Urban Planning Taboos

 There are taboos in my profession, topics for which you don’t share any cynical apprehensions. One topic concerns the concept of “the homeless.” We progress under the shibboleth that all those unfortunates who live under overpasses, dig through restaurant dumpsters, and wander the street in miserable, disheveled condition are there for several justifiable reasons, all of which are directly our fault, certainly not theirs.

 Most are there, we understand, because they lost a good paying job and, next, their home.

 Others are there because they mistakenly joined the military and came out too traumatized to fit into society in any meaningful way. Of course, the Vietnam vets are the worst, notwithstanding the fact that they are getting a little “long in the tooth” to wander the streets, sleep on the frozen ground, and frighten the righteous as we, uh they, have done for half a century. Military veterans, often grouped under the subset, “homeless veterans,” seem to add a bit of patriotic cache to appeals for money. Everyone loves a vet, or so they say.

 It is this latter group which prompted me to examine the matter of homelessness in more detail, risking much alienation and approbation from liberal friends and professional colleagues.

 It started when a friend from northwest Arkansas came to Little Rock for a meeting and invited me to lunch. I met him at a downtown diner and found that he had brought another person. He introduced her as a homeless advocate, and we sat to dine. The talk soon turned to her advocacy. She proudly related how her efforts were aiding the poor and unfortunate up in what some call “Walmartia.”

 Interjection of a Generalizaion_1: The only poor and unfortunate people in northwest Arkansas are there by choice and not by fortune.

 Interjection of a Generalization_2: All generalizations are specious, even the previous one.

 Anyway.

 She proceeded to set off a hidden bomb that I had been harboring for nearly 50 years. She just had to go and mention all the self-satisfying work she was doing for the homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas.

 Homeless veterans in northwest Arkansas? Now don’t get me started. Oh, you already have, you say. Oh well.

 To make a long story bearable, I calmly asked a question that had been smoldering within me like a lit fuse headed for a store of dynamite. “How do you go about determining veteran status?” I asked. “Do you require a DD214?"

 I’ll swear on my Sainted Mother’s grave that she forked a bit of salad in her mouth, chewed, and calmly said, “What’s a DD214?”

 I took a deep breath and thought of rose gardens and Martha Lou Shomier from high school. I exhaled, managing to keep my cool. “Only the proof that those people you are calling ‘homeless veterans’ have actually ever served in the military.”

 “Oh,” she said, obviously relived that it wasn’t a requirement that had to do with grant proposals. “I do suppose we have some that may ‘assume the persona,’ I really don’t know.”

 “Assume the persona?” Was I hearing correctly? She did say, “Assume the persona” and not the more military-related, “Assume the position,” didn’t she?

 I turned to my friend. “Have you ever actually known a homeless veteran?” He pretended that he had been so busy enjoying his meal that he had missed the conversation. Of course he hadn’t known any homeless veterans. He had, in all likelihood, only known a handful of veterans in his life.

 Just then, fate interviewed. I caught a glimpse of a friend from high school enjoying a meal with colleagues, all in their finest “litigatin’ suits.” Judging from their raucous comradery, they were probably on opposite sides of the same lawsuit.

 “See that man?” I said. “He spent a year as an enlisted man in an artillery unit in Vietnam. He’s now a partner in one of the most prestigious law firms in Arkansas. And, oh by the way, he’s not homeless, not weighted down with any false persona, and is more representative of the military veterans that I know, than any of your so-called ‘poor homeless vets.’ So you can take your ‘persona’ and shove it.”

 I didn’t finish my meal, but I did, I’m afraid, end a friendship.

 Next: Searching for a definition.

 

Affordable Housing

 The answer to affordable housing for service workers may require much broader lateral thinking than we have attempted thus far. It may require cooperation from sources not engaged to date in our analysis, to wit:

The military: It must have hundreds of thousands of helicopters it doesn’t need due to the pressure from legislators representing areas where they make the darn things.

Government Archives: Surely there is some hidden corner of some warehouse where one can find the plans for the internment camps and homes where displaced Japanese families were interned in 1941.

Employment Agencies; They should be able to standardize the shift times of entities employing service workers.

Famers: They will make more money with far less effort by renting plots of farmland to the government.

Highway Construction Departments: A dollar saved by not building commuter lanes is a dollar that can be used for transportation.

President Trump: He will certainly throw his political weight behind a program that will help his make good on his promise to protect the real estate investments of wealthy homeowners.

 By now, the hyper-astute among you can see where this is headed,

Yes.

1. Obtain large segments of vacant land downwind but near major employment centers.
2. Use archived plans to rebuilt exact replicas of the internment camps of WWII.
3. Move service worker families into the camps.
4. Construct multiple helicopter pads adjacent to the camps.
5. Standardize shift schedules at plants, service outlets, retail outlets, etc.
6. Build helicopter pads located within walking distance of major employment centers.
7.  Confiscate, say, 50 percent of the largest helicopters the military has but doesn’t need.
8. Confiscate funds wasted on building commuter lanes.
9. Obtain a couple of presidential executive orders.
10. Tear down any existing low-rent housing near suburban enclaves.
11. Schedule pickup and delivery times.

 Problem solved.

Old Days. Old Ways.

For some reason yesterday, I began thinking of my fifth-grade elementary school teacher. Her name was Edith Rupe and she enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most popular teachers at Lakeside Elementary in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, an all-white institution of learning at the time.

I know little of her private life. I know she was unmarried and lived in a boarding house that I think was located on Sixth Street, at the edge of Downtown. The school was on 15^th Street so she walked or rode the bus to and fro. A bus ran within a block of the school.

I can’t determine what her salary would have been. Some records indicate teachers were paid an average of $3,000 per year but I can’t imagine that they were paid half that in my hometown. The African-American teachers probably received less than half that of white teachers.

At any rate, it was a lonely and minimal experience that she must have led as she trained young minds to face the future. Her only companion was a parakeet who died when I was in her class. She squashed our offer to take up collection for a replacement, choosing more loneliness over more heartbreak. Televisions wouldn’t become common for several years, so it is a bit comforting to know that she lived only a few blocks from the (white) city library.

Boarding houses, rooming houses, or resident hotels, as they were called, afforded a common source of housing for American workers who could not afford the $9,000 average cost of a new home or the $80 per month average rent of a full apartment. Rooms at a boarding house included meals. Patrons relied primarily on public transit or walking for access to jobs. Boarding houses existed well into the 1970s and began to fade from the urban landscape. Here is the last one I remember.

It stood in Little Rock a few blocks from our state’s Capitol and the building exists to this day. It has been recycled as a commercial use for decades.

What caused the demise of boarding houses? They once served as entry-level abodes for newcomers moving to the city for their first job. Safety made them popular with young females. Low price made them popular with students. Racial conditions made them segregated.

Some scholars blame local zoning and building codes for the passing of this type of dwelling. I’m sure that played its part, although most zoning ordinances in our state still list them as an allowable use in certain districts, as long as those districts are far away from the rich folks.

At the same time, building codes portray the audacity of requiring that buildings have adequate structural components, safe electrical systems, and meet the nebulous social designation of being “decent, safe, and sanitary.”

Also, most areas of our state lack public transit systems, and despite the urging of planners, walking to work in temperatures of 90-plus degrees and 100-percent humidity isn’t nearly as socially soothing as it might seem.

That brings up the matter of the automobile as the default system of conveyance. Even a modest requirement of one parking space per unit might require more space for the automobile than for the tenants.

Some murmuring is circulating that boarding houses might represent at least a partial solution to the present crisis in affordable housing and its tragic offspring: homelessness. As with many elements of the urban landscape, most people would consider that a fine idea, as long as the results didn’t end up anywhere near their own backyard.

And so it goes.