from Indymedia

“The homeless people that live here are the luckiest homeless in Fresno.” Surprised by the statement, I asked undercover Fresno Police Officer Ray Wallace what he meant. “They have maid service. We come out and clean up for them about every other week.” The cleaning party today was particularly vigorous.

The letter handed out by the Fresno Police Department, giving notice of the “clean up” said they would “start at 8:00am.” I arrived at 7:50 AM and the destruction of property was already well under way. One homeless woman told me that everything she owned had been destroyed because she was a few minutes too late to save it. “I had paper work in there that can’t be replaced,” she said.

Within a couple of minutes, half of the shopping carts were destroyed. One sanitation worker was heard saying that he wished he could get a nickle for every shopping cart he destroyed.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Fresno made some bad karma for itself.

One car ride, two trains and two long walks later and I’m in my old neighborhood in Chicago for the long weekend. Mostly I’ve been visiting friends and I’ve had several substantial walks around my old stomping ground and had a few observations.

Finding housing isn’t the problem. Affording it is.

The area is starting to gentrify but still has plenty of rough edges. Lots of lower income folks are still here and still a significant presence of the very poor seeming people so it’s hardly some luxurious neighborhood yet. But when I walked past a building I once considered moving into I was shocked to see their available apartments posted. They have shoe box studios for $715 a month. These units couldn’t have been much over 250 square feet and while they seemed safe and clean enough they sure weren’t “nice.” Once basic utilities are tacked on this is over $9,000 a year just to have enough space for a bed, dresser and desk. To keep housing below one third of yearly income this would require earning over $30,000 a year before taxes. This in a town where the average per capita income is slightly over $20,000 yearly.

There’s little wonder in my head why today I found out that another friend is moving out of this area for greener pastures. You simply pay too much to stay in some place that’s a tiny little bit of floor space in an area where gun shots still are all too common a sound.

Poor Folks: broke and made to stay that way

A friend of mine lives in a neighborhood that’s just on the edge of a place you don’t go easily at night. It’s one of the higher crime areas but as it’s relatively affordable it’s where lots of poor and struggling people resort to living. But, this is also a ‘hood where old stock houses are going for up to $800,000 in a condition requiring total gutting and redevelopment as they were once micro-divided flop houses that now house only pigeons and puddles. Granted they could easy be made into two or three unit apartment building so they’re large, but they’re still in a gang ridden crime rich area with some very low per capita income stats. Clearly another enclave of affordability is going to get crazy expensive in comparison to average income.

It was here I went thrift shopping and was shocked at the high prices poor people are expected to pay for cast off junk and occasional gems. This is where I’ve done much of my shopping over the last few years but now their prices aren’t making sense at all. Some of the items were priced near retail and still weren’t a bargain on half price Monday. So where are the poor supposed to save a buck? This isn’t a cash cow outlet in some upper middle class suburban strip mall used to subsidize sales at other locations, this was in the heart of a severely depressed area!

On the way back to my friends house we stopped at a convenience store. Mind you, this is the sort of neighborhood that doesn’t have conventional grocery stores. There’s a couple small ethnic markets but mostly it’s little corner convenience stores that charge and arm and a leg for everything. I treated myself to a bottle of Coke, breaking my no caffeine rule, and my friend wanted beer and was shopping the six packs.

I was appalled at the price gouging on alcohol and as she debated on brand I realized that most of their food items were grossly inflated too. Easily they had marked up prices a good 50% over what a normal grocery or liquor store a few blocks away would charge for the same item, be it beer or food. And when the local grocery is already inflating their prices the gougers are really making a killing. But they evidently sell well at such inflated prices as they were mighty busy selling to people who were too lazy to take the nearly one mile round trip walk to greener shopping pastures.

My Coke was oddly $1.29, the current going rate in Chicago for a single serve bottle and at this place was an absolute steal.

It’s all a mater of perspective.

I was riding public transportation and a gentleman was nearing his stop and was edging his way to the door to exit. He was rather well past due on showering and his clothing probably hadn’t been washed since Eisenhower was in office. He was the epitome of disheveled. Stops are more like pauses so you best be ready to exit and readying yourself while the bus is moving is the norm. As he was walking and using both hands to keep himself up his pants dropped to the ground.

Sitting next to me was a woman who was in her early middle-ages, a decade or two younger than the embarrassed flasher. She was seemingly missing an eye with no prosthetic or patch to cover the gap, wild and crazy hair, poor skin, fashions from the last decade or two and lips that looked like gnarled tree bark covering the few remaining teeth she had. She broke from her stupor to say, “That man needs to get his self together!”

The haves and have nots

It’s been really refreshing to get away from the status and material wealth obsessed people I’ve been around the last month or so. Flirting around in easy van dwelling territories has brought me into many conversations where being poor means not buying new cars rather than walking a couple miles to save the two bucks for a bus. One suburban person couldn’t understand why I didn’t just order an RV with all the things I wanted rather than buy an old used van, repair it and build my own. When I mentioned the price barrier she said, “oh no, they’re really not that expensive. So and so just bought one!” As so and so must be much richer than I could hope to be I just let this topic fade as there was going to be no common ground. My entire van cost about what one month’s payment would be on such a ready made convenience.

Being around people this weekend who are appreciative of things as small as having pants that stay up is really refreshing. Same with being in urban neighborhoods were everything isn’t all homogenized and polished like in suburbia. My urban homeland might be gritty but at least it feels real and not like some pretentious Hollywood facade.

Positive: I’m feeling very excited about the reaction I’m getting from the paintings I’ve done. This might actually work out! I’ve gotten some good high resolution pictures of them now so I can actually part with them without losing them completely. Plus I’ve started a couple more too!

Negative: I’ve had precious little internet access the last few days so I’ve not been able to research how to best sell them.

Positive: I’ll be visiting friends later this weekend so I’ll have plenty of internet time and can catch up on all sorts of things. And I’ll have a driveway to leave my van in so that I can take the train for the visit. It’s cheaper than driving and I don’t have to worry about my van or stuff in it. While I’m off being social I don’t have to worry about cops ticketing me nefariously or hoodlums wondering, “hey, what’s in that dark van over there…”

Negative: I needed to fix the passenger door window before I leave as it’s stuck partially down. This wouldn’t be so bad but it’s been raining so I got soaked the other morning trying to duct tape the opening up as the rain was blowing inside and drenching things. The only thing ruined through was some maps, but those are expendable, the rest will dry eventually. It was one wicked storm. Came up all of a sudden and left just the same but the middle part made me wonder just how much water can fall from the sky before it becomes so dense you need a SCUBA tank to stand in it and fix your stuck open window.

Positive: It seems like it was just a dirty connection that prevented it from going up. I pulled the door apart and didn’t find a flaw exactly, but it was really in need of servicing. So cleaned all the electrical contacts and lubricated the mechanism. I had some white grease from lubing the lock on the back doors and the window rises lickety-split now just as I don’t risk breaking my key off in the back door lock. With an old vehicle of any sort a little white grease liberally applied here and there does a world of wonders.

Negative: Repair costs are getting me down. My alternator needs replacement, there’s a leak in my exhaust and a slew of things typical of a twenty year old vehicle. Not to mention Green Peace keeps picketing my van for the oil slick it keeps dripping. And speaking of leaks, the seal on my windshield lets water through sometimes so I’ll have to get some caulk squirted in there to seal that one.

Positive: Over all it’s been cheap living and does run well. And oil is cheap. Besides when the peak oil doomsday scenario takes place I can just go back to all those places I’ve parked and get my oil back. Dirty puddles of oil will be worth a lot once the underground supply starts running thin. I’ll just need to broker it through whoever cleans up the Canadian oil sands.

The Super Negative: the hidden costs of free storage

This one is killing me. I had planned on having a friend ebay somethings for me and had a box of stuff that would have sold for a good bit based on already closed auctions. She’s a big ebayer and has great feedback so she’d max out the possible prices for things and has sold similar items and knows what works. So while I’d be giving her a cut of the profit, there’d be much more profit since she has tons of stellar feedback and I have essentially zero. Plus, at the time we set this up I wasn’t sure what my life would be like and I didn’t want to take on anything more. I was already up to be nose in life changes in my transaction from living in a home to living in a van.

She suddenly made a trip to the south and wasn’t able to follow through so when I got back to my sister’s house, where I left the box, I found it missing. Apparently it went to charity as the leftovers from our garage sale was picked up. So while I gave explicit instructions, marked the box, placed it separately from the charity pile it still managed to be given away in my absence. My friend was never able to pick it up, being out of state and all, yet there was a verbal understanding that it would be there when I returned. But alas, it was not.
I spent a good day and a half sulking over this one. I was really expecting a trickle of money from my friend as things got sold and as the items were valuable I was sort of counting my unhatched chickens. So now, yet again, I’m at a disadvantage financially. The price range on the items was $300-500 dollars. This is real dollar value based on comparable item sales and not some idle wishful thinking.
Now that I’m feeling established in my van and have a bit of a routine I’m finding that regular internet access isn’t a problem if I focus on it so selling online wouldn’t be a problem. If I want connection it’s easy enough to find. Plus I’m not so focused on making the van a home and have more time for such endeavors as doing my own ebay auctions. But, all my “good” stuff is missing now.

The challenges can end now. Okay? Thanks!

The upshot there is that some charity is getting some really premium stuff to sell. Like the remnant of my record collection, somethings that I was just never able to get rid of despite not even owning a turntable in over ten years. There was some absolute gems including some mint condition original pressings of 1950s jazz albums by then nobodies who went on to super stardom–one of them still sealed. Even without a turntable to listen to them on their mere ownership brought me joy as they were steeped in the history of American music and have been the soundtrack to my life. They exist for now only as mp3 files and fond memories.
There was a few other old things that didn’t look valuable but really are. So I’ll trust their sorters know what they’re doing otherwise someone like myself will be getting a super deal on these things. Much as I one did when buying them.