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March 26, 2009

Hard To Shed Visions Of Two Americas

By Michael Shaw

550_city_of_hope_3.jpgjtcvua.jpg

The city of Fresno, population 500,000, now has three major homeless camps, or “tent cities,” near downtown and smaller encampments or “settlements” along two highways. A few dozen of these homeless have moved to a “village” founded by the non-profit Poverello House in 2003 called “Village of Hope,” a collection of storage sheds, 8 feet by 10 feet. It exists in a former junkyard behind a chain-link fence. Each unit offers two cots, sleeping bags and a solar-powered light.


031809toolshed02.jpg

From: Good Questions: Modern Outdoor Tool and Storage Sheds? (ApartmentTherapy.com)

Patrick has a question about affordable outdoor storage:

I have been trying to finding an attractive, affordable storage container for my relatively large deck/patio. Ideally it would be about 3-3.5 feet deep and about 5-6′ wide and 5 feet tall. All I can find are very “suburban” plastic or wood things that look like either a miniature barn or plastic playground equipment. I haven’t been able to find anything that is slightly more contemporary looking and would actually be an aesthetic asset to the deck.

Patrick, we’ve noticed the very same thing each time we visit the local hardware store or lumber yard. Storage and tool sheds seem to be mostly relegated to Fisher Price themed plastic housing or barnyard chic in appearances…something we’d hide away far from view.
…

Some ideas: you could always purchase a standard toolshed and fancy it up like this couple did in Polynesian theme. Or perhaps splurge and order a MetroShed, a small sized prefab shed that is delivered flat packed, takes a few hours to construct and is definitely a more modern (and larger) storage space you could also expand into as somewhere to enjoy as additional living space.

image 1 from: Fresno Homeless Moved into Tool Sheds (1984/Indymedia)

NYT slideshow of Fresno tent cities, including “Village of Hope” today.

(Update 10:15 am PST- revised for clarity/content)

(image 1: Mike Rhodes/IndyMedia. image 2: unattributed/ ApartmentTherapy.com.)

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  • Tony

    …but the Indymedia pictures are datelined 22nd November 2004!

  • vicki

    So many homes sitting empty, so many tents housing families.
    That it’s fucked up is an understatement in the extreme, but it’s all I’ve got.
    ::

  • eyelessongaza

    WhereRallthe
    Olliefonts?

  • http://profile.typepad.com/bagnews Michael Shaw (The BAG)

    Thanks Tony. The Mike Rhodes photo is from 2004. Because the Village of Hope photos in the current NYT story look much the same, however, I used Mike’s image. To bring the information up to date, though, I deleted Mike’s quote and account from 2004 leading off the post and included a summary from the current NYT story instead. Sorry for any confusion.

  • angellight

    Bush-Villes or Tent Cities are the symptom or results of the failed Bush economic policies that were the true “unsustainable”….

  • asdfjkl;

    I usually find something to learn from your postings, and while we don’t always agree the analysis of actual news images is so necessary for someone who wants to see their world more clearly.
    I disagree strongly with this posting, two disjointed and not date congruant images. I understand your point and the meta message but it is important to be ruthlessly vigilant about accuracy in postings, particularly since this site so often succeeds at peeking behind the curtain of scrubbed or altered political images.

  • stevelaudig

    The top photo looks ever so much like temporary housing at prisons triggered by prison overcrowding which, I suppose, is what they are.

  • JayDenver

    Homes from Shipping Containers
    Starting at $12,000.
    Or, the Hexayurt
    Starting at $200.

  • LanceThruster

    I always thought New Orleans could have been a test bed for cargo container modular housing in its rebuilding. It’s stackable, portable, durable, affordable, and could be on a raised framework to provide both carport-type storage below with the added benefit of being about flood level should there be similar disasters. I’ve seen designs that fit in with almost any style and with the current economic downturn, these containers are piling up in places, particularly port cities. I’m told it’s cheaper to leave them at the final desination than ship them back empty.
    I would love to see some of the recovery money going to modular housing projects such as this. Imagine nomadic construction crews that could live in the community they were building and then move their cargo container home to the next project. It wouldn’t seem as if they were living out of a hotel room or suitcase that way. I would think there’d be a way to build rather rapidly a monkey bar type framework where the cargo container housing units could be added for expansion as needed. The quick-start applications would be quite useful. Migrant-type crews for any sort of industrial/commercial project could work out of these and then move on leaving these affordable residence (and commercial?) communities for others to inhabit. The recovery would leapfrog from place to place and these shipping container communities would be an image of aid and restoration the way that UN or National Guard disaster relief is.

  • LanceThruster
  • Sophronia

    Very elegant, and eloquent, juxtaposition. This is something we do not see in the MSM. I think the 2 pics shown together make a valid statement. I have to admit that I did not know that any city housed the homeless this way.

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