Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases. They will be in terrible shape, operated without insurance, registration and driven by someone without a license. They will also be gross polluters but won’t be taken off the street unless there are a series of criminal actions. Many states will only cite and not tow for lack of insurance or a valid license. The chance of getting pulled over is also quite low in many areas due to distribution of police resources. These vehicles are allowed to be parked and serve as shelters in many cities who choose to allow this as a tacit form of shelter. Just look at the transformation of the streets in Seattle, parts of the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and more. This is an ad hoc solution to a situation that can’t be addressed effectively.

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dlcarrier 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My 25-year-old car gets 30+ miles to the gallon, far better than an F-series truck, which is the best selling vehicle in the US.

It's been 30 years since anyone sold a new carbureted production car in the US, for just as long cars have had OBDII, and it's been 50 years since cars were sold without catalytic converters.

There was a time, immediately after those technologies were developed, when older cars polluted significantly more than newer cars, but modern engine designs have been around long enough that cars old enough to be big polluters are expensive collectors pieces.

There may be an occasional car with a blown head gasket or piston ring polluting excessively, but they won't run for long in that condition. Thanks to CAFE standards increasingly limiting the availability of smaller vehicles in the US, the average 20-to-30-year-old gasoline engine probably pollutes less per mile than the average 0-to-5-year-old gasoline engine.

	▲	fragmede 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not really. While it's true that CAFE standards have lead to bigger vehicles, average to average, the newer vehicle pollutes less. Yes if you compare a 2001 Honda Civic to a 2024 Chevy Suburban, the Honda wins, but 20-30 years old puts you around the year 2000, during which the pollution standards on cars was much more lax than they are today.

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DanielHB 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is not even the cost of the car, but the upkeep. In large European cities parking alone can be prohibitive. In Sweden cars older than 2006 pay extra tax because they don't have emissions testing data.

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bluGill 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In the US car taxes are based on value. Where I live once a car is 10 years old the tax is $50/year. Buy a cheap car for $5000, pay $1000/year to insure it, and $50/year for a license and it is fully legal. You still have to pay for fuel, but that is fairly cheap. You also have maintenance expenses, but generally the poor have a network of mechanics to do the labor for free (in exchange for your labor for something else). Even if you buy a different car every year, you will be hard pressed to find an apartment for $6000/year.

Downtown in US cities parking is prohibitive, but that is only a small part of the city. Most of the city you can park for free. You want to move the car every day just so it doesn't look abandoned, but otherwise this is a cheap way to live and you get transportation as a bonus.

	▲	DanielHB 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Sweden large cities even in the suburbs parking can be quite expensive. But I guess it is because "the big city suburbs" in Sweden are still mostly 4-6 story tall apartments. At my current place (apartment in a suburb about 10km from the city center) our parking would cost ~180 USD per month. From a tech worker perspective it is not like unaffordable, but definetily a luxury for most of the population. The median after-tax income in Sweden is like 3k USD. That tax I mentioned before also makes very old beat-up cars not worth keeping (which is the intent of the tax to be fair). One of the main upsides of living in a detached house in Sweden is not having to pay for parking. But even so the increase heating bills in winter can easily cost more than a car installment depending on your HVAC and insulation.

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diskzero 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The issue in America is that you can own a car, not pay for upkeep, not pay registration, not pay for insurance, not pay to park and still drive it many times without consequence.

	▲	DaSHacka 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's a feature, not a bug.

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cucumber3732842 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The opening of your comment is a nice buzzword bingo for people of a certain bent.

Like god forbid some dude live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip malls eats a quart of oil every 2k.

The tent cities and the rows of campers are a different story (i.e. the density is the problem).

	▲	diskzero an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"Cars are plentiful and cheap in America and can be had next to free in many cases." What is the buzzword bingo and what is my bent? I think it should be permissible to allow some dude to live out of a 2002 Town and Country that parks at a revolving series of strip mall. I currently work with several people who use a similar method to keep themselves and their kids off the streets. The phrasing might be bad in that I was pointing out the overall bleakness of the overall situation; no insurance, no registration, no maintenance, but the intent was to show that they are teetering on the brink of falling into an abyss that is very difficult to come out of, not that they were some sort of anonymous nebulous mass. The main thing I have been struggling with personally with working with this issue (housing, addiction) over 25 years is that it is such a huge, seemingly unsolvable problem that no one is able to address systematically and when I think about the big picture I feel overwhelming helplessness, but find hope working in much more local situations. The car comment was just an observation to the parent comment, with some additional commentary on how it isn't at all a big luxury, rather a bleak situation where the car owner is in a very precarious situation. Reading it now, I do see how it could be misconstrued as some sort of zealotry of people of a certain bent, but I think I am might be bent the opposite way of what you think!