Housing the Homeless, One Guilty Liberal at a Time

by Nathan Walpow

A lot of the time the L.A. Times’s Column One feature is simply lame, filled with facile commentary on some miniscule aspect of our society. (And believe me, folks, I’m an expert on facile commentary.) But sometimes it’s fun and sometimes it’s interesting and sometimes it’s even worth writing about. Thus it was with last Wednesday’s edition, entitled “Reengineering the cardboard box” in the paper and “Upgrading from a cardboard box for the homeless” online. There’s this philanthropist, see, and he’s invented this “offspring of a shopping cart and a pop-up camper,” see, and they’re testing it out and homeless people seem to like it. And, hell, even a cynic like me can get all fuzzy inside reading how this guy’s helped some people and maybe will help some more.

But, hell. The thing’s still, when you get right down to it, a really fancy box. And I still haven’t comprehended why people are still living in boxes. What kind of stupid [fill in one: city, country, world] is this?

The story of my Bell’s-palsy-hiatused mystery serial, Bad Developments, involves (among several dozen other not-yet-connected plot threads) a plan to house all of L.A.’s homeless. In a way, I was fortunate that half my face froze (I’m all better now; thanks very much for asking) because I hadn’t the faintest idea where to go with that plotline. I’m not an advocate; I’m not a policy wonk. But some of you out there are one or both. So let’s start a conversation: if you had unlimited funds (as the guy behind the plan in my story does; we’ll worry about real-world funding later), and you wanted to get everyone in Los Angeles off the streets, how would you go about it? Broad strokes or minutiae, I don’t care. Whatever you want to say. Say it here.

On a somewhat related note ... I went to the post office yesterday, and there was a woman standing outside. She had a small rolling suitcase and some sort of other bag on top of it, and she was just lurking there where people walk when they exit the P.O. and head for their cars. There’ve been homeless people there before, but I tried to convince myself she wasn’t one of them. Not because, gee, it would be nice if this person wasn’t homeless, but because I dreaded the inevitable asking for of money when I emerged if she was. And I looked at her hair, and it was gorgeous. Clean, combed, shining. And because of this I decided she wasn’t homeless; she was merely waiting for her husband/friend/whatever to come out.

I was, of course, wrong. Nice hair and all, she hit me up as I left the P.O. And I said something inane like, “Hitting some tough times?” and I reached for my wallet to give her a buck or two. Which wasn’t there. The smallest thing I had was a five, and I looked at her and said, “I don’t have any singles, and I don’t want to ...” and I trailed off because, really, what else was there to say? And she said, “Happy holidays,” and off I went, just bursting with liberal guilt.

I got halfway to my car, then stopped. I thought of the ten bucks I spent on the birthday card for my sister I’d just mailed (it’s about a foot square, has a giant picture of Hillary Clinton on the front, and plays “YMCA” when you open it, because to have a happy birthday it takes a village, people), and the nearly five I’d just given the post office to send it priority mail because, as usual, I’d waited until the last minute.

I turned around and walked back and fished out my wallet again and gave her the five. She said thanks, but I felt a twinge of disappointment that she hadn’t been more excited at my largesse. I went to my car, that liberal guilt not assuaged, and I thought of how much more I could do, and how I probably wouldn’t do it.

Then I went to the local bakery and picked up a triple berry scone to go. Two and a quarter, and another quarter in the tip jar. It sure was good.

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