[GJM] Fw: [globalnetnews-summary] Autos become homes in California as economy tumbles

[mary rose]

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Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:46 AM
Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Autos become homes in California as economy 
tumbles



http://www.santafenewmexican.com/National%20News/California-Autos-become-homes-as-economy-tumbles


Autos become homes in California as economy tumbles

Homeowners complain as more vehicles take up permanent residence on streets
6/23/2008 -
Christina Hoag | The Associated Press


LOS ANGELES - Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll 
has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from 
homelessness.

She is living out of her shabby 1978 RV, and every night she has to look for 
a place to park where she won't get hassled by the cops or insulted by 
residents.

"I'm not a piece of trash," the former home health care aide said as she 
stroked one of five dogs in her cramped quarters parked in the waterfront 
community of Marina del Rey.

Amid the foreclosure crisis and the shaky economy, some California cities 
are seeing an increase in the number of people living out of their cars, 
vans or RVs.

Acting on complaints from homeowners, the Los Angeles City Council got tough 
earlier this year by forbidding nearly all overnight parking in residential 
neighborhoods such as South Brentwood.

But some people are just crowding into other parts of the city, including 
the seaside community of Venice, where dozens of rusty, dilapidated campers 
can be seen lined up outside neat single-family homes. The stench of urine 
emanates from a few of the vehicles, and some residents say they have seen 
human waste left behind.

"They're nasty and gnarly," said Venice resident Jeff Scharlin. "We've heard 
about drug dealing and prostitution in them. I've never seen it, but 
visually they're a blight and they take up parking space."

In Los Angeles, as in many other cities, it is illegal to live in vehicles 
on public streets. But the law is not easy to enforce. Police have to enter 
a vehicle to find signs that people are living there, such as cooking or 
sleeping, and occupants often refuse to answer when cops knock.

An easier way is to restrict overnight parking. In L.A., a first offense 
carries a $50 fine, and subsequent violations can cost as much as $100.

Parking-enforcement officers often give vehicle owners a warning and tell 
them to move on before issuing a ticket, and that usually solves the 
problem, said Alan Willis, a city transportation engineer. But other cities 
in the area are not as lenient.

"I had my motor home towed in Culver City. It cost me $500 to get it out," 
said Desiri Hawkins, who lives in a small RV in Venice. "I got ticketed in 
Santa Monica and had to go to court."

Tourist states with temperate climates, such as California and Florida, have 
long been magnets for the homeless. Los Angeles is the nation's homelessness 
capital, with an estimated 73,000 people on the streets. A survey of 3,230 
homeless people last year in Los Angeles County found nearly 7 percent 
living in vehicles, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services 
Authority.

"It's trending toward an increase," said Michael Stoop, acting executive 
director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "People would rather 
live in a vehicle than wind up in a shelter, and you can't stay on a 
friend's couch forever."

People living out of their cars or campers tend to be more well-off than the 
homeless on the street. They usually have jobs or disability checks that 
enable them to maintain an old camper but do not allow them to afford rent.

"For more working-class and lower-middle-class people, the car is the first 
stop of being homeless, and sometimes it turns out to be a long stop," said 
Gary Blasi, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor and 
activist on homeless issues.

Some Venice residents are clamoring for overnight parking restrictions. But 
parking limits in oceanfront neighborhoods are problematic because the 
California Coastal Commission requires communities to accommodate surfers, 
fishermen and other early-morning beachgoers.

"The complaints are getting louder and louder," said Los Angeles City 
Councilman Bill Rosendahl.

For years, some cities such as Santa Barbara, Calif., and Eugene, Ore., have 
accommodated people who live out of their vehicles. Activists in Venice are 
looking at some of those ideas. Santa Barbara, for example, allows vehicles 
to stay from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. in church and city parking lots.

Knoll said she can barely afford to drive around with the rising price of 
gasoline eating away at the $950 monthly disability check she receives 
because of mental illness.

She said she is also sick of police waking her up in the wee hours by 
pounding on her vehicle with their nightsticks, and she is tired of fighting 
with residents who call her "lowlife scum" and hurl other insults.

"We need somewhere we can have a safe haven, where we won't be harassed," 
Knoll said as the wind from a passing car rocked her RV. "I never thought 
I'd be living like this, but I'm stuck. This is it for me."

Dear Co-learner's

This was me back in the early 1990's when the last depression, which was 
labeled a recession, hit the U.S.  As a real estate broker, having made 
$150,000 the previous year, I found myself homeless, living in the back of 
an old station wagon, and unable to get a job because I was overqualified 
for everything I applied for. I never thought it would happen to me either, 
but it did.  And, looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened 
because I wasn't happy with what I was doing.  I never had time for friends, 
family or relationships. And homeless, I got a good look at society from the 
bottom up.  Having worked as a lay counselor doing group therapy with a 
group of psychologists prior to going into real estate, I weathered this 
situation better than most.

I finally was able to land a part-time job in a call room marketing 
time-shares, and I made enough to eat and keep my station-wagon, which I was 
living in the back of, going. During the day I went to the library and 
checked out armloads of books and went to the beach to read and meditate 
with my dog for company. Nights I slept parked in underground garages where 
it was safe since when the police came around to check they thought my 
vehicle belonged to the night cleaning crew. I began attending the Church of 
Religious Science, and from time to time I was offered a room in which to 
stay for a month or two at a time. I met Vern Woolf and began to study 
Holodynamics.

But there was always a burning question in my mind -- why were things this 
way?  Why did people work so hard always to have these recessions come along 
and take it all away. Later, enscounced in an apartment with a roomate I met 
who had the same burning questions I did, only with regard to why so many 
Mexicans were forrced from their homes across the Border in order to be able 
to have a decent life. I still didn't know what was the answer for 
Americans, but I did see the cause and answer for Mexicans.  And I wrote and 
had presented at the highest levels of Mexican goverment the Hands Across 
the Border: Operation Lifesave proposal. We would build Jim Bell's 
Ecological Life Systems Institute in Southern Mexico, and in a hands-on 
learning environment the campesinos who were forced off of their lands by 
U.S. Ag businesses, would be able to learn how to create sustainable living 
communities by building both the Institute and a model for sustainable 
community in their hands-on learning experience.  The government would fund 
the project and the campesinos would receive compensation as they worked and 
learned. When the project was built out, these campesinos would then agree 
to spread out through Mexico, committing five years of their life to help 
create extension campuses in other States, thus restoring Mexico to 
habitability once again and creating a model for sustainable development for 
the world.  It would have greatly reduced migration from South to North. 
The entire project could have been funded by the U.N. under Chapter 21.

Submitted at the highest levels of government, the project received the 
endorsement of two sitting Mexican presidents and an endorsement from the 
Office of the Secretary of Agriculture in the U.S.  But the real powers that 
be did not want this project to happen.  It would have interrupted their 
income flow and stopped Mexicans and other illegal immigrants from providing 
cheap labor for the U.S. market. A factor which subsidizes U.S. food 
production and keeps prices low, something most Americans don't understand. 
Neither do most Americans understand that the Structural Adjustment 
Programs, imposed by the IMF when loans are made to countries like Mexico, 
restrict what that country can do economically.

My point here being that if we were to use the Earth's resources 
appropriately, and responsibly do the things necessary to create prolific 
ecosystems and maintain them in alignment with natural laws -- with the 
Implicate Order of the Universe, we would not have the problems we have 
today.  We have the ability within us to change the way we live -- it does 
not have to be this way.  And the choice is ours to make.

It's in every one of us
To be wise
Find your heart
Open up both your eyes
We can all know everything
Without ever knowing why

It's in every one of us
By and by

It's in every one of us
To be wise
Find your heart
Open up both your eyes
We can all know everything
Without ever knowing why

It's in every one of us
By and by
By and by

Each one of us has an inner consciousness, all we need to do is to listen 
and follow it.
It is innate within us -- it is the holographic mind.

with love and in gratitude to each of us for all that we do, and all that we 
do together

mary rose
        .

.  .                         .        .  . .