Down & Out In Silicon Valley - Like striking it rich, being 'almost homeless' can happen to anyone

sfgate.com/San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Sunday, October 13, 2002 | Stephanie Salter, Insight Staff Writer

[American Preservative]

Many middle-class people joke about being "one paycheck away from the street." This is the story of a couple who've slammed hard into that reality.

Over the past 18 months, they've gone from his six-figure salary and life in a tony townhouse apartment complex in Silicon Valley to collecting aluminum cans and sleeping in a 28-foot-long recreational vehicle in a parking lot behind the husband's old office building. Once distracted by VCRs and mega- cable, they now watch local television on an old black-and-white set, stand in line at a public food bank for groceries and do their laundry with a garden hose.

[null and void]

I was in the Seattle area in 60's when the aerospace boom went bust at Boeing and in Michigan in the 70's when the steel and carmaking industries hit bottom.

Where are you going next? (I want to avoid it)...

[glory]

Geez, 75k in my area of flyover country will get you a comfortable existance.

[null and void]

Young people have been buying 2 and 3 hundred thousand dollar or more homes and living extravagantly.[sp?]

HA! My broken down 1000 sq ft 1906 vintage crackerbox appraised for over $300K earlier this year. A 200 to 300K house would last about 30 sec on the market here...

[glory]

That is the best way to do it Fitz! Exactly how I have been working on them and they are moving.

[null and void]

The $300,000 homes are what we moved out of, with 5 murders in one year within 1/4 radius of our home.

Only two murders within a block of my house last year...

[Misterioso]

NO one expected the great high tech depression ... anymore than anyone expected the first depression.

This is not really true. A few free-market economists, not infatuated with Keynesianism or Marxism or in the employ of politicians, were sounding warnings in the late '20s; but everyone believed that there really is a free lunch, and the nay-saying of the real economists went basically unreported in the press or was dismissed as being out of touch with the times.

This is also true for the '90s. In fact, much more attention was given to stock market equity P/E ratios, and even more ominous factors in the media, but it was effectively drowned out by the politicians and the Rukeysers in order not to worry investors. The Media/Government Complex (to re-coin an old bugaboo) fueled the "Greenspan bubble" and took hard working Americans to the cleaners. We need to study the science of economics enough to be able to know when politicians are working against our interests.

[luckystarmom]

I'm from Texas, and I want to move back. We've also been looking at Tulsa. My husband's company has an office located there. I'd love to move to Tulsa!!! My family is in Dallas, and Tulsa is fairly close to Dallas.

[Chemnitz]

Wal-Mart has a reputation for welcoming RV campers. It's ideal for both. Wal-Mart gets all night business from campers who run out of food, goods. The campers get a nice secure parking lot where they are welome. K-Mart caught on to this and tried to welcome them too, but it was too late for KM.

[UnBlinkingEye]

Good man.

[XBob]

you would NOT sell your TV or AV equipment

ever try to get a giant tv and stereo into an RV???

it doesnt work.

[UnBlinkingEye]

Most here believe that bad fortune cannot happen to them, I hope they are right.

[UnBlinkingEye]

But, that does not relieve individuals from their responsibiliy to provide for themself

What kind of work do you do?

[XBob]

"For an over qualified Silicon Valley person ... getting a job .. any job IS NOT THAT EASY."

BTTT

None of these jokers know. I went through the oil crash in Houston in the 80's.

When it is happening, It is incomprehensible.

This story sounds very true to me, I know I lived it, except I had my own house to loose, not just an apartment.

[SteveH]

For beer, Los Gatos Brewery has a much better selection than The Cats, which is pretty average. I would not recommend it for music ambience either.

For hard stuff, C.B. Hannegan's on Bachman Ave. Los Gatos seems to have the market cornered (except perhaps for biker types-- no pejorative intended).

[Axenolith]

Factory people who go broke probably never had it to piss away. There's nothing to laugh at there.

Our blue collar labor at my old company used print money during emergency response work. These guys could pull 10K in a month and blow it by the next. No savings, no planning. We had guys who made $70,000 in 3 months on the Valdez job (couple of years before I started) and didn't have a shred of savings a year later from what I was told.

Regardless of future plans of individuals, schools need to have a year or two of intensive education in Capitalism and Financial Planning or we're gonna keep churning out workers (blue or white collar) who can't plan for themselves and then whine about it and want the rest of us to pick up after them when the chips fall the wrong way...

[FITZ]

Most here believe that bad fortune cannot happen to them, I hope they are right.

I've had bad times happen to me and I think many people do for one reason or another. You learn from them. You appreciate the good times even more when you get them back and you don't take some things for granted. I think what makes us not pity these people is for one the story seems a bit fake and the other is that they aren't exempt from bad times just like the rest of us aren't.

[nutmeg]

Bump to read later

[XBob]

157- you hit the nail on the head - and a lot of the fools on this thread don't understand what you wrote:

"If someone will hire the ex Silicon Valley engineer for 1/4 of what he's used to. Sure he'd be happy and thankful for the driving job but would be a fool not to leave that job for a job in his own industry when times get better. Employers know this and WILL NOT HIRE these people for this (among many others) reason."

[FITZ]

Isn't working for temporary agencies a possibility? Or teaching? There's nothing really special going on here, layoffs and joblessness are affecting all kinds of people. Everyone should have realized what the 90s economy was about, there was no reason to believe it was good because it wasn't based on anything. Just like right now is still not a good time to go out and buy things or move into a more expensive home. It's a good time to pay off debts and learn to live very cheaply.

[FITZ]

Exactly how I have been working on them and they are moving.

For some reason that is the method that seems to work best. Get the little ones gone and you have more money to then go after the big ones. Maybe it's psychological but it's a good stategy ---I was actually surprised at how quickly all my debt was gone after using this method. I got very drastic in spending as little as I could during that time, you find you need very little, most buying isn't necessary.