In which everything reminds George of something else...
...Mobile homes for the homeless, huge neon cats and real rail service for Salt Lake City
New article in The Salt Lake Tribune with some nifty video demonstrating what looks like some handy new pop-up shelters. A colony of them is being put up in downtown Salt Lake City to provide a place out of the freezing elements for some of the community’s homeless this winter.
Looks like a really good idea to me.
SLC’s first legal homeless camp begins to take shape. See what the mini-shelters look like. - Blake Apgar, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 3
…The shelters, created by California-based company Foldum, are slated to house up to 50 people this winter at a city Redevelopment Agency-owned site at 600 West and 300 South.
State homelessness coordinator Wayne Niederhauser said Thursday that when he started pursuing a sanctioned camp, he wanted to offer unsheltered Utahns something more secure than a tent….
I think Niederhauser has this just right. The core of shelter is not just being out of the wind and the rain, but security and privacy. As George Carlin said, “A place for your stuff.” It’s why even some desperate homeless souls have avoided shelters and service centers and formed their own campsites. It gives them some sense of control. At least until the cops show up with bulldozers and throw it all away.
These shelters, with a door you can lock, should get more of our homeless neighbors out of harm’s way and off the streets.
…Think of the shelters as stripped-down tiny houses. Each pod is about 150 square feet with a dividing wall so it can house two people. Pods, which can be locked, come with insulation, heating and cooling units along with fold-up beds and tables with seating.
The units do not feature bathrooms. Salt Lake City is working on providing on-site toilets and camp residents will be referred to the nearby Weigand Resource Center for showers….
Like many cool inventions, you wonder why nobody thought of it a long time ago. Except they sort of did.
Manufactured housing has long been seen as a less-expensive alternative to shelter not just the homeless but also low-income folks, young singles or retired couples looking to declutter and downsize.
The problem, for as long as I’ve been watching local politics, is that housing that’s made elsewhere and quickly set up on-site brings the mental images of a “mobile home park,” which city governments traditionally restrict to the other side of the tracks. And which then fall into the self-fulfilling prophecy of falling apart.
Besides, as Dr. Johnny Fever explained to us on “WKRP in Cincinnati,”
God must really hate mobile homes, Andy, because tornadoes always attack them first... they get very mobile.
In a small town where I once covered the city council and planning commission, there were several meetings where a local mobile home dealer tried to convince the city to allow his products in more parts of town. He argued that modern “manufactured housing” was of better quality than people might think, just as good as the “stick-built” homes that were all the zoning code allowed.
The mobile home guy got nowhere with the city. So he ran for the council himself. The chance that he might get elected frightened the local establishment so much that they dug up an old indecent exposure conviction that was on his record. It would have been illegal to show me that particular record — it was for law enforcement only — but there were hints that if I would go to the county where it happened and search the public records there, I might find something interesting.
So I did, published an article about it, and the mobile home guy was not seen much after that. I’ve felt kind of dirty about it ever since.
The same guy did beat a DUI rap after explaining to a jury that the police officer who found him asleep at the wheel of his car at 3 a.m., stopped at a traffic signal as it turned green, yellow, red, green, for several cycles, with an open bottle of liquor in the seat beside him, never actually saw the car move. No driving. No driving under the influence.
There is reason to hope that 21st century manufactured housing will help solve our acute housing shortage. The key will be if they are well-made, properly installed, kept up and, for want of a better word, policed.
For example:
Gail Miller Homeless Center is under ‘gross mismanagement,’ Salt Lake City businesses allege - Jordan Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 4
The “gross mismanagement” of the Gail Miller Homeless Resource Center by two nonprofits has led to a “rampant rise” in area crime, four Salt Lake City businesses contend in a new lawsuit.
The companies want a judge to order the nonprofits, The Road Home and Shelter the Homeless, to “immediately abate” nuisances — from piles of used syringes and needles to human waste to public drug deals and fights — allegedly caused by their negligent operation of the center….
The big rotating Katz sign in Kansas City to turn again
I was taken by this article in The Kansas City Star about the creation of a new entertainment district in the city where I was born that will feature a giant open-air museum of some of the big neon signs that used to stand out along that city’s skyline.
Kansas City Ferris wheel could be out-dazzled by what will soon lie below: Neon Alley - Eric Adler, The Kansas City Star, October 27
…Unable to recover an original Katz Drug Store sign with its iconic bow-tied black cat, the museum commissioned to rebuild one anew. The sign, whose creation was paid for by Jami and Fred Pryor of seminar fame, was unveiled in August, topped by a 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide cat’s head rotating 360 degrees…
…“The Stephenson’s sign will be up there, the Capri over there. Then, at the end” — he pointed east — “the Katz rotating sign will be right down there. This wall will be packed with signs. The other side will be packed with signs. This whole alley, it’s going to glow.”…
I remember that sign from my family’s many visits to Kansas City when I was a child. It will be cool for people to be able to see it again.
Sorry my old friend Fred Elliott — aka Neon Freddie — a neon artist I knew back in Salina, Kansas, didn’t live to see it.
Real passenger rail service for Salt Lake City? They are looking.
Another article in The Tribune about the plans — well, for now, just dreams — of real passenger rail service from Boise to Ogden to Salt Lake City to St. George to Las Vegas.
Passenger rail connecting SLC to Las Vegas, Boise: Possible, or pipe dream? Here’s next steps. - Jordan Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune, November 4
To understand how best a passenger rail service could connect Salt Lake City to Las Vegas and Boise, Utah transportation officials first need a pile of federal dollars to study the issue.
They’ve asked for it: the Utah Department of Transportation applied for a $500,000 grant earlier this year. Whether or not they will receive it hasn’t been announced, but a decision is expected in the coming weeks, officials said Friday…
As I have written before, I think this would be a great idea. Of course, I’ve always been a fan of rail travel. Which is why I did a lot of it in France this summer. It was great.
France shows that train travel can work, George Pyle argues, if it’s fast and tied into local transit - George Pyle, The Salt Lake Tribune, June 30
…The country’s reputation for a fast and reliable passenger rail service, including the Paris Metro, is a big part of the reason why I’m here. The results have been a little mixed….
…But the intercity routes have proven smooth as silk, with lessons for Utah, Idaho and Nevada to consider.
For passenger rail service to work, it has to overcome the natural habit Americans have to hop in their cars. The UDOT report already failed on one key part of that.
UDOT put the rail travel time from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas at seven to nine hours one way.
That’s not going to cut it.
Not when it takes six hours to drive yourself. (I know people who say they do it in five.) Go whenever you want, stop wherever you want and have your car to get around in once you are there.
But if a new American passenger rail system were to be a high-speed operation like those in Europe, Japan and China, the SLC to Vegas run could be as little as 2.5 hours. So could the Boise-Ogden-Salt Lake trip.
If those proved to be reliable timetables, and they ran, say, four times a day, that could be a game-changer. Well worth it for quick trips to the casinos or Raiders and A’s games….
Anyway, I hope Utah gets the federal grant it has applied for and that they can find a way to make it work. High-speed rail all the way from, say, St. Louis to San Francisco might be too much to ask. But St. Louis to Kansas City to Omaha, or Boise to SLC to Vegas, should be doable.
‘Board!