Glorified Chicken Coop

This is the "real life" portion of this blog.

I would like to preface/blanket, whatever I say next with how much compassion I feel for those who are homeless.  People without a home are in profound trouble, physically, mentally and likely spiritually.  This makes me questions what is useful help.

I have been cooking in homeless shelters and eating with the folks, since I started college (decades ago).  In my experience, seldom do you meet a homeless person who would benefit from owning a glorified chicken coop.  There are so many legitimate wrongs with this idea, I won't bore you with the list.  What isn't wrong is the loving, creative hearts of the people who care for the marginalized.

The reasons are vast why someone is homeless.  I could explain it to you, but you already know why people are homeless.  If you don't, go volunteer at your local soup kitchen or homeless shelter, and sit down with anyone there and just listen to them.

Real estate.  These micro-structures on public property are not real estate.  This is a fundamental problem with being homeless.  I see a man and woman who park their camper at K-mart & Raley's, every-other night.  Not real estate, just real life.  Is 'real estate' just the space you are currently occupying?

These mini structures (though a childhood fantasy) are unsettling.  I am only one (maybe two) events away from the tragedy of being homeless and I am VERY secure.  My mind tells me to take shelter, and prepare for it.  My body and spirit obey.  Any one of those ingredients can vanish, because life is hard.  What is 'real' about where I live, can vanish as well.

That is the tragedy, not that people can live without a house, but without a home.

I can sit at my computer and pontificate about real estate and housing statistics, but this is another side of the story.  When I look at my reflection through this hometown news story, I feel cut down the middle.  I would rather use the $110 to buy the person a sandwich every day for a few weeks.

Dream House

The 1st house we bought

Last night I was talking to a friend, who is in the middle of a housing mess, just a few skips behind us.  She  said something that made my imagination churn.  She wants to plan her life to her desires.  She is a reasonable and loving person, so her desire is to be able to pick her kids up, and drop them off at school every day (not world cruises and plastic surgery).  Her house has made it so that she isn't the mom she dreams and desires to be.  Her life is hard, because of home-ownership, and she is picturing her life the way she wants it.  It isn't selfish, in her case, it is selfless.


I wondered that for myself.  What do I want?  I have only been thinking how relieved I am to have found arsenic in the water, and not bought the house next to my parents.  (who by the way, tested their well water and it is all clear of rat poison, which I took as a favorable sign in our favor)  I realized last night, that without asking myself, "what do you really want?", I have no ambition.  I have no selfish ambition, and no selfless ambition.  I really am in denial.  


Part of getting out of the housing market was a step towards not letting my life, as much as possible, happen to me.  That is how we got into a mess partly,  in the first place.  Some of it was just bad timing, and some just blindly doing what we thought we were supposed to do.  Buy a house,  because that's 'what you do'.


On to my dream.  I would like to live in this house while my kids are growing and going to school.  I would like to clear a patch for a veggie garden, and bust a hole in every southerly facing room, so that light comes into the house from where the sun shines (it has been a long winter, and there are NO windows on the south side, it looks funny).  I would like this house to be ours, which means we would have to buy it, but I would like to buy it for a screamin' deal.  Those are my dreams, at the moment.


I think that is a good marriage of dreaming and denial.