good stations, and Caltrain maintains them mostly as decoration. I'm surprised they don't put a Starbucks in each one.
Google Street View coverage is so good that you can see the apartment.[2]
[1] https://flickr.com/photos/rajbhatnagar/5626838344
[2] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.57977486,-122.34480873,10.5...
1 replies
15h47m
Can you provide a link to the Daily Journal piece with photos of the apartment? I can’t find it.
0 replies
14h8m
The closest I could see is at 1:43 in this video https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/former-caltrain-manage...
Apparently the DA declined to share pictures.
0 replies
15h13m
I’m surprised they don’t put a Subway in each one.
0 replies
14h58m
I grew up in Millbrae. Oddly satisfying to solve the mystery of why I often saw a couple dudes hanging inside the decommissioned old station over the last 5-10 years. It has a display train car. I wonder if they were living in that too. https://maps.app.goo.gl/vk9ZXxWGJT9UmM3D6?g_st=ic
The Millbrae one would be easy to get away with but the Burlingame one is more surprising. If we're talking Bgame Ave, that's a very busy area. If they mean Broadway station then that makes more sense.
0 replies
15h40m
7 replies
15h37m
See also another daring act of guerrilla building: a homeless guy who built an underground bunker in Hampstead Heath, a park in London. No embezzlement was required for that one, and it lasted for years.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/05/invisible-city-...
6 replies
15h9m
This was a great read, thanks for posting it. I didn't really understand what he received so much jail time for though...
3 replies
13h47m
He was found guilty of owning an improvised firearm that he maintains he had nothing to do with
1 replies
13h31m
Right. But as the article tells it, it wasn't even found in his possession; it was found with a bunch of junk in a park, along with some of his mail. Apparently his DNA was on it but then they admit there was doubt about how conclusive that was. I'm just amazed that that kind of shaky evidence could result in a 5 year prison sentence.
All that aside, what the hell is a pipe gun? What exactly did they find? A length of PVC...
https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/homeless-man-livi...
0 replies
2h21m
From the image, that does not look to be PVC but a metal pipe. It is possible to create a firearm from a pipe that can fire shotgun shells. Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJUtEnCLVUI
0 replies
2h22m
That's what he was found guilty. It's not what he did.
What he did was embarrass the system. That's what the prison sentence was for.
The piece of PVC pipe found in a junk pile.elsewhere in the park was just the excuse they pointed at.
1 replies
13h0m
Possession of illegal firearms is a significant crime in the UK. He was accused and convicted of possessing a home made pipe gun found near the bunker. He denies it was his weapon. He wasn’t jailed for the bunker.
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5h17m
If you're interested see my reply to the sibling comment. There is an article with a picture of the "firearm" which is apparently a piece of PVC, of much greater diameter then any bullet. Setting aside the fact it was never actually found in his possession, this is absurd.
2 replies
15h43m
A lot of the article is devoted to people being surprised they could build two apartments in the Bay Area for $50k.
I hate to be this HN guy, but they didn't build anything. From what the article says, they took an existing structure and added a shower and sink to the existing plumbing, and installed some countertops, and some security cameras. They did all the work themselves, so the $50k is just for what seems to be two rooms worth of materials. They didn't buy the land or build a structure from the ground up. Without knowing more details, an average of $25k actually seems high to me if I think about turning a small office into a bedroom with a kitchenette. One guy spent $8k, which seems about right, and the other guy spent $42k, which seems enough to build a pretty swanky bachelor pad.
0 replies
15h5m
It kind of sounds like one of these guys just expanded out a break room to avoid having to do the commute so often.
If he'd shared it with his team members he might have been able to spin it as something official. ;)
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15h14m
Well if they hired somebody else to do it, 8-42k bid difference is possible - i’ve seen worse.
2 replies
5h37m
About a year ago, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board was found to have a "secret sex room".
https://veritenews.org/2023/06/26/payroll-fraud-and-a-secret...
0 replies
4h32m
Sewerage and Water Board is often an employer of last resort for people released from Angola.
0 replies
4h21m
Well any empty room with a door lock can be a private sex room if you really need one.
1 replies
15h30m
This is based on so many levels
0 replies
15h16m
Based literally only at the foundation of the building.
1 replies
14h40m
Housing interprets regulation as damage and routes around it.
0 replies
1h23m
OTOH I think regulators sometimes interpret more housing as "unruly" and try to block alternative routes.
1 replies
15h23m
This is the kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism that is illegal to build in most American cities
0 replies
6h4m
There are malls with included housing in Shanghai, but the housing is luxury hotels.
1 replies
14h48m
Why not charge the greedy landlords that priced them out of the cities they were serving?
0 replies
4h48m
What would you charge them with?
1 replies
11h14m
Former Caltrain Deputy Director Joseph Navarro and contractor Seth Andrew Worden face felony charges for misusing public funds to build the mini apartments in the historic Burlingame and Millbrae stations. Neither facility is being used by the public.
Wait, what is the crime here?
0 replies
7h56m
If I take public money (either cash or paid working time) and convert that to a use directed by me rather than public benefit, why wouldn’t that be fraud/theft and maybe embezzlement?
1 replies
2h59m
My fav takeaway is that no one is angry at them. They built nice homes for 10 and 40k. If they were to do it legally, it would cost 900k. Where are the extra 850 Ks going? Transit workers probably don’t make much money in the first place, maybe they should be provided housing anyway.
0 replies
2h50m
Value of land and cost of utilities.
If you want to build a 6 unit residential building in the Bay Area you first have to buy the land it will go on, and then build a building on it which will tie into and distribute utilities for electricity, water, sewage, and possibly gas.
The cost of finishing out each unit within goes on top of that foundation which already existing in this case, where the units were converted offices inside existing buildings already owned by Caltrain.
Maybe it should be easier to rezone and repurpose existing land and buildings into residential units. A lot of the regulations that hinder conversion of non-residential buildings into residential are there for good reason, for things like ventilation and fire escape. Regulations written in blood after previous tragedies.
1 replies
15h35m
Meanwhile, in NYC… https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/secret-man-cave-discov...
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15h7m
Three employees utilized an unused and unknown space as a break room and,
"It just completely destroys the reputation of Metro North, it's so disturbing on so many levels," said Rinaldi. "These employees should not be doing this when they're on the job, so to have this thing set up it completely unacceptable."
1 replies
12h48m
While these guys were taking a few grand for a kitchenette, Caltrain top management gave away $150 MILLION to some well-connected friends for the failed CBOSS signal system project. CBOSS was an complete sham, but of course nobody will go to jail for that.
0 replies
12h40m
Exactly, or the billion+ spent on “feasibility” studies for building a rail line between SF and LA.
What a joke.
0 replies
7h58m
A cabin in the woods doesn't have the same charm it used to have, it seems.
0 replies
15h11m
Paging Geoff Manaugh. Geoff Manaugh to the courtesy phone, please.
0 replies
14h52m
Around the turn of the century, an artist did something similar in a Rhode Island mall; he found a void space left over from construction and turned it into a furnished apartment. Incidentally I think he's still banned from the property.
0 replies
14h13m
Real-life upgrade to the boomer classic “From the mixed-up files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler”
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14h14m
Reminds me of a plot element of the difficult-to-find movie called Shooting Fish (1997) where 2 guys squat inside a giant water tower and turn it into their secret lair. (Yes, it's fiction.)
Meanwhile, mere mortals can't afford Bay Area rent and either commute insane distances, live in their cars, or leave.
In other news, people do sometimes live in surreptitiously in storage units. And if you're really very poor, squatting in property that is unused and locked up for investment purposes seems a moral duty.
0 replies
15h18m
Good for them even if they did embezzle. If it was an exorbitant amount and for luxury, fuck that. But what they did was convert a space for modest housing on a small budget. Rather have my tax money go towards that than insanely overpriced gov contractor projects riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse
0 replies
13h36m
I wonder what Caltrain is going to do with these "secret apartments" now they have been discovered? Allow staff to use them officially? Rent them out to the general public (could be difficult due to security issues)? Abandon them in place? Destroy them?
I wonder if the defendants' lawyers are going to try the argument that they weren't "misusing public funds" because they built them for a "work-related purpose" (e.g. have somewhere to crash after overtime, which might enable them to get more rest and hence improve their work performance), and if they do make that argument, whether it is going to fly with the judge and/or jury.
0 replies
9h27m
If anything, these two should be acquitted, and instead Caltrain be charged for letting space where people could live in go so unused and uncared-for that it took whistleblowers to find out the "illegal" conversion.
With property comes responsibility, and clearly Caltrain didn't give a fuck about its property.
0 replies
14h33m
"Life, uh, finds a way..."
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14h31m
This reminds me of an urban exploration video on YouTube taken in a dead mall, where the people found a hidden apartment in a crawlspace where someone had apparently been living — there were signs that the area was being actively used.
0 replies
1h12m
I would think anyone having outstanding financial leadership ability, who cares about the financial shortfall resulting from this kind of irregularity, would seriously consider recovering an amount equal to the misdirected funds (and then some) using the Airbnb technique.
0 replies
8h43m
I have often thought of finding some obscure nook or bit of waste ground in the city and simply building a secret house there.
0 replies
1d12h
0 replies
5h55m
Imagine for just a moment if the Bay Area had started back in the 90s building housing aggressively to meet demand, as well as good transit and related infrastructure.
Today it would be the greatest city in the world. Really. It’d be like a cross between Tokyo, Berlin, and Shenzhen. It would be well on the way to passing NYC in GDP and probably would soon become the world financial capital. It would be the tech capital of the world and maybe even the cultural capital since real estate hyperinflation would not have driven away all the artist types.
The Star Trek world element of Starfleet Command being in SF would seem prescient, not one of the least believable elements of the world. (SF would never build enough housing for that!)
I would probably live there instead of being thankful that I managed to build a strong career in tech without doing so.
But no, its residents instead wanted to preserve a time capsule of the 60s and 70s and that interest overlapped with the cynical interests of real estate speculators.
So instead we get the world’s only slum for rich people, a place where only the mega rich can afford to live and the streets are littered with homeless. A place that pretends to be “woke” and progressive while pricing out anyone who makes less than $200k. A place that is doing its best to divest itself of its core industries and has already driven out everything that once made it culturally cool. SF is doing to itself as a city what a chunk of its residents are doing on the street with fentanyl. Absolute suicide.
But hey I guess you saved some old houses and preserved the “character of the neighborhood” once you pick up this week’s load of OD corpses.
Other cities should take note. NIMBYs must be opposed ruthlessly, everywhere, without compromise. Don’t let them hide behind fake political posturing. If you oppose housing you are not progressive. You are consigning people to poverty and homelessness.
0 replies
15h18m
Meanwhile, the politicians that were enriched by SBF and FTX are still at large...
0 replies
14h37m
Former Caltrain Deputy Director Joseph Navarro and contractor Seth Andrew Worden face felony charges for misusing public funds to build the mini apartments in the historic Burlingame and Millbrae stations. Neither facility is being used by the public.
Click bait headline. I imagine if they used their own funds instead they'd just be told to stop. Homeless people tend to not get charged for encampments.
How about commuting the sentence and putting them in charge of public housing. Seems like they're doing for much cheaper than the state.
0 replies
14h8m
Text-only, works where archive.is is blocked:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=5038774415350316&w=OXpJ7sq...
links -dump https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2024/04/06/two-bay-area-railway-workers-charged-for-building-secret-apartments-inside-train-stations/
Yeah, it's the kind of case where it's hard to decide between putting them in jail or giving them some kind of award. Possibly both.
Definitely jail. These low-income losers should be punished as strongly as possible, to make an example out of them. It's too bad the Bay Area can't just round up all low-income trash people who can't afford $5M+ homes and ship them off to far-away concentration camps, but until that's legal, they should do everything in their power to keep these useless people out. Whatever useless low-income jobs they were doing, these people don't belong among the people of the Bay Area. Restaurant cooks, janitors, supermarket workers, schoolteachers, firefighters, all these kinds of people are low-income trash and should be pushed out, and the Bay Area will be better off without them around.
</s> ⬅ here, you forgot your closing tag
Interestingly, I actually do wish all these lower-income workers would leave the Bay Area (or at least the highest-priced parts): I'd love to see how all the NIMBYs fare without any supermarkets, restaurants, schools, or firefighters.
I would love to just see a hyperlocal minimum wage set in CA that's tied to housing prices. Live in enclaves with an average home of 10M dollars, your house cleaner will need to be paid $500/hour type thing.
What I'd like to do is pass a state law that requires employers to pay commuting costs for their employees, plus only allow up to one hour of unpaid commuting.
So, suppose the only people applying for your job live 2 hours away. You'll have to pay 1) the federal mileage rate ($0.50/mile??) (or better yet, an even higher state rate to account for higher costs of car ownership there), or buy the employee a company car, for their commute time, and 2) the employee will get paid for 3 hours of commuting time, and only have to actually work 5 hours on-site (but getting paid for 8), so you'll have to hire another employee to cover the time difference.
These people living in 10M homes should be paying $500 per plate to eat at a restaurant and $20/gallon for milk from the supermarket. And yes, $500/hr for the house cleaner.
Here in Tokyo, it's normal (maybe legally required?) for employers to pay for employees' commuting costs. Of course, since the best public transit system in the world is here, a commuting pass doesn't cost that much.
The hopelessly optimistic side of me thinks this might be just the thing we need to spur massive improvements in mass transit, when big employers discover that it's cheaper to chip in for some commuter light rail than it is to pay everyone to sit in traffic. Realistically I don't think it'll happen, but I can dream.
Mass transit is horribly expensive, not just to build, but to operate too. Because of this, it requires high density to really work. You can't just slap some light rail lines into a giant suburban US city and expect it to work out somehow. Even here in Tokyo, with hundreds of train/subway stations all over the metro area, you frequently have to do a significant amount of walking (or even cycling) in between the nearest station and your actual destination. And don't forget all the stairs: subway stations are frequently quite deep, and have long staircases to get in and out. (There's many escalators and elevators, but they're not always that conveniently located.) It's a completely different culture that most Americans will not desire nor put up with. Mass transit isn't some kind of utopian panacea where a nice train will take you right to your employer or shopping destination or home.
It all works here because the city was built densely to begin with, and because they made the smart decision back in the 60s, when it looked like car culture was going to take over, of revamping the zoning laws and permitting the construction of housing just about anywhere, which made it more profitable to build housing and other buildings than parking lots, which made it extremely inconvenient to use a car.
I don’t see your point, in most European cities (and I don’t know Tokyo but I believe it’s the same), mass transit is much faster than driving, including walking, escalators, and elevators.
Yes, you have to walk a little, but we are not talking about a hike. In fact for most people, it’s not even enough walking to compensate for their sedentariness.
Also you are talking about subway stations but I doubt that there isn’t a denser bus network in Tokyo to get you to the subway stations fast and dry.
It’s also SO MUCH LESS stress than traffic jams.
This is not the case in Shanghai. Driving is a lot faster.
The big difference is that driving lets you plan your own route between your origin and destination, whereas if you take mass transit, (a) you have to follow whatever the existing route is; and (b) you're constantly starting and stopping at the intermediate points on the route, making for low average speed.
I don't believe either of those points vary in other cities.
The biggest speed advantage for driving is the same as biking or walking - you can begin the trip at any time.
Even a subway with a five minute headway is going to burn waiting time or be incredibly precisely scheduled.
The subway will beat driving during the rushiest of rush hours but off peak the car will win unless it’s literally prohibited.
This just isn't true. For example, it takes a bit over two hours to take mass transit to the airport, but it takes a bit under one hour to make the same trip by taxi. The potential five minute wait for the train to arrive is a sideshow. The problem is the intermediate stops.
I should have been precise - the biggest advantage for driving when the train is the same or faster.
This assumes there's a place to park at or near your destination. In dense cities, this normally isn't the case. However, here in Tokyo this makes taxis quite fast most of the time, because there's not much car traffic, and the taxi doesn't need parking and can drop you right at your destination.
My point is that Americans won't see it the way you and I do.
It really depends; it's hard to compare. If you have a route in the US that's mostly highway and you avoid rush hour, you can get to your destination very quickly. If it's a bad route and/or rush hour, it can be hellish. Many people I work with have hour+ long commutes; it's not unusual at all. It usually takes me 45-60 minutes to get to various locations in Tokyo, and I'm not even that far outside the central district; it really depends whether I have to change trains though. Cars really can get you places quickly, but the problem is the whole thing breaks down if there's too much traffic. Not to mention the stress factor and expense.
It's frequently a 5-15 minute walk from a station to your destination. Of course, land closer to stations is more valuable because of this, so apartments closer to stations are more expensive. But many people have to walk 10+ minutes to get home from the station, after climbing all the stairs to get out. For most Americans, that really is "a hike".
Yes, but we're talking about people here who fight over parking spaces that are 50 feet closer to the door of their Walmart.
No, there really isn't. There are buses, but they generally only serve routes that are very poorly served by the trains. They're also not as convenient or fast as the trains. The network definitely isn't "denser" than the trains at all. They can be handy to save you a bit of walking when there's a typhoon though.
Agreed, but again we're talking about Americans here: people who would rather drive around in circles in the Walmart parking lot just so they can find a space 50 feet closer to the door.
So my point here is, it's not a panacea like many pro-transit Americans seem to believe. It's a very different lifestyle. I personally am happy with it and the tradeoffs, but car-brained Americans will not be.
OK now I understand where you are coming from.
Still I’m not convinced that people wouldn’t gladly adapt. People in Amsterdam are really happy of their situation and still, Amsterdam was a totally car centric mess up until the 70s-80s. Sure people pushed back when it was time to accept the change (and also changing infrastructure takes decades so you have to suffer decades of imperfect infrastructures) but now, nobody wants to go back.
Humans are rarely really anti or pro this or that, they just hate when things change and Americans aren’t really different beings.
So yes, I agree that there would probably be a huge political push back, but if it were to happen, they’d just adapt like every other country who did this transition and they’d probably never want to go back.
Edit : look at this pictures : https://dailyhive.com/calgary/sharing-amsterdams-story-of-tr...
I don't think Amsterdam is a very good example. It's a very old city, similar to Manhattan NYC: it was built before cars (and coincidentally used to be named after Amsterdam centuries ago). So when they tried to go car-centric in the post-war period, it was basically a retrofit. Try driving around Manhattan and you have the same problem: roads are small and there's no parking. So going back to walkability isn't that hard: just rip out some of the larger roads and make things more bike- and walking-friendly like it used to be. All the buildings are close together anyway, so it all works.
Suburban/exurban America simply isn't like this: it was all built after the rise of the automobile. Trying to get people to ride bikes 15 miles to their nearest Walmart or Costco, because all the space between is filled with gigantic subdivisions full of big houses with big yards, isn't really feasible. Things are too far apart. So you can't just copy what Amsterdam did and expect it to work out. Manhattan could do it (and is doing it, slowly), and maybe a few other places mostly on the east coast, but other places not so much. Perhaps you could get more of this eventually if the US adopted Japanese-style zoning laws, but that would be very difficult to do because of the decentralized and local-first nature of lawmaking in the US.
Another issue is the enclave-style construction of American neighborhoods. I live in the very very front of mine, with a bunch of commercial businesses just outside that are ~100-150ft away as the crow flies.
Unlike the crow, I can't trespass and hop a fence, so to get to these businesses that are "right there", I'd have to walk 0.7 miles, almost all of it with no sidewalks, and more than half on busy 4+ lane roads.
And that kids is how I met your mother... I mean and how California finally got high speed rail funded. It only goes an hour into the Central Valley but its better than nothing.
If I buy them a company car, do they have to pay me the mileage rate?
Oh they’d do fine — don’t worry, those low income people just love to spend hours and hours commuting from the Central Valley. Their lives will become worse, but not the NIMBYs!
Well that's one way to try and make the point.
The funny thing is there is a long history of the bay having art predict its own downfall. Mostly with imported talent at that.
Thompson was probably the first. He has some choice quotes about the 60's and high water marks. And riding a bike to Oakland high...
But this round falls squarely to Willam Gibson.... He pegged the class and culture fall out of corporations. He picked the wrong part of Asia as a motif but was close there. He nailed the homeless camps but had them a bit east on an abandon bay bridge.
You could make this same statement, and make it standing on the shoulder of a giant. It could be far more effective and resonant. Go read some Gibson, it will blow your mind ;)
GP is completely on-point, you just have to read the post in Jello Biafra's voice.
One of the guys was deputy director at Caltrain. Very doubtful he had "low income". And he was siphoning public funds to do it, for his own benefit, something which actually does hurt people with low incomes.
the main dude was probably making more than your average software engineer: $235,000. regardless wasn't exactly broke or down on his luck. he just didn't want to sell his home in socal and find an apartment up here.
$230+k is low-income?
It’s not ok to steal public funds. It’s sad that you think that merits a reward.
Definitely earned their place leading some internal jail improvement programs
Reminds me of the opening of the Suez Canal, where a British naval ship did something that obviously pleased the admiralty but which they were obliged to condemn.
From https://web.archive.org/web/20151009025658/http://aquarium.u...
Considering it costs $900k for affordable housing, I'm not sure what the word wrong even means at this point. If democracy is good (the greatest?) and that's what it produces, I think we might have to start redefining the meanings of plenty of words...or should, anyways.
Oh well, I'm sure it will all work out fine as long as we think positive.
Your thesis here is that since housing is unaffordable in California, and California is a democracy, therefore democracy produces unaffordable housing?
The old quote is, "Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.".
It feels like whatever -ism you want to organize society under, you have to have checks and balances, in order to prevent things like grift causing 900k apartments...
It might be too broad a brush to paint capitalism or democracy as the unique cause of the Bay Area problem of unaffordable housing, given that affordable housing exists in both capitalist and democratic regions in the US and around the world.
My point is, the -ism doesn't matter, corruption exists everywhere, so saying the corruption is the result of capitalism/democracy is bullshit.
Indeed a "proper" democracy seems to be a lot more resilient against corruption, although I wonder if it's more to do with the society's cohesiveness, e.g. in Scandinavia. Then again the crazies like to call Scandinavia "a socialist hell hole", so maybe even socialism can be done right if you have the right society...
I am an immigrant from the US to the socialist hellhole of Finland, and it's quite delightful here.
Whether "unique" is in the claim is not a trivial detail. One should always be wary of bugs in the interpreter, they are far less battle tested than compilers, operating systems, etc.
In a democracy, over the long term, short term interests win out over long term interests. This is true of both the citizens and the politicians.
In a monarchy, long term interests win out over short term interests because they're dynastic and stay within a family. There is a natural incentive for long term thinking that comes with a monarchy.
This problem is not democracy itself, but the incrementalism that occurs in democratic systems. At least in representative democracies, every few years another person is elected to carve out provisions to benefit their special interests. In theory, this would be the constituents. But in practice, after the politicians realize voters are unorganized, uninformed, and as self-interested as everyone else, the politician also focus on themselves (and you would too). Compound that over hundreds of years and it's should be clear as day why democratic governments inevitably grind to halt, become ineffective, collapse, and are recreated from a clean slate.
Monarchies usually result in long-term thinking? I’m sure we haven’t read the same history books. Most monarchs throughout history have been very self-interested and their decisions have been focused on their own personal interest - the definition of short-term.
I’m not claiming democracy is any better - humans are notoriously bad at long-term thinking unfortunately.
I mean, some of those personal interests were long term too. "Peasants need food within the next few days or they'll die": short term interests of the people. "I need aristocrats to take everyone's grain so I can make them be knights and keep people from overthrowing me": long term interests of the monarch. the people are very good at identifying their short-term interests (not starving,) but it's hard to figure out long-term collective interests (exactly how much grain to give up for however many armored guys on horses you need.) this is why modern democracies are usually republics.
Yes. Do you believe this is not logical, if one is allowed to use "pedantic" logic?
Misusing public money (instead of their own money) was wrong but I don't have a problem with the squatting part. There wasn't a clear victim and it satisfied someone's need for housing in otherwise unused property. That's commendable, even if it was illegal.
If they’d paid for it with their own money I’d have a hard time getting real mad about this.
I don't think what they did was wrong at all.
They were serving their city, they have every right to be housed by it and not be priced out by greedy landlords.
That argument doesn’t make sense. The city doesn’t provide homes to any other workers