Being houseless to be a reporter

Good grief. Dude went from living an hour from the office to living in a van thanks to shit wages and insane housing prices.

Local news led me to choose being houseless - Poynter

 

Most of us are a dropped transmission away from disaster.

 

This is why there are more CONEXes than grains of sand in Malibu (and likely up and down the coast).

 

I saw a story recently on the boom in backyard houses in SoCal.

 

The last line of the story says this:

As grateful as I am for the experiences I had living unhoused, and the perspective it offered me, I worry about what will keep people interested in telling stories once the romance of the job has worn off.

I wonder if the romance of the job has worn off for Ian Bradley. It's my feeling that reporters would stay interested in telling stories as long as people seemed interested in reading them. Unfortunately, reading is becoming an activity in which people are becoming less and less engaged.

It doesn't say, but I looked him up and it appears Bradley has moved on to being a real estate reporter for the Nashville Business Journal, and is now living in a one-bedroom rental in Tennessee.

I'm familiar with The Acorn, a group of local weekly newspapers with separate editions each focused on different cities within Ventura County and outer Los Angeles County. I'd say $37,000 a year is pretty good pay for those little papers. But Bradley was right. It doesn't go far in Southern California, especially in the areas (Agoura and Calabasas) that he covered.

A lot of people in these areas, and surrounding ones, are moving to Tennessee. And Idaho.

 

I'd like to see some tiny-house communities in SoCal, and I have always wished builders would invest a little more in building smaller standard-sized homes -- say, on the order of 1,000 to 1,600 square-foot, 2-bd, 2-ba or small 3-and-2's, instead of the seemingly bigger and bigger homes that are being produced all the time now.

So many people have so much in this country that we seem to no longer realize how little we actually really need most of the time. I've always believed a focus on minimalist-but-enough-to-be-comfortable housing would actually work out well -- and, theoretically, be much more affordable -- for many, many people. I've always thought a builder could get rich catering to people seeking such living arrangements -- young, starting-out couples/families, singles, elderly, people coming to the realization I have and wanting to downsize...but this need doesn't seem to be addressed in this area.

My own dream home would be modest: a one-storey (do you know how hard it is to find single-storey homes in SoCal these days?) 2- or 3-bedroom, 2 bath home of about 1,200 square feet that included a garage. It'd be nice to have a small outdoor space, just enough to sit out if I wanted, or to let a dog out. That's it. I'd be very happy with that, and I'd bet a lot of other people could be, too.

 

Developers always say "no one wants to live in a 1,400 sf house any more," so they build these developments with 3,000-4,000 SF homes they can sell in the upper $700s or more (in my city).

That's such BS. My neighborhood was built in the 1970s, almost every house is one story, 3BR, 2 bath, 1,600 SF or less, (the bigger ones have had rooms added on). Houses don't stay on the market for more than a couple days when they come open. The last house sold on my street was on the market for four hours. People would buy houses this size, but developers want to make a killing.