This morning, pre dawn, I woke to the sound of my doorbell going ‘ding’. I was being alerted to the fact that there was a fire just over the hill and a possible evacuation was at hand.
I leapt into survival mode and impressed myself, once again, with the human ability to deal in crisis with efficiency, speed and non emotion. As I loaded a few things into my car, I thanked her.
Cars.
During the eight years of being without a home, the aged black Subaru station wagon was ‘it’. My husband and our beloved dog lived in it around the clock, while I house sat here and there, but it was our home base, our safety, our holder. We experienced profound drama when it broke down or we did not have the money for gas.
Homelessness is looming for the masses, in ways that are unimaginable. I have said and will keep on saying that I know that the reason that we lived this is because we learned things that one cannot know unless one has lived them. One is the importance of having a car.
There is a vital effort to get tent dwellers off the street and ideally creating solid homes is the the answer. As a pre-home solution, an intermediate step, and one that can then move into being in addition to having a home, there needs to be a program for supplying those without homes with cars.
Women on the street need protection. One can lock the doors and windows of a car and move.
People seeking employment need transportation and a ‘closet’ for clean-up essentials and clothes. Cars provide this.
I vote for initiating a program ‘calling all non functional cars’ to be put in working order by hired homeless people. The cars find homes and with the cars, the owners receive a gas stamp allowance, along with their food stamp allowance.
Here, here.