Originally posted by mikemike on rare occasions.
that's it..on rare occasions..and no..after a lifetime of taxes i'm pretty sure we payed enough...
i would say they didn't ask to be identified, and that you don't need to know the name to know the person...i live with 13 people and don't know the family names of most of them...
As for the firefighters, houses sometimes burn..not only squats..but only squats make the news because the news like some social scapegoats, they like social tension and this kind of incident can be used as fuel.
We are forced to live here, don't blame us for the expenses the state takes on our behalf...
Originally posted by mikemike Some of the buildings that remain blighted are that way because the owner has been unable to come back and rebuild either because they are old and frail or they were uninsured and haven't been able to save enough to rebuild. Or they were insured and are still in the process of suing their insurer because they did not agree on how much their claim is worth. Or the original owner has died since the storm and the house is tied up in a succession. Or it was a historical property and they have preservationist restrictions on how they can rebuild. Or they have just moved on and they care about the building anymore but the expropriation process takes a long time.
As you say there are other actors as insurance who are far much more to blame than people who squat ages-long abandoned houses...you keep saying it's gutterpunks that cause trouble, i keep seeing there are other people to blame for the disaster (it could have been prevented..but someone didn't do what he had to...).
Originally posted by mikemike Punks and anarchists have been protesting attempts to streamline the rules to make the expropriation process faster. Currently, fines for code violation have to mount up and a tax bill has to lapse before the process even starts which takes at least a year. Then the city attempts to contact the owner and give them a time to respond. If the owner can't be found they have to make a public notice in the paper and give them time to respond. Then they offer the house as a tax sale, but if you purchase the property in this way the original owner has 3 years to pay their back taxes and penalties and reclaim their property so no one in their right mind would put any money into improving the property until that period passes. A property has to be blighted for at least 5 years before a truly blighted and abandoned property has changed hands and someone willing to fixed it has clear title.
Expropriation may not be the right solution..look at Lisbon for example, half the inner city abandoned and people living in "cité" type of buildings in the outskirts.. Not everything has to be fixed by father state, those abandonments can be made livable and it's only a crooked market sense that counsels to demolish and rebuild..usually selling the new buildings at a prohibitive price...there are some of the reasons to protest..That time opens up an opportunity to build something different.
Originally posted by mikemike So without a reliable method of personal transportation they will be able to evacuate? I think they will either end up in the city paid for evacuation for the elderly or squatting in an unsafe shelter. Getting people with the means to evacuate to do so is hard enough without worrying about this crowd's safety.
No one asked you to worry...that's the point..you don't know and you underestimate our capabilities..i've lived in "unsafe" places for years..it turns out they were only unsafe much more for commodity reasons than real risk...and then i've done some "unsafe" things and if done properly there's no real risk either. As for an hypothetical hurricane, the time you got to prepare yourself is enough. No one asked if we wanted those services just as no one asked if we wanted to live in this societies, we were forced to..so stop blaming society's choices on us. And you are inflating the real danger out of fears, the real "bother" out of isolated cases..
Also there are some boarded houses that are in a livable state, that were not affected by the storm and were boarded so they could enact some urbanism projects without paying the due costs and following the due processes.
Sparkle charges again with the rich beggar...Even if it was a prime stop you won't be able to mantain the luxury lifestyle you commented...And yep some of the people who ask for money (usually jugglers) are not in despair, in hunger need (because in western societies it's quite hard to starve if you forget some stupid things we were taught...food is easily found)..but that is very far away from the mercedes and luxury flats...
Some jugglers may use the money for traveling, others may buy things to do music, most use it for little things you have to buy...And usually the only ones who are willing to "use" the system are junkies...most of us won't have the patience nor the need to stand all the bureaucratic procedures. Damn i was entitled for an excellence scholarship because of my grades in the university and didn't apply for it because i didn't need it and i didn't want to follow the bureaucratic procedure (and i'm not the only one like me who has done such a thing...usually we only take them when we want to travel.).