Upgrading from a cardboard box for the homeless
The EDAR, a cross between a shopping cart and a pop-up camper, is a step up.
Christopher Raynor's father kicked him out when he was 13, after his stepmother interrupted an orgy in his bedroom and the teen jammed a broom handle against her throat.
Daaaaaamn son, an orgy at 13?! You were a mack! I'd be pissed too if anyone interrupted my orgy. Now a days it's illegal to kick a kid that young out of the house. Maybe it was allowed 27 years ago when this supposedly happened.
Raynor's mother died of stomach cancer, his father was shot to death, and he himself has served time in jail. He spends much of each day intoxicated and grimy. He despises most people.
What's that ladies? You want to know if he's single?
EDAR creator Peter Samuelson discusses how he came up with the idea for the EDAR by interviewing homeless people:
"Where do you spend the night?" he asked one woman. She led him by the hand into the bushes and showed him a large cardboard Sub-Zero box.
I bet that's not ALL she showed him if you catch my drift. *wink wink* *knowing nod* Cue the 70's porno music!
Samuelson said he was shocked by the demographics: About 60% of the homeless were men, 24% were women, and 15% were under 18. (Adult transgender individuals accounted for the rest.)
Wait a second, if we do 100% total people, minus 60% men, minus 24% women, that leaves us with 16% trannies! Yikes that's a lot of trannies! I suppose it makes sense though, because most people don't want trannies around; they're just too damn weird. This makes it hard for them to get hired for jobs and no one on Craigslist will room with them, so they go homeless.
Here is another EDAR user's story:
After Dehanka Straughter was laid off from her job as a cook at a Compton preschool, she and her two sons, ages 2 and 6, were evicted from their $975-a-month apartment.
...
Now the petite Straughter, 27, sleeps in an EDAR with her boys on the fourth floor of the mission. They like it better than she does. "The kids adjust to anything," she said. "They think they're camping."
Damn, these poor kids. What are the laws on keeping kids in shelters like this? At what point are the kids removed from the mom because she can't take care of them? If you don't have much money, then don't have all these kids!
Raynor learned about EDAR from homeless acquaintances. A high school dropout and former construction worker, Raynor had spent three years in jail for auto theft and forgery. With police after him in Texas and his home state of Missouri, he went to Arizona. He left there in search of more temperate weather and found it next to Pacific Coast Highway.
As traffic rushed by one recent starry Friday night, Raynor reminisced about his brushes with the law. Beer can in hand, he spoke of jumping a freight train to Texas to search for a friend's missing 13-year-old daughter. Wielding a sawed-off shotgun, he banged down a door and tied up two men who he thought knew her whereabouts. "How was I to know they were cops working on a sting operation?" he said.
lol wut?! I like how he's acting like his actions aren't that big of a deal and that he just got unlucky with the undercover cops. Dude, you aren't OJ Simpson, you can't be busting into places with a gun and tying people up.
Recently, a woman he described as his fiancee was struck and killed by a driver on PCH. Not long after, a male friend suffered the same fate, he said. The woman he'd married in Arizona disappeared from his life. He shares his PCH-adjacent turf with a woman named Yolanda, whose speech has been slurred by alcohol and a head injury.
Damn, PCH is gangster! PCH in Long Beach is where I saw my first big homeless caravan of people. It's not surprising that these bums are getting nailed by cars on PCH. I saw a bum walk straight across PCH with tons of cars flying by that had a green light. Basically it was the bum saying "fuck all of you, what are you gonna do, hit me and damage your cars?"
Meanwhile, lawyers are sorting out legal issues. Will municipal codes allow users to park their units anywhere? What about constitutional questions and not-in-my-backyard complaints?
My buddy in Long Beach is a doctor who had a homeless woman set up camp with her carts and boxes full of garbage right on his parking lot in the back of his office. He called the cops to move her out of there. The woman was taking her sweet time gathering her garbage, and the cops finally said, "we're busy and have to go now," no doubt to take care of the one million other crimes going on in Long Beach at that moment. "Homeless woman, make sure you're out of here within the next hour." Well of course as soon as the cops left the homeless woman just plunked her trash right back down to where she was. *sigh*
These EDARs are indeed a step up from living in card board boxes, but unfortunately some homeless will use EDARs to rationalize and justify that their way of life is accpetable because they have this nifty transportable tent-like device. Regardless, more EDARs should be tested and deployed to bums everywhere.
http://www.edar.org
1 comments:
bum hate,
well, we could always go back tothe good ol' days by sending these kids to some orphanage.
We could clean up the judicial system in America. Numbers would drop then.
Or we could realize reality now. We have created this bliss by turning our heads at abused women and children, arrested women and children, who have done nothing but finally beaten their abusers.
As we send tons of money all over the world, how much would it really cost to give homeless women and youth a safety net when there is none now?
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