Progress in a poor town
I just returned from San Francisco, the land of plenty, bounty abounds everywhere you look from brains to tchotchkes, it’s all going on there. And yet, I haven’t seen so many homeless people in a long time. I watched a man fixing his cardboard box shelter and thought of Managua in the 1960s and the people sleeping in cardboard boxes. During that period Somoza reigned as if landless peasants were no different than rats in the streets – they were offered no support whatsoever. What differentiates San Francisco 2011 from Managua 1960s?
I walked by Le Central and there in the window as if frozen in time sat Willie Brown and Wilkes Bashford (minus Herb Caen) and they laughed, and raised their glasses, and I wondered if either of them was thinking about the guy in the cardboard box? Years ago, an architect, Donald MacDonald designed a pop-up shelter to be put under expressways to give the homeless shelter – he was chastised by city government:
… San Francisco architect Donald MacDonald designed the “city sleeper” in 1987. The shelter was boxlike, made entirely of plywood construction and raised off of the ground by inverted car jacks. It was large enough to house one homeless individual, it could be secured from the inside and it couldbe fabricated for less than eight hundred dollars. Although the proposed solution was conceived with good intentions, city hall denounced the plan for the design did not account for running water nor did it meet several other building codes (Fantasia, Isserman, 57). “The Sleeper provides [the homeless] with shelter – while supporting the belief that everyone has a right to a home” (MacDonald). McDonald’s design emphasizes individuality at its core. The homeless individual can be self-sufficient in this solution with complete control over his or her shelter environment.
I snapped a photo of Willie and Wilkes and wondered if in life I had followed the Browns & Bashfords or the MacDonalds – the problem is the answer was clear without finishing the question – I have divided my heart and my head – and this sorely needs remediation.
