The nomads of North San Jose
Our neighborhood is a quiet suburban neighborhood in North San Jose. The population is mostly Asian. A lot of people here are blue collar. Just like us, the new neighbors who moved in the past decade are mostly professionals working for one of the Silicon Valley tech companies. It is also why the average house price soared to above $1 million. For Silicon Valley that is still cheap.
People mind their own business here. There isn’t a strong sense of community. There is no yearly block party, or Saturday get togethers in the street. This is why our neighborhood has been an ideal place to blend in and park in our streets almost unnoticed. Unless of course, you show up pulling a camper or in a mobile home. We have plenty of space to park along the large avenues, or along fences near the corner of a street. Folks will show up and live there for a few days. These nomads move their vehicles every 72 hours. A week later they will rotate again into the same spot, never truly leaving the larger neighborhood.
These mobile homes are different from the ones you find near large construction sites, Halloween pumpkin patches or at the back parking lot of Nasa Ames in Mountain View. Those are seasonal workers, craftsmen and contractors from all over the Western United States. I’ve heard about woodworkers who will come from Idaho or Montana to build sheds for Tuft Sheds in the Spring, or about volunteer fire fighters who will help California in the fall to fight the dangerous wildfires. Some even form a private fire department for certain winemakers.
The nomads in our neighborhood are different. They are living some of the hardest lives of Silicon Valley. I don’t know what they do for a living. Some of them collect iron. I see others work continuously on cars, along the side of streets. The wide boulevards of your neighborhood or a perfect place to blend in without causing too much trouble for neighbors. Sometimes it just looks like a nice mobile home is parked there. Other times, it is not as pleasant with plenty of old iron spread out around a trailer, with trash in the gutter, and even sewage. Most of these set ups do not have running water obviously.
As long as you are courteous to the neighborhood, I am not bothered much by them. Life must be very rough for the nomads of Silicon Valley.