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
> 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.
> 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configure the firewalls and load balancers for that project, but the project also paid for the weeks he spent upgrading outdated network switches in office buildings even though that had no logical connection with identity management.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)
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.
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
Former contract worker, US State Government - 100% similar stuff happens.
But it can be a much finer line.
Example: Approved effort for call center expansion to meet the growing demand of the public. Includes improvements to the backend business software to improve cycle time for the call center to meet goal of addressing public demand. Those backend software improvements - which were real, and did help the call center cycle time - just happened to be the same improvements requested by mobile field workers for 5+ years, which were never approved.
Did a leader see the opportunity to make the 5+ year requests happen and pull it into the budget ask? Absolutely. Were the changes necessary to accomplish the call center project with the resource / staffing levels in the budget proposal? Yep.
I view the prior example as the same. Sexy projects don't work unless the foundation is operational; allocating funds under Sexy project to shore up foundations is surprisingly common.
The real learning for me is the vicious circle. New upstairs leader sees everyone say don't need to spend on sustain, so doesn't spend on sustain, but nods to higher-than-actual costs for New Cool Thing, and the layers below upstairs work the game to get key sustain tied into New Cool Thing projects... which then supports upstairs view that don't need higher sustain costs. Tough to break this.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> $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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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 aren't under sufficient competitive pressure, 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.
the point is that the relationship is obviously asymmetric, which you can clearly see.
> 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.
This line of thinking assumes that corporations are unwilling or unable to use economic and political leverage to avoid the consequences of their actions or to change the law to let them do what they want. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny.
We should have better corporations AND better unions. Cable companies are good examples of corporations that get away with collusion by working with municipal governments to create exclusive contracts.
> the point is that the relationship is obviously asymmetric, which you can clearly see.
Everything is always asymmetric. The same thing happens when you go to buy something. You're some individual and the seller is Amazon, a trillion+ dollar corporation. And yet you get competitive prices and free two day shipping with Prime and no hassle returns etc., because they have competition.
> This line of thinking assumes that corporations are unwilling or unable to use economic and political leverage to avoid the consequences of their actions or to change the law to let them do what they want. I don't think that stands up to scrutiny.
But now you're talking about an entirely different battlefield. The premise of a union is negotiating with employers for employment terms. If your issue is lobbying, what you're looking for is a PAC or, if we could ever replace first past the post voting with score voting and thereby stop having a two-party system, a political party.
Sometimes labor unions get drafted into that role, but if that's the only good they're doing then they should just be a PAC and stop trying to do the things they're bad or harmful at, like negotiating collective employment contracts.
> We should have better corporations AND better unions. Cable companies are good examples of corporations that get away with collusion by working with municipal governments to create exclusive contracts.
Unions are good examples of organizations that get away with collusion by working with national governments to carve out an anti-trust exemption for themselves.
The way you make organizations better is by subjecting them to competitive pressure.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Are you confusing me with someone else? I never said land was the ‘primary cost’?
If your confused about the terminology, $300,000 is a smaller number than $450k. “Saleable square footage” means net of elevator shafts, hallways, etc….
> Are you confusing me with someone else? I never said land was the ‘primary cost’?
The premise of the post you replied to is that land isn't the primary cost. For a building that puts 500 units on an acre, the cost attributable to land is only $20,000/unit even when the land is $10 million/acre.
You replied trying to add in construction costs and regulatory requirements, which was the point -- that's where most of the cost is, because regulations make construction bureaucratic and labor-intensive, where they don't prohibit it outright.
> “Saleable square footage” means net of elevator shafts, hallways, etc….
Which is why I only allocated half of the footprint of the lot to livable area to begin with. If you could allocate the entire acre of footprint to living space, one acre of land could have more than 20 units of 2000 sq ft per floor and a 50 story building would have 1000+ units instead of 500+.
Please carefully reread the first comment, these figures are already assuming a perfectly smooth zoning process with no setbacks or roadbumps whatsoever.
In the real world it is probably going to be a lot more complex as you mentioned.
Paying $100M/acre for land would only be the case in the most expensive parts of the city, but there is nothing (outside of zoning) requiring you use the most expensive land, and most of that land already has a tall building on it which doesn't make for an ideal site when you want to build a new one. There exist properties for sale in San Francisco with more than an acre of land that cost less than $10M, and indeed the average cost of land is less than $10M/acre.
Your method of calculating costs is also flawed. Things like loan interest, taxes and realtor fees are a percentage of the other costs, not a fixed amount. If construction and regulatory costs were lower then you could take out a smaller loan and pay less interest etc.
The dominant costs here are the premium on sites zoned for tall buildings, which is the cost of zoning rather then cost of land and could be alleviated with the stroke of a pen, and construction costs which are themselves significantly higher than necessary as a result of regulatory requirements.
The premise here is flawed. Due to zoning, most housing in SF / the Bay is not dense. The post I originally replied to blamed union labor for the price of housing. For non-dense housing, land is a huge portion of the price.
Yes, as a thought experiment, you could build an infinitely tall building which pushes the per unit cost for land to zero. That’s not what’s happening in SF, and it has nothing to do with labor. Another obvious point: building tall buildings requires more engineering, more expensive materials, more difficult labor, and more safety than small ones.
Your argument is all pointless hypotheticals. Put up or shut up: show me the numbers that say labor is driving the price of housing in SF. You’ve done nothing to support the idea that labor is driving the actual costs of real housing built in SF.
> For non-dense housing, land is a huge portion of the price.
That isn't the cost of the land, it's the cost of the zoning rules that prohibit density. And, more to the point, construction costs, because now you have a problem where the only place you're allowed to put multi-story buildings already have multi-story buildings and to be profitable you need construction costs low enough to justify replacing a 10 story building with a 20 story building instead of replacing a single-family home with a 10 story building for the same benefit. Which, as you point out, costs more because the building has to be taller, and also costs more because you have to knock down the existing building and do twice as much construction to add the same number of units. Multiplying the effect of any increase in construction costs.
> Yes, as a thought experiment, you could build an infinitely tall building which pushes the per unit cost for land to zero.
It doesn't have to be infinitely tall, buildings tall enough to make even high land prices irrelevant are routinely built in practice.
> You’ve done nothing to support the idea that labor is driving the actual costs of real housing built in SF.
Your claim was that the primary cost was land, but the primary costs are zoning, construction costs and their interaction.
My claim was that labor was not the primary cost, and I guessed that land was the biggest driver. You have confirmed it basically is, although as a function of things like zoning. That’s trivially obvious. That was what I meant when I wrote the post. Obviously zoning is not the same thing as labor.
Lumping zoning in with “construction costs” makes zero sense. Everything in some sense fits that definition. To be clear, zoning costs definitely are not labor costs. The way you are using these terms is incorrectly conflating things.
Again because you don’t seem to get it: the post I was responding to blamed (union) labor for the price of construction. Clearly incorrectly.
They converted some disused offices into a sleeping area and kitchenette. If they used discretionary funds allocated for a break room, which is what it sounds like from the sound of the $3000 cap, I don't think this is a problem.
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.
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.
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!"?
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.
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
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]
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> My point is, the -ism doesn't matter, corruption exists everywhere, so saying the corruption is the result of capitalism/democracy is bullshit.
It is almost guaranteed to be misleading, but it isn't incorrect. I'm very comfortable increasing the complexity, but few people are, and I've yet to meet someone who doesn't call foul very early in the process, even if you forewarn them.
> It is almost guaranteed to be misleading, but it isn't incorrect.
What is "it" here?
> I'm very comfortable increasing the complexity
Of what? I'm guessing the complexity of the conversation?
> I've yet to meet someone who doesn't call foul very early in the process
I'm wary of asking for "try me" and ending up doing this, and wary that this warning means whatever it is people called foul about is something you're getting wrong but insist you're right on, without ever reflecting about others' opinions/their foul call.
How about that for meta...
Ah you're the original "maybe we need to redefine a lot of words" commenter. Sigh, I think your mistake is believing what it says on the tin/the dictionary definition, on things like "we are ruled by democracy [or communism, pick your poison]"
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.
I do think this is an interesting perspective even though I disagree that monarchies result in more long-term thinking.
You do raise the issue of how to structure government to encourage more long-term, or rational, planning. I don't think that short-term thinking is inherent to democracy any more than a two-party duopoly is inherent to democracy. As with the US and UK duopoly, short-term, self-interested government policies may be due to election incentives or the frameworks in which elections take place.
This isn't contested in political philosophy circles, just amongst people with a romanticized understanding of a very specific form of representative democracy they happen to live within.
For example, short term interests have preempted long-term interests with regards to climate change. But, even if the government passed a law on climate change, at what point in the future should the law be ignored or changed. Is it one year, ten years, or one hundred years? Further, what about all of the laws from the past you've dismissed as antiquated or arcane? It's intellectually dishonest to argue those laws weren't passed without any long-term thinking just because they don't comport with society now.
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.
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.
> As the time approached for the ships to ceremoneously enter the new canal for the first time, the contingent of British ships were second to the French in the congested approach. Captain Nares had difficulty accepting this positioning, and so, during the night and without using lights, he maneuvered Newport forward into an inextricable position in front of the French yacht accorded the honor of entering the canal first. The French were understandably upset, and protested to the Admiralty. Captain George Nares received an official reprimand from the Admiralty, but was, apparently, the object of great admiration for his clever actions, and was questioned at length about how the feat was accomplished.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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!
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.
> 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.
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 subway will beat driving during the rushiest of rush hours but off peak the car will win unless it’s literally prohibited.
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.
> The biggest speed advantage for driving is the same as biking or walking - you can begin the trip at any time.
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.
My point is that Americans won't see it the way you and I do.
>mass transit is much faster than driving, including walking, escalators, and elevators
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.
>Yes, you have to walk a little, but we are not talking about a hike.
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".
>In fact for most people, it’s not even enough walking to compensate for their sedentariness.
Yes, but we're talking about people here who fight over parking spaces that are 50 feet closer to the door of their Walmart.
>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.
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.
>It’s also SO MUCH LESS stress than traffic jams.
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.
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.
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.
Well, as a first stage transit, minibus lines could be set up to feed people to main streets that would have trams. A Sprinter minibus with 12 seats and 15 standing capacity is not that expensive.
> 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.
Being leveled during World War 2 by sustained allied bombing likely helped with this.
Huh? No: the European cities leveled by bombing were, mostly, rebuilt exactly the way they were laid out before. Go look at downtown Nuremburg, for instance: they built it to look exactly as it did before. The area outside downtown is much more car-friendly, though, but that part wasn't populated pre-war anyway.
> 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
If I buy them a company car, do they have to pay me the mileage rate?
>> plus only allow up to one hour of unpaid commuting.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
It's definitely plastic. It's also of a much greater diameter than a shotgun shell. And, it doesn't resemble at all the device in that video.
That aside, the fact that it's possible can make a firearm from a pipe, doesn't seem to me to mean that someone should do 5 years in prison... for possibly having touched a pipe... found in a pile of junk.
Either there is more to this or something went seriously wrong here legally
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.
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.
I don’t understand what new codes they would need to follow, these buildings were already made to be occupied by people, with all applicable codes covered.
Most residential codes require an exterior openable window in each bedroom. If you take an office building and subdivide it into residential units that may not be easily achievable.
Things that may be adequate in a large open floor office may not be when turned into individual separated dwellings.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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?
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.
