gimme some of that big-box religion
tv or a toilet?
Wed, April 4, 2007 - 12:35 PMThere were several guests, including Donald MacDonald. You’ll remember him as the radical architect who, upon seeing all the homeless people in his urban neighborhood, designed this single-occupancy shelter thingy. It was considered very controversial, because it didn’t try to solve the problem from a social perspective, just provide a safe and practical shelter for people living on the streets. See his “City Sleeper” project here:
www.donaldmacdonaldarchitects.com/b...ml
The most interesting thing in the program, though, was listening to Didier Faustino. His English wasn’t great, but his ideas were amazing. The most compelling story he told was about a public housing project in South America – Lima, Peru, I think. In the 90s, he had worked with the government to provide basic shelter to the large number of people livijng in extreme poverty. They built very basic apartments with a bathroom and simple kitchen, which was plumbed with potable water: the first that many of these people had ever had. The project was a complete failure. Didier said that the people who moved in just destroyed the buildings;. For example, they immediately crowbarred up the toilets, and sold them to buy cheap televisions.
Basically. these folks felt that a sitting device for defecation was way less necessary to their lives than a television. Didier said it was because tv was a technology they were familiar with, but toilets were completely unfamiliar, and therefore unnecessary.
It seems like a good idea to just sit with this information for a while.
Wed, April 4, 2007 - 12:35 PM -
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 1:13 PM
I can imagine that...
viewing tv as more of a creature comfort, and more of a connection with the rest of the world, than a toilet. now, i wouldn't go that route myself - but i can theorize as to why/how that was what they would do. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 1:28 PM
It's the same the world over and 'round. You don't have to go to Peru to see it... just head to the peejay's in any city.
Section 8 subsidised housing. Food Stamps. 24" chrome spinners on a brand new Escalade. Head to the Appalachian foothills (I saw this a lot when I lived there...) Banged up single-wide for a family of 6. Government Assistance, SSI, or grandpa's pension checks. 54" Plasma TV and latest game console. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 1:52 PM
When your life is that beaten down, sometimes the very best you can hope for is a means to escape it. Surrounded by poverty and hopelessness, with no direction to go and no way to get there, that fish-eye lens into the world of comfort, laughs, entertainment and limitless stuff to dream about someday having must seem like a portal into a better world, at least for the mind. It's a new twist on Maslow's hierarchy of needs: who cares about the body's needs, as long as the mind can dream?
I can't even imagine. I've lived in pretty substandard conditions, without running water or indoor plumbing, but never urban squalor, which is a whole different level of hopelessness. I've always been able to step outside my doorstep into beauty. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 2:25 PM
I've lived in urban squalor. Without even a doorstep. (Actually, I was living on doorsteps and park benches.) While I didn't even have a place to keep my stuff (other than my backpack) I learned very quickly which things are necessities and which are wants.
Now that I have a place and a job, etc., but I'm looking at moving to a smaller place, I need to reprioritize my "wants" items. I know I have a lot of crap I can get rid of. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 5:59 PM
Jumbled thoughts from me... :)
Clearly a well-intentioned effort, but one where they didn't study/speak with the people being helped enough beforehand. If you're going to do more than an incremental improvement it needs to be wanted and come with instruction on how to use it. Ideally it's certainly at least as much up to those getting the help as to the providers to make sure what is received is appropriate. I remember a discussion on NPR with someone who had observed a lesser version of this with US subsidized housing. Providing someone with a home but not the knowledge of how to do maintenance, etc., is not a complete solution. If I had never seen indoor plumbing before and then got a home with it, odds are I'd clog it with food scraps, motor oil, etc. in a matter of hours. And while I'm no TV addict, I guess given a choice of one or the other I can actually see why many would opt for the TV. The lack of a toilet is only inconvenient for a few minutes a day. Still, it's hard to argue that a government agency should be prioritizing TVs over health and sanitation. Maybe we by default think people need items in the order they came into common use, instead of evaluating it all from scratch? E.g. a cell phone network is actually a great way to skip earlier infrastructure steps entirely. But if you don't think of it you'll waste effort running wires all over. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 7:16 PM
Interesting....
So, my take on the tv vs. toilet, is that many of these people have been shit on by life, and see no problem with forgoing a proper toilet so that they can continue to shit on the world that shits back on them. y'know?
And escapism is rampant, when life is that...that....shitty, no? hence TV, drugs, alcohol. Numb it. Hope it goes away. The American Way. Ever seen Dark Days? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark...cumentary) it's pretty intense and shocking, about the lives of the homeless living underground in NYC. When one is faced with survival, one becomes very very crafty. I'm pretty disgusted by the NIMBY attitude around everywhere about the homeless. Like, punish the symptoms of the dis-ease? Why not treat the disease? In Santa Cruz, There is a sleeping ban. It's a CRIME to sleep outdoors or in a car. Homeless people trying to get one of the basic functions of LIVING become criminals by their mere existence. Move along... Marin County, for years, did you know, has been lobbying AGAINST Bart Trains to Marin because then it would mean (egads!) homeless folks would infiltrate the rich folks trying to get away from all that "filth" up there. Sorry, this is a little bitty of a sore topic for moi. There is SO much honkin stinkin wealth in the world pouring and pouring into the pockets of CEOs and from our tax money to the military.... and so many struggling and opressed... So much food being culled and wasted daily, when there are people starving. It's sick. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 8:24 PM
Yeah, it's a jumbled and touchy subject for me as well.
I think Didier's take was close to Lynx's - if you've been shitting in a hole all your life, and you have a choice between a magnificent white shitting throne and a TV, what are you going to pick? Here, I'm thinking that these folks want the TV not just for its entertainment value, but as an information conduit... I can't remember who it was, but someone else told me this story about the middle east that's similar.... They said that when cars became common there, in the second half of the 20th century, when they died by the side of the road, people just left them there, like dead camels. Ok, that sounds racist or classist or something... but their point was that they hadn't grown up with the car technology, and suddenly switching from a camel or bicycle to a car resulted in some surprising behaviors. It also sounds right to me that if you want to help people, you need to work with them to figure out how they want to be helped. Didier talked a little about this, too... the program in Peru was well-intentioned, and prioritized on simple things like sanitation and security, but that vision was not in coherence with the inhabitants... chandra, I know about the Marin anti-BART thing. It's a little more complicated than that; for example, the biggest transportation problem Marin has is the hundred thousand people in Sonoma and Napa counties who need to move through Marin to get to their jobs in the bay area. Every year, there are rail proposals on the ballot, and every year, they're shot down for different reasons. Two years ago it was because there was a growing sense that a rail would just encourage more sprawl and development in Sonoma and Napa. Last year's light rail proposal got voted down becuase it was a diesel train. Most of us want electric plus bicycle routes. The biggest transportation tragedy in Marin is that the entire county was crisscrossed with rail lines that were put in to transport timber, and all of them were ripped up in the 1920s. Why? To replace them with roads. Personally, I'd like to see a non-diesel, non-gas-powered rail system circumnavigating the bay area. Back to the homeless, though. What I liked about MacDonald's City Sleeper was that it sidestepped all of the politics and went straight for the basic human right to a safe shelter. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 8:28 PM
"I've lived in urban squalor. Without even a doorstep. (Actually, I was living on doorsteps and park benches"
Clifton, I can't quite imagine that happening to you. You seem like the ultra-resourceful type - I mean, you can build an igloo, fer chrissakes, and you gene splice for a living.... I'm sure there's an incredible story in there somewhere. And I'm very glad you got out of that situation. |
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Unsu...
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 8:48 PM
Nothing intelligent to add to what's already been said; but I did love reading this...I always enjoy reading what you write, dru.
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 9:05 PM
Aw, thanks daien. Maybe sometimes, just every so often, being a scatterbrained generalist can be a good thing :-) Don't you just wish you had lifetimes to devote to each oh-so-interesting subject?
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 10:00 PM
**Clifton, I can't quite imagine that happening to you. You seem like the ultra-resourceful type **
It didn't happen by chance the first time. I made it happen. I packed up a backpack and hit the road for 3 months before going to college. I didn't know what else was out there, and I wanted to see how far I could get on my own. I hitched around a squatted for 12 weeks before deciding that college was really a better option than living in squats and busking for change. The second time was unintentional. I was living in student apartments, had a summer lease lined up with some friends, and graduated a quarter early. When I came back, I was told that since I was no longer a student, I couldn't live there. I had 3 months to go until my summer lease started. I stored my stuff in a friend's trailer home, and I slept a couple nights a week in my office, a couple nights w/ my gf (who lived in the same apartments I was kicked out of, so I couldn't be seen there every night) and a couple nights in stealth campsites around campus. Funny thing is that I was full time employed with my first GenEngineering job at the time. |
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Wed, April 4, 2007 - 11:51 PM
well
is it more like a jail cell if you can't leave the bathroom ever?
i mean if the place is too small, isn't it nicer to put the litter box outside? there's the desire for connection via TV but then there's also a lot of reason to sort of space out on a luxury. i might have done the same myself. |
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Thu, April 5, 2007 - 9:13 AM
about 20 years ago
i went to this exhibit of a frank lloyd wright house built all of materials used in subsidized housing.
it was so amazingly beautiful! it was more beautiful and livable than most middle class homes. put next to the typical "housing project", it looked like a castle. i was blown away and deeply angered all at once. i think in a way, it doesn't matter so much if you give homeless people a home if something deeper doesn't change such that they can live productive lives that feel useful to them. (i mean unemployed and underemployed people are "useful" - they allow our employers to keep our wages low, so for our employers, conscious of it or not, its convenient to have a bunch of jobless around.) yes, when there is a sense of real usefulness as humans on earth and when it doesn't have to be a CHOICE between tv or toilets, well, then lets check the behavior..... |
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Thu, April 5, 2007 - 2:12 PM
"is it more like a jail cell if you can't leave the bathroom ever?
i mean if the place is too small, isn't it nicer to put the litter box outside?" I'm not sure. In the case of the City Sleepers, this makes good sense. But the apartments Didier was talking about sounded more like regular apartments - probably very basic, but no unusual dearth of space. I think I found the idea of trading toilets for TVs engaging because (1) It would''t occurr to me, and (2) I could see how someone living in deep poverty might consider it; especially if the big shiny white chair looked like a major if not *absurd* luxury item. Different values.... And *that* reminds me of a really angry Social Studies teacher I had in high school. He was always concluding this or that lecture with the following statement, which, for him, seemed to be the Rome that all roads led to: "Americans keep making the mistake of thinking that if they scratch the brown people of the world [yes, he said it just like that; I think that's why I found it so shocking and still remember it] just the right way, a good little Christian American Consumer will pop out. The arrogance of assuming that everyone else in the world shares your values....." |
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Thu, April 5, 2007 - 2:17 PM
" went to this exhibit of a frank lloyd wright house... "
I think I've seen this, too. Was it a collection of boxy rooms with a spacious, high-ceilinged living/dining area and small bedrooms? And it knocks down so they can move it around as an exhibit? If so, I thought it was great. I could have lived comfortably in it. Shoot, it had way more room in the common areas than my house does, and with all the windows and high ceilings, it was way more elegant and welcoming, too.... |
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Thu, April 5, 2007 - 9:15 PM
possibly. i saw it in newport, CA. there was a lot of cinderblock and built in fruniture of sorts. i remember the 40's/70's style living room around the corner from the kitchen/dining area and a step or two down, large windows with lots of light, spacious and welcoming, even with all the gray of the cinderblock. boxy, i suppose, with no arches and smooth curves of any sort. the exhibit was sort of in the middle of nowhere.
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