CA - Massive fire at Oakland warehouse party, 36 dead, 2 Dec 2016 #2

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thank you for lending me credence :) as we in the hood say, "the struggle is real!"

BelleIsle said:
I stated something similar a few pages back. Unless you live here it is very difficult to understand the housing crisis. Even for families who are in the upper middle class it can become cost prohibitive. The artists moved to the East Bay (from SF), discovered it was also very expensive and had to deal with Costa Hawkins price increases and are now moving to Vallejo. It is ridiculous to expect your firefighters, teachers, plumbers, servers, engineers, to have to commute 2 hours to work every day. But that is how it is for many Bay Area cities. Even to buy, you will deal with 25 competing offers and it takes an average of 12 bids before you actually succeed in getting a house/condo. The tech boom has brought so much wealth to many businesses and great stock options to many employees, but it has ruined the community feel of San Francisco. Not all of the people who are struggling here are unemployed or underemployed, many of us pay in rent or mortgage in one year more than the average income in the US. And for many of us this is where the jobs are (or as stated above, we can move to WA and raise prices there). Greed is at the center of it all, mostly on the part of the local government (look into Costa Hawkins) and property owners. Read CValdez's posts, she knows of what she speaks. In the last 5 years the prices of homes in Berkeley alone have doubled, but income has not. We need a local government that is more representative of the people who keep these Bay Area cities vibrant.
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human said:
Everybody wants to live in certain areas, apparently. There are other places to live and I hope some entrepreneurs figure it out and go there to create jobs.
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I hope so too! Although we love it here (many like-minded people, the beautiful ocean & parks, the quaint coastal towns, the wonderful fresh produce, the mild weather year round, the architecture) my husband and I have lived other places (the SF area so far has been rougher than NYC as far as housing, believe it or not) and are open to relocating to the other coast. The thing is, his job here is something that our national security relies on, in fact it depends upon everyone who works for this company. My DH became very involved in his Union precisely because they are trying to outsource work & short these employees even more than they already do (I don't want to turn this political in any way, but I have to say that any "extra" money is certainly not finding its way into the employees' pockets)...Because of contracts they cannot completely disregard this location, and if they did I am not sure that they could replace these very specialized and qualified workers. There needs to be a motivation to follow the jobs, money...lovely locations...something. Or you are going to compromise on the quality of employees and I don't think anyone would want a compromise on what they are producing here.

It basically trickles down, the lack of housing, so I can only imagine how difficult it is for those who come here expecting to find the SF of the 70s/80s/90s/early 00s and are faced with skyrocketing costs and plenty of new money competitors. I really do feel that changing our local government is the best way to begin again, and to fill in the huge gap between the very top and the very bottom. We need all levels (of education, of creativity) for our society to function and all should be valued equally. For now though, I understand why so many are leaving, maybe they will come back someday and bring what they learned with them.
 
human said:
They come in from lower rent areas.
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This may work for your region, but your region is not representative of mine, nor the rest of the United State's. For example, another area I'm familiar with, where it is happening, is Naples Fla. They can't find caregivers b/c the caregivers can't afford the commute, and they've been priced out of Naples.. Naples is most definitely a wealthy, but aging community, and needs caregivers.
 
im sorry :( it wasn't personally me! im still suffering here in silicon valley. lol

my cousin I mentioned upthread eventually bought a one bedroom condo here and within a year turned around and made a fat profit and moved up your way though.

Hapworth said:
Yep...you sure did drive up the costs in Portland, Ore. I finally left in October 2015. Rents skyrocketed. The influx of individuals who could no longer afford Seattle or the Bay Area found their way to crunchy portland. I left when the lease renewal for my one bedroom near PDX went from $970 to $1300.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk
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I am so so so sorry (hugs) to you all. prayers up.

gitana1 said:
Our beautiful Jennifer has been identified. She died without suffering. She was unconscious in 15 minutes and was not touched by the fire. She died of smoke inhalation.
attachment.php

Thank you all for your incredible support. And love. And assistance. And a special thanks to Tricia and Linask who kept my confidences and communicated for me. A special thanks to Linask who drove over two hours round trip to pick me up and taken me to the Family Assistance Center and who saw things there that were incredibly difficult for her to see and who used such discretion in protecting the privacy of the families and officials she saw and spoke to and whose intense pain she witnessed. I know it shook her. But she was there for me.
You are all my cyber family.
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cvaldez1975 said:
thank you for lending me credence :) as we in the hood say, "the struggle is real!"
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I would say that 90% of us in the Bay Area are all in "the hood" ;) I have never lived anywhere else where the gentrification has been so pronounced, except possibly NYC.
 
human said:
When you go to an area and it is filled woth trash , there is a feeling of hopelessness. When you go to a poor area and it is clean with buildings that have some murals, some outdoor spaces it is a whole different feeling. A feeling that people matter and that there is hope.

I personally knew four people back in MN who died from opiates. All white. Three from middle and upper class . The other one from more poor families. There were reasons for their drug use . Different hard family situations but not because of lack of caring by the families.

Anyway, to me garbage indicates what we think of people who live in communities that lack basic human services.
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Not so much in my particular part, but, yes, there is a sense of hopelessness in some parts of the Appalachian region. Some of the poorest counties in the nation are in Appalachia. I worked for over 20 years w/a non profit that worked to improve the conditions here, so I know a bit about my region. I don't know what being white has to do with opiate overdoses but, fwiw, all of the folks who've died from drug overdoses, that I've known, have been white...
 
cvaldez1975 said:
I totally understand. I was speaking of residences, its the same there.
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EPA is a small city about 30 miles south of SF. At one time, it was mostly black, about the 1980s became mostly Hispanic. In the past it was considered a poor area.

Illegal-housing crackdown leads to dozens of evictions
East Palo Alto landlords, tenants ask City Council for a moratorium on condemnations
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/09/09/illegal-housing-crackdown-leads-to-dozens-of-evictions

The crowd, which was backed by the interfaith group Faith in Action and pastors from St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, told council members that the city's recent enforcement action against illegal second dwellings and structures deemed uninhabitable has created a crisis in the community. They asked the council for the moratorium and for help in finding solutions, including allowing nonprofit groups to bring the homes into compliance with city safety codes.

http://www.zillow.com/east-palo-alto-ca/home-values/

The median home value in East Palo Alto is $722,500. East Palo Alto home values have gone up 18.6% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will rise 3.0% within the next year.
 
jdj125 said:
Gitana, our hearts are yours. We know yours is gone for a bit. Please use them. We are ALL standing with you in support.
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This is a beautiful post, so I am bumping it.
 
YUP my good friend grew up there. in fact, my mom grew up in palo alto (NOT EPA) and they were a working class family w 6 kids. think that could happen now? hell to tha no.

SophieRose said:
EPA is a small city about 30 miles south of SF. At one time, it was mostly black, about the 1980s became mostly Hispanic. In the past it was considered a poor area.

Illegal-housing crackdown leads to dozens of evictions
East Palo Alto landlords, tenants ask City Council for a moratorium on condemnations
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/09/09/illegal-housing-crackdown-leads-to-dozens-of-evictions

The crowd, which was backed by the interfaith group Faith in Action and pastors from St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, told council members that the city's recent enforcement action against illegal second dwellings and structures deemed uninhabitable has created a crisis in the community. They asked the council for the moratorium and for help in finding solutions, including allowing nonprofit groups to bring the homes into compliance with city safety codes.

http://www.zillow.com/east-palo-alto-ca/home-values/

The median home value in East Palo Alto is $722,500. East Palo Alto home values have gone up 18.6% over the past year and Zillow predicts they will rise 3.0% within the next year.
Click to expand...
 
gitana1 said:
Our beautiful Jennifer has been identified. She died without suffering. She was unconscious in 15 minutes and was not touched by the fire. She died of smoke inhalation.
attachment.php

Thank you all for your incredible support. And love. And assistance. And a special thanks to Tricia and Linask who kept my confidences and communicated for me. A special thanks to Linask who drove over two hours round trip to pick me up and taken me to the Family Assistance Center and who saw things there that were incredibly difficult for her to see and who used such discretion in protecting the privacy of the families and officials she saw and spoke to and whose intense pain she witnessed. I know it shook her. But she was there for me.
You are all my cyber family.
Click to expand...
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Sending you, and yours, my prayers, and thoughts, for healing and comfort in the days and weeks to come, Gitana1. I am so sorry for your loss.
 
Do I understand correctly that DI/A has rented the warehouse for only 3 ish years??
I thought it must have been much much longer from the photos. 10,000 sq feet is a tremendous amount of space to fill up to the extent the photos show.
I understand art can be big and making art can be messy. As I've said my husband is an artist with a 5000 foot warehouse. It takes a good deal of self discipline to maintain any sort of order during a project with a looming deadline.
The Oakland warehouse was clearly under the direction of an addled mind.
Simply filing the space to the gills with "stuff" must have been time consuming.
So strange and dangerous.
 
Oh Gitana. That took my breath away. I am so so very sorry. I hope you find some comfort and peace during this time. We are grieving with you.
 
mom2four717 said:
Do I understand correctly that DI/A has rented the warehouse for only 3 ish years??
I thought it must have been much much longer from the photos. 10,000 sq feet is a tremendous amount of space to fill up to the extent the photos show.
I understand art can be big and making art can be messy. As I've said my husband is an artist with a 5000 foot warehouse. It takes a good deal of self discipline to maintain any sort of order during a project with a looming deadline.
The Oakland warehouse was clearly under the direction of an addled mind.
Simply filing the space to the gills with "stuff" must have been time consuming.
So strange and dangerous.
Click to expand...

.
I was wondering if they were actually artists, or collectors of items that they were drawn to as "art" and arranged it as their own "art" exhibits within the warehouse. Some of what they collected and arranged was a bit deranged looking to me, but, what's art to one, is not art to another. I've never figured out the allure of a painting of a Campbell's tomato soup can, so...
 
gitana1 said:
Our beautiful Jennifer has been identified. She died without suffering. She was unconscious in 15 minutes and was not touched by the fire. She died of smoke inhalation.
attachment.php

Thank you all for your incredible support. And love. And assistance. And a special thanks to Tricia and Linask who kept my confidences and communicated for me. A special thanks to Linask who drove over two hours round trip to pick me up and taken me to the Family Assistance Center and who saw things there that were incredibly difficult for her to see and who used such discretion in protecting the privacy of the families and officials she saw and spoke to and whose intense pain she witnessed. I know it shook her. But she was there for me.
You are all my cyber family.
Click to expand...

You have become sister to so many here, Gitana. we hurt if you hurt. There are no words adequate I can say except I am beside you. Relieved that identification has finally been made. May love wrap its arms around your brother through this very difficult time. The days ahead are going to be tremendously difficult for him --- but it is when things settle down that his heart will hurt the most. Stay in close touch and be there for and with him.

Much love and support for you, Gitana,

'Many thanks to LinasK for being there to take care of anything you could. You are the best of the best.

'Thanks also to Tricia, for keeping in touch with our friends here, and for giving us this place to call "home"
 
Gitana, much love to you and yours.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk
 
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