FranLab is getting evicted

[james_s]

UPDATE: Eviction 3.0 
She has 2 months to get out:
Really bad timing, as she just blew a load of money on the zero-g flight and the flight school.

This is nothing against Fran on a personal level, but this just has poor life choices written all over it. Given how old this thread is she has to have known this was coming for a long time. Something like a zero-G flight sounds like a blast, but it sounds expensive too, I am reasonably comfortable financially and yet I don't think it's something I would consider, certainly not if there was any uncertainty to my living situation. Sadly I have known a lot of people, some of them even quite intelligent by most measures, who just make one bad choice after another and for a long time I tried to help the ones that were close personal friends but eventually realized it was an uphill battle. Some people are just bound and determined to mismanage their lives and the only way that will ever change is if THEY make a firm commitment to change it. The number of people who are chronically short on money yet find all manner of frivolous things on which to piss away vast sums of it is mind blowing. I once dated a girl for a while who was struggling just to pay the rent, I worked on her beater car a few times to keep it going since she couldn't afford to replace it and yet she found money to get a tattoo and other non-essential stuff and of course I was the asshole for pointing this out.  Call me un-caring, but I ran out of shits to give years ago and never got around to restocking.

[rodcastler]

I like Fran, her channel, almost all what she does.
I have supported her during bad times in the past and chances are that I will help her again.

That being said, I must admit that this time will be a bit harder for me, some internal struggle to fight against. The thing is, that I can't help to find the arguments expressed by this gentleman James_s here above fairly reasonable...

[nctnico]

UPDATE: Eviction 3.0 
She has 2 months to get out:
Really bad timing, as she just blew a load of money on the zero-g flight and the flight school.

This is nothing against Fran on a personal level, but this just has poor life choices written all over it. Given how old this thread is she has to have known this was coming for a long time. Something like a zero-G flight sounds like a blast, but it sounds expensive too,

OTOH you can see it as an investment to make new content and it seems this flight was sponsored by her supporters on Patreon. The question however is what the cost versus benefit is. I don't know the exact costs but business wise it likely is a large risk. In that light Dave is pretty clever with his test equipment review, mailbag and dumpster-diving repair videos. Costs him next to nothing in purchases / materials to make.

[james_s]

OTOH you can see it as an investment to make new content. The question however is what the cost versus benefit is. I don't know the exact costs but business wise it likely is a large risk. In that light Dave is pretty clever with his test equipment review, mailbag and dumpster-diving repair videos. Costs him next to nothing in materials to make.

That is a valid point, although it seems like a bit of a risky investment. There are some fascinating videos she has done, I liked the series in the Apollo DSKY, and the various esoteric display technologies are fascinating. Those sorts of topics are relatively low cost (and thus low risk) and fairly high reward in that they are interesting content.

Either way if I were in her position with regards to housing, I would put the youtube channel on the back burner and look for a job, any job that will pay the bills. There is a massive labor shortage across the USA right now. We need truck drivers, that doesn't need any kind of degree or even a whole lot of training. We need people in the trades, that usually needs an apprenticeship but you get paid. On the engineering side we need software engineers, my employer has been hiring like crazy and can't find enough senior SDEs, they can even be approved to work fully remotely if desired. Her living situation has already been discussed to death but sometimes the simple reality is that a person has to find somewhere different to live, something she has apparently been totally unwilling to do. There are numerous solutions to the problem and yet from my admittedly limited view of the saga, it appears she is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results.

[NiHaoMike]

I'll just leave some Swagbucks mining code (instructions in Python script comments) in the hopes that makers can use it to make a bit of profit to support her and other makers in need. I don't make much from it (about $10-15/month with an old Nexus 7 motherboard) but even 1% of her subscribers running it on their own setups would add up to a sizable amount of money. (Current subscribers is 230K, 1% of that is 2300, which would be $23000/month total!)

[Ed.Kloonk]

UPDATE: Eviction 3.0 
She has 2 months to get out:
Really bad timing, as she just blew a load of money on the zero-g flight and the flight school.

This is nothing against Fran on a personal level, but this just has poor life choices written all over it. Given how old this thread is she has to have known this was coming for a long time. Something like a zero-G flight sounds like a blast, but it sounds expensive too, I am reasonably comfortable financially and yet I don't think it's something I would consider, certainly not if there was any uncertainty to my living situation. Sadly I have known a lot of people, some of them even quite intelligent by most measures, who just make one bad choice after another and for a long time I tried to help the ones that were close personal friends but eventually realized it was an uphill battle. Some people are just bound and determined to mismanage their lives and the only way that will ever change is if THEY make a firm commitment to change it. The number of people who are chronically short on money yet find all manner of frivolous things on which to piss away vast sums of it is mind blowing. I once dated a girl for a while who was struggling just to pay the rent, I worked on her beater car a few times to keep it going since she couldn't afford to replace it and yet she found money to get a tattoo and other non-essential stuff and of course I was the asshole for pointing this out.  Call me un-caring, but I ran out of shits to give years ago and never got around to restocking.

I think there is a correlation with people who are musicians. Or is it starving artist? Dunno. But it does seem consistent.

[EEVblog]

UPDATE: Eviction 3.0 
She has 2 months to get out:
Really bad timing, as she just blew a load of money on the zero-g flight and the flight school.

This is nothing against Fran on a personal level, but this just has poor life choices written all over it. Given how old this thread is she has to have known this was coming for a long time. Something like a zero-G flight sounds like a blast, but it sounds expensive too, I am reasonably comfortable financially and yet I don't think it's something I would consider, certainly not if there was any uncertainty to my living situation.

To be fair:
a) She didn't seem to have any uncertainty about her living situation, sounds like this building sale came out of the blue. I'm sure she would have done the flight had she had any inkling of this.
b) The Zero-G flight was also an attempt to create some content that would get some or all of the money back in ad revenue (admittedly a bit of a long shot)

[EEVblog]

Either way if I were in her position with regards to housing, I would put the youtube channel on the back burner and look for a job, any job that will pay the bills.

If I was in the same position, the last thing I'd want to do is go look for a real job. When working for yourself for so long, it would be very hard to go back working for the man 9-5. You'd have to exhaust every possible opportunity first.

Her living situation has already been discussed to death but sometimes the simple reality is that a person has to find somewhere different to live, something she has apparently been totally unwilling to do. There are numerous solutions to the problem and yet from my admittedly limited view of the saga, it appears she is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results.

I mentioned this in the Youtube comments:

You mentioned you can't get a mortgage, well, unfortunately you are going to have to try again, because that does seem the best option if you can pull it off. You can't just assume that you got rejected last time so you'll get rejected again. Knock on 100 doors if you have to, make it a full time job applying for loans until someone cracks.
Assuming that fails, option 2 would be reconsider living in the burbs somewhere. I know you said it's dangerous, but surely it's better than moving into some miserable tiny space that would be a financially self spiraling productivity killing drain.
And I know you said people will just bombard you with Zillo listings, but we care, and one of them may pay off. Once again I think a solution can potentially be crowd sourced here. 99/100 leads will not play out, but you only need that 1 that does.

She seems very set on staying in Philly, and I've tried to talk her out of that before to no avail.
If it was me I'd be on the LGBT forums (I assume there are such things) and find a smaller cheaper city that is already proven to be LGBT friendly. Philly can't be the only place she can feel safe.

[EEVblog]

I'll just leave some Swagbucks mining code (instructions in Python script comments) in the hopes that makers can use it to make a bit of profit to support her and other makers in need. I don't make much from it (about $10-15/month with an old Nexus 7 motherboard) but even 1% of her subscribers running it on their own setups would add up to a sizable amount of money. (Current subscribers is 230K, 1% of that is 2300, which would be $23000/month total!)

Actually, that's an interesting concept. Kind of like BOINC, she could start a campaign where people donate spare processing cycles which would all add up.

In any case, her problem doesn't seem to be income or money so much at this point, she said she can afford a mortgage, the real problem is getting one.
Any rental thing is going to have her eventually back to quare one again, she needs to find a way to get a mortgage and buy a place. Someone out there must know a banker who can help her out.

[beanflying]

Either way if I were in her position with regards to housing, I would put the youtube channel on the back burner and look for a job, any job that will pay the bills.

If I was in the same position, the last thing I'd want to do is go look for a real job. When working for yourself for so long, it would be very hard to go back working for the man 9-5. You'd have to exhaust every possible opportunity first.

After 20 years of self employment I consider myself unemployable 

The main question really needs to now be after getting the commercial lease term security WRONG multiple times, clearly the lesson isn't being learned or sorted out prior to signing a contract  Either Fran is hiring the wrong lawyers or worse is her own and failing at simple due diligence.

[EEVblog]

The main question really needs to now be after getting the commercial lease term security WRONG multiple times, clearly the lesson isn't being learned or sorted out prior to signing a contract  Either Fran is hiring the wrong lawyers or worse is her own and failing at simple due diligence.

Can anyone remember what her lease term was? I think its pretty close to spot on 3 years from when she moved in?
Maybe only a 3 year lease was possible on this place?

[beanflying]

The main question really needs to now be after getting the commercial lease term security WRONG multiple times, clearly the lesson isn't being learned or sorted out prior to signing a contract  Either Fran is hiring the wrong lawyers or worse is her own and failing at simple due diligence.

Can anyone remember what her lease term was? I think its pretty close to spot on 3 years from when she moved in?
Maybe only a 3 year lease was possible on this place?

Seems we are maybe two years on from last time around on a quick check back.

Unless USA leases are written really differently to Oz it is normal and in a lot of cases now part of the initial lease to include an extension of another or even two terms providing the Tenant signs up appropriately. Typical terms in Victoria at least are 3x5's for the last two I have signed.

[NiHaoMike]

Perhaps someone with more software experience could figure out how to virtualize an Android VM on a Raspberry Pi, then make a preconfigured image for Swagbucks mining with a Pi? I think if that were made, a lot more than 1% of her subscribers would run it. Theoretically, if it gets up to 5-10% or so it would be right in the territory of making enough profit to buy a house in a month or two, although at that point I would expect the difficulty to rise a lot making things hard to predict.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/embedded-computing/virtualization-on-arm/

[Alex Eisenhut]

She said no bank will give her a mortgage, what about a credit union?

[beanflying]

She said no bank will give her a mortgage, what about a credit union?

Look at the history online alone of money issues and requests. Then add to that self employed and any other associated risks that comes with that before you even get to an actual credit history. This has been done earlier in this thread sort of to death too.

The more likely and only option for finance on a building loan will be an Angel investor of some sort but that will come with its own set of generally control type issues.

[EEVblog]

Seems we are maybe two years on from last time around on a quick check back.

Oct 2018:

I think she foudn the new space a few weeks after this, so basically 3 years ago.

Unless USA leases are written really differently to Oz it is normal and in a lot of cases now part of the initial lease to include an extension of another or even two terms providing the Tenant signs up appropriately. Typical terms in Victoria at least are 3x5's for the last two I have signed.

Yes, common here to have a fixed term plus options for further terms if needed. And these leases transfer to any new owner, you can't just have the owner sell the building and get booted out by the new owner.
In Fran's case maybe they had planed the leases to all lapse at this time and hence sold the building and the new owner can then boot everyone out.

[beanflying]

I was basing two years ago on this one 

Here we go again!

[Fixed_Until_Broken]

Either way if I were in her position with regards to housing, I would put the youtube channel on the back burner and look for a job, any job that will pay the bills.

If I was in the same position, the last thing I'd want to do is go look for a real job. When working for yourself for so long, it would be very hard to go back working for the man 9-5. You'd have to exhaust every possible opportunity first.

EEVblog I Feel you on that one. I've been working for myself for only 2 years now and I can't imagine going back. Then again my work experience before that was military they won't take me back haha. In all seriousness I had a really good job offer fall into my lap and it would be a really cool experience but I really love working for myself. I don't know if I will take it.

[WattsThat]

Lifelong Philly area guy here. Horrible timing. It is an absolutely awful time right now to find housing in the Philly market. There is zero home inventory for sale. Depending upon the specific area, decent properties around here sell above asking price (offer/bidding wars) without home inspections and other common contingencies. It is beyond crazy.

Rental properties are equally nuts. We have rental properties in a bordering county to the city and we have zero problems finding tenets willing to pay above market rates.

She’s got a real mess ahead without a good solution if she wants to stay in the area.

[james_s]

She seems very set on staying in Philly, and I've tried to talk her out of that before to no avail.
If it was me I'd be on the LGBT forums (I assume there are such things) and find a smaller cheaper city that is already proven to be LGBT friendly. Philly can't be the only place she can feel safe.

I have several LGBT friends, some areas are more friendly to them than others, though none of the more notable ones are known for having a low cost of living, but there are pockets of them everywhere. If someone asked me to list every place I could think of that I would associate with that culture, the entire state of PA would not even cross my mind. There are absolutely forums catering to that culture, and virtually any other subculture you could imagine. Frankly it's bizarre to me that *anyone* would consider Philadelphia to be "safe" in any sense of the word. I've never been there myself and maybe things have changed, but it at least was known for having a very high crime rate, with a lot of violent crime in particular.

Edit: Reading the post that came in while I was typing this, it sounds like maybe things have changed. Sounds a lot like Seattle in terms of exploding housing prices and scant inventory. I'm not even sure where all the people are coming from.

[james_s]

EEVblog I Feel you on that one. I've been working for myself for only 2 years now and I can't imagine going back. Then again my work experience before that was military they won't take me back haha. In all seriousness I had a really good job offer fall into my lap and it would be a really cool experience but I really love working for myself. I don't know if I will take it.

Well, different strokes I guess. Personally unless I was already wealthy it would drive me nuts to be working for myself and have that uncertainty and variable income. I'm not very motivated by money on a day to day basis so without a boss to answer to I'm not sure I'd be able to stay focused on tasks that earn me money. Either that or I'd focus too much on earning money and forget to set aside time for anything else. I really like that I can go in (or in more recent times log in), do the work I'm assigned to do, sign out and the same amount of money appears in my bank account twice a month. I put in my 40 odd hours a week doing what the company asks me to do, the compensate me with money and benefits and the rest of the time is mine.

I might feel a little different if I lived somewhere where benefits like healthcare weren't typically provided by an employer. An individual will pay a fortune for health insurance, to be self employed here you'd have to earn a LOT more compared to a company that can get a group plan.

[EEVblog]

Needs some TLC, but only $180k in west Philly for 2000sqft
https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/6032-Lansdowne-Ave-Philadelphia-PA/23914193/

[EEVblog]

I might feel a little different if I lived somewhere where benefits like healthcare weren't typically provided by an employer. An individual will pay a fortune for health insurance, to be self employed here you'd have to earn a LOT more compared to a company that can get a group plan.

No one outside the US can relate to that I'm afraid. The US is nuts.

[EEVblog]

This has Franlab written all over it!

https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/1978-Federal-St-Camden-NJ/23620532/

[james_s]

No one outside the US can relate to that I'm afraid. The US is nuts.

I like most things about the US but that is one aspect I'm not crazy about, but given the polarized political climate I don't expect that to change. If they do ever manage to implement some kind of universal healthcare they will find some way to completely screw it up to the point that it turns out even worse than what we have now. Whatever the case, it is what it is, a self employed person is going to need to come up with $600-$2k a month for health insurance. Companies can negotiate better rates, the larger the company, the better the chance of getting a good plan.