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Silicon Valley's Blue Collar Workers Have Nowhere To Live
Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group
Silicon Valley (as in California's tech hub, not the landfill where used breast implants go) has reached near mythic status. It's a magical land, where with enough ingenuity and hustle all of your wildest dreams can come true. It's like a sci-fi utopia -- complete with a seedy sci-fi underbelly. But minutes from the glittery high-rise buildings housing Apple, Facebook, Google, Netflix, and -- shockingly -- Yahoo once stood "The Jungle," a 68-acre shantytown filled with homeless people who have nowhere else to go. "Big deal," the worst section of your brain is probably thinking. "Every city has homeless people." That's true -- but not every city has a small population of employed homeless people who can't afford to live where they work.
Robert Johnson / Business Insider
"Technically this does count as 'rent-controlled' ..."
The Jungle was shut down in 2014, but San Jose is currently trying to figure how to house the 7,000 homeless people in the area. Like most cities, the area has its fair share of people with mental problems and drug issues who just can't keep it together in mainstream society. But Silicon Valley's homeless population also includes bus drivers, carpenters, medical clerks, and caterers who can't afford San Jose's average rent of 2,633 clams per month.
So, what's a working man or woman who can't afford to move to Middle America do? Some of the bus drivers who shuffle Apple's workers between their suburban homes and glitzy offices end up sleeping in their cars between shifts. Others don't have cars, so they opt for the next best thing: sleeping on a bus every night.
Nhat V. Meyer / Bay Area News Group
Nhat V. Meyer / Bay Area News Group
Which is absolutely the most depressing case of taking your work home we've ever heard.