WRITER • READER • RUNNER • RUMINATOR

Category: Ruminating

A Place For More “Vans Down By the River?”

You can’t shake a stick around Denver without hitting an occupied motorhome parked on the side of the Mile High City’s streets. 

There are hundreds upon hundreds of individuals in Denver who call these ubiquitous motorhomes or recreational vehicles (RVs) home. There are a greater number of Denver homeowners who call these same vehicles an eyesore, a safety concern, and an environmental hazard. 

I found myself driving one of these cluttered streets with my significant other, who made a comment that made me go, “hmmmm.” 

“Why not make an RV Park just for these quasi-homeless, outside of town, with dump stations, water, and electricity. Where they can park without fear of being towed?” she asked. 

I answered with an observation that didn’t come close to addressing the issue. 

“Transportation. If you move them out of the city, away from the bus and metro, then if they find a job, they don’t have a way to get to it.” 

She gave me the nod. The one that means, “OK. Valid point. Is that all you got?” 

Well, it was. At that time. At that spot. But it got my ruminating side going. RV parks for those with nowhere else to go. Is that a thing? Do they work? How do they work? Aren’t they addressing the symptoms of homelessness rather than the root problem? 

The COVID-19 epidemic highlighted the vulnerability of the homeless and accelerated innovative proposals that had been waiting for someone to pay. With federal COVID funds available, cities across the United States began looking at ways to get the homeless off the streets and into living quarters. You can read about a successful RV housing program at San Francisco’s Pier 94 and the failed projects in San Jose and Seattle here. But what you can’t find out there on the Internet is a single instance in which providing an RV park for the homeless resulted in a long-term, permanently funded, solution to homelessness in a city. Spoiler alert: you won’t find a solution in this blog either. 

Because it’s complicated. 

Let’s do some point/counterpoint on this RV park concept: 

Point: Shelter and sanitation are basic human rights. Providing RV parks for the homeless grants these rights. 

The quasi-homeless living in street-side RVs have it better than most of the homeless population. Thousands are living in tents or under tarps and relieving themselves on or near local landscaping. But those in RVs are also often without heat or water and run into the same problem with waste due to full tanks. Five-gallon buckets dumped in sewer drains or on vacant lots
provide a dumping solution. 

Counterpoint: OK. If you build it, they will come. But what next? 

Once you move the homeless to an RV park, what comes next? “Get a job,” is the most oft-quoted response. It is also the response that shows a lack of awareness about the homeless problem. Depending on where you search for statistics, data shows a quarter to a half of all homeless struggle with mental health disorders and/or drug and alcohol addiction. Giving these people a roof over their heads, water, and electricity might be the right thing to do, but it won’t “cure” most from the underlying conditions that led to their life on the streets. Note: Homeless in shelters have lower rates of mental health
issues and/or alcohol/drug issues—so, quasi-homeless in RVs may have lower rates as well.
 

Bottom line: If you’re going to fund the RV park, then you should fund the required counseling and treatment to address conditions preventing your tenants from gaining employment. 

Point: The RV park concept gets all these vehicles and people off our streets 

How about a city we are proud of and not one that looks like a graveyard for 1970s RVs and a repository for blue tarps? If we build these parks with the appropriate infrastructure and support, then our streets will shine again and we’ll look like a city that takes care of its homeless. The San Francisco Pier 94 program is a success story. Built with federal COVID funds, San Francisco will sustain it with state funds. 

Counterpoint: Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to maintain it? 

Great. Who is going to pay for it? It’s a rhetorical question because everyone knows the money will come from the taxpayer’s pocket. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a federal program using emergency funds or a city program run by volunteer organizations (funded by government grants,) this RV park initiative is a burden paid for by taxpayers who did not create the problem but live with it every day. And it’s not like the government has a great track record for effective and efficient use of funds for projects like these. Look what happened in San Jose—$1.3M spent before they relocated the 37
residents and the project shut down for escalating costs. If you’re going to
build it, a long-term sustainment plan is required—one built from guaranteed resources and not from emergency funds and contingency volunteers. 

Bottom Line: You can’t build this concept like an experimental refugee stream. It has to be programmed and developed in the same fashion as a permanent homeless shelter—with consideration for transportation, food, waste management, counseling, job training, and safety factored in before the gates open. 

Point: The RV park concept makes our neighborhoods safer because we no longer have the quasi-homeless parked on every street. 

It’s not just the local residents who feel insecure when walking down a sidewalk populated by the homeless. Other homeless people can feel threatened as well. It’s not the homeless descriptor that frightens others. It’s the known fact that mental illness and drug/alcohol use are more prevalent
among this population than others that makes these streets feel less safe than
others. Centralizing these RVs in designated parks makes more streets safer. 

Counterpoint: Right. You build these parks and now they are all together in one spot. And everyone who lives near that one spot is now concerned about their own safety. 

Does moving these RVs and people to a central RV park really make more people safer? Tell that to the people in Los Angeles County’s Westchester where the congregation of RVs and tents sits just yards from a local school. It doesn’t matter where in a city you build this RV camp, it’s going to be in someone’s “back yard.” And if you build the project far away from the city population, you’ve built a detention center rather than a housing solution that allows for potential future training and employment. 

Bottom Line: There is not an “in-city” RV park solution which will make everybody happy. But centralizing these RVs would make larger sections of the city safer. 

 Point: Providing the homeless a “permanent” home in the RV park helps them restore their dignity. 

A permanent shelter in a neighborhood setting can restore a homeless person’s sense of dignity, giving them a place they can call their own. When the person doesn’t have to spend the day wondering where they will sleep or park next, worried about their safety, or searching for their next meal, it allows them the stability and time to get themselves together. 

Counterpoint: Does it really? 

Some would argue giving the homeless a permanent place to live without asking for something in return does not provide dignity. As Andrew C. Brown, director of the Center for Families and Children at the Texas Public
Policy Foundation and Michele Steeb, former CEO of Saint John’s Program for Real Change in Sacramento noted, Giving them (the homeless) a roof over their head without expecting them to address the root causes of their homelessness robs them of their inherent dignity and the opportunity to reach their full potential.” 

Bottom Line: The RV park solution alone is not the answer. It has to be connected to an opportunity for the residents to either receive treatment for the disability that factors into their homelessness or training and employment assistance for a future that allows the resident a pathway to becoming a tax-payer who contributes to the type of shelter in which they once lived. 

I said at the beginning of this piece, “it’s complicated.” If it wasn’t, then every city would copy the success stories around the country and their streets would overflow with lemonade stands and kids playing kick-the-can instead of stationary RVs. 

This post looked at one concept with a soda-straw view and didn’t address the root causes of homelessness, the potential of low-income housing initiatives, the scourge of drug and alcohol addiction, or dealing with mental illness. Heck, we didn’t even discuss whether the RV park would provide the RVs for the resident like they did (or planned) in San Francisco and San Jose, or whether residents could tow or drive their current RVs to a designated park.

The point I wanted to make was the same one Colin Powell made prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. “If you break it, you own it.” By this, I mean that if you are going to use our citizens’ fiscal resources on an initiative to help the homeless, then you need to plan it, fund it, execute it, and maintain it. Not half-ass it. Pulling the homeless off the streets and giving them a roof over their head in an RV park is not a solution. But housing opportunities, as part of a comprehensive rehabilitative and vocational effort to reduce the number of homeless, could provide hope for those in need and make our cities a better place to live.

You’re Foolin’ Yourself If You Don’t Believe It…

I returned this morning from a Boy Scout campout on the Upper Arkansas River Valley, just north of Salida. We had eight or nine scouts with us throughout the weekend as the Angel of Shavano looked down upon us from a tad over 14,000 feet. Beautiful weekend, despite having to chip through the ice on our drinking water in the morning. 

I helped our Scoutmaster lay out an orienteering course while the Scouts hung around the campfire, swinging sticks at each other. I’m sure he assumed my 30-year military career gave me plenty of experience in this area and since the adult who had prepped the Scouts on compass use (a retired Green Beret) was out of country, he was hoping for some help.

He was right about my experience. Wrong about my aptitude.

Turns out, it had been a few years since I’d been through my aircrew survival
training refresher, and I was more than a little bit rusty. OK—lots of years.

“What’s your pace?” he asked. 

Now I’m not bad in the jogging department and usually train in the 8:10-8:40 minutes for a mile. But even as I silently nodded, I knew that wasn’t what he was talking about. 

He must have sensed my hesitation. “You know, how many paces does it take for you to go 100 meters? So we can set this course.” 

OK. It was coming back to me now. If you’re going to follow a 270-degree bearing for 150 meters, you need to know how many steps that is. “About
a 100, I guess.” 

He gave me a dubious look. “Let’s pace off a 100 and see what it looks like.” 

I started walking, taking what I figured was 39-inch steps, and stopped at 100. He pulled up next to me and shook his head. “I still got ten to go. Are you counting every step or every other step? We were taught to count every time your right foot hits the ground.” 

Shit. And so it went. By the time we pulled the compasses out, I had recovered my sense of bearing (get it?) and could shoot an azimuth. But I quickly realized that the last time I’d used a compass in this manner was
before I started using reading glasses. How can you read those tiny numbers? I was pulling out the IPhone to check my work (this, after I pulled out my GPS to check my 100 meters.) 

It all worked out. Within minutes, I had my 100-meter pace (60 steps for me) and was reviewing orienteering skills with the Scouts. By the end of the hour, the Scouts were setting up their own courses. I had fun. The Scouts had fun (not as much as swinging dead tree branches at each other, but how can you compete with that?) 

 Driving home, the scent of my two boys tea-bagging campfire and body odor throughout the Subaru, I reflected on what I had learned. 

“How to use a frikkin’ compass…again” said my dominant side (the smart ass.) 

But it was more than that. 

The first thing is that not every skill is like riding a bike. Sure, after 4,000 or so flying hours, I can keep an airplane from running into the ground. But unless I’ve been operating its flight computer for a couple hundred hours (ie practicing and training), I’m going to have a hard time getting us where we need to go and talking to who we need to talk to. The same held true for my compass skills. If I really want to be able to land navigate with magnetic north, I need to practice those skills more than once every twenty years. And before you say, “Why not just use the phone?” I’ll remind you that the freezing temperatures in the Rockies can take down IPhone and GPS batteries rather quickly. 

And reading about these skills isn’t enough. You’ve actually got to “do” the skills you think you remember, if you want to perform them at crunch time. That’s why CPR training is an annual requirement for many organizations.
Maybe it should be semi annual. Physically “doing”; whether it’s pressing a pen to paper, snowboarding, or using a lensatic compass, will burn the skill into your brain much faster and deeper than reading about it. 

Finally, exercise these skills in public. If you’ve maintained your proficiency, you may have the opportunity to teach others. And there’s no better way to hone your craft than by teaching. If you haven’t kept up with your skills, exercising that in public is the best way to ensure you’ll get it right. Most people don’t like to fail, but no one likes to fail in front of others. You’ll pay more attention, try harder, and learn better if you’re doing all this with or in front of others. 

It’s not about the compass. It’s about reviewing what you need to know and refreshing those skills. If you’re a writer, it means mixing in “Character” or “Setting” seminars with your “How to Make Your Website Sizzle” class. Going back to the basics. 

Readers of fiction should throw in some non-fiction. You had to read and analyze that stuff in your past. Have you lost those skills? 

If you’re a runner, it means getting out there for a race or group run and pushing the edges of your comfort zone. To be a better runner. 

As Tommy Shaw of Styx wrote: 

“Get up, get back on your feet. You’re the one they can’t beat and you know it…”

Thank you, General Powell

Colin Powell passed away today.

What a national treasure. 

And a personal mentor as well. General Powell probably has no memory of Air Force 2nd Lt Torrens. But I will always remain indebted to his formative role in my life. 

I met Colin Powell in the spring of 1991 on a gravel road in Iraq. My C-130 unit had deployed to Incirlik, Turkey to airdrop food and supplies to the Kurds in Northern Iraq retreating from Saddam Hussein’s post-war gas attacks on those who opposed him. Capt Stan Masters (another great American, gone too soon) was my pilot and informed me our role was to get General Powell out of the combat zone and onto a C-141 back to the States. 

“You can fly the leg out to go get him. Enjoy it because you aren’t touching the stick after he’s on the plane,” Capt Masters said to me. 

The road where Gen Powell waited was our landing strip and Capt Masters took the plane from me and put it down on brick one. “No copilot landings in a combat zone,” he said. Truth was, there was no way he was going to let his copilot jack up a landing in front of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. We kept the engines running while the loadmaster loaded the General and his staff on board. Gen Powell stuck his head up into the cockpit and Capt Masters introduced the crew. 

“We’ve got a spot for you to get some rest in the back, General. It’s not fancy, but hopefully you can sleep,” Masters said. 

“The heck with that. I want to hear about what you all have been doing. Got any room for me up here?” Gen Powell asked. 

We all looked at each other. The Chairman wanted to sit up front with us? The flight engineer stood up from his position with a smile and Gen Powell sat in the middle of the flight deck for the remainder of the flight. 

But he didn’t sleep. After a whirlwind tour in Iraq, checking in with the joint forces controlling the humanitarian aid delivery, he spent the next hour asking our crew about what we did in the war, how many kids we had and what they were doing, and how our spouses were holding up.

Over the next thirty years, I would read all of Colin Powell’s books. My American Journey. It Worked For Me. A Soldier’s Journey. The difference between these books and others on leadership? My crew saw it in action. He was a soldier’s soldier, and he practiced what he preached. Or as he said: 

The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.

 He was not infallible. No person ever was. I know he must have spent the last twenty years agonizing over his role in misinterpreting intelligence that led to the coalition invasion of Iraq. But no one will convince me his intentions were political. I firmly believe he was trying to do the right thing with the information he had. 

He lived out those life’s lessons of which he wrote, even as he entered his final chapter. I have fellow veterans with stories of interaction much more interesting than mine. Capt Greg Clark flew Secretary of State Powell back into the US from South America after 9-11—one of the few flights in the air that day. Even under the stress of that terrible attack, Secretary Powell was asking the crew how they were holding up. Combat vet Anthony Maggert has a great story about helping Gen Powell change a tire on his way to Walter Reed and how they stayed in touch after their chance meeting. 

It’s these simple tales from common soldiers that touch my heart. The stories are there because of a man who never let ego get in the way of teaching young men and women how humans should talk to one another. 

And there is no more appropriate lesson in today’s world. 

Thank you, Gen Powell for your humble service to our country and bless your family. Your nation mourns your passing.

 

 

A Confession: I’m tracking my pandemic days. You can count on it.

This piece was published in the Colorado Sun on 28 Jan 2021.

Colorado authors, thinkers and readers share their thoughts on living through historic times as the state fights the progress of coronavirus

Pandemic Day 312

I count.

Asked how I’m dealing with the pandemic, I rarely admit this truth. That my coping mechanism for things I can’t control is to count. To track. To schedule.

Because it sounds a little weird, don’t you think?

I remember 30 years ago, crawling into the passenger seat to drive to the grocery store with my father-in-law. He adjusted the driver’s seat, started the car, and then scribbled a note on a piece of paper he’d pulled from the cupholder in his door.

“What did we forget? Ice cream?” I asked. Looked like the grocery list to me.

Not likely. My wife’s parents were starting to forget things, but not when it came to the core essentials: ice cream, mixed nuts, and red wine.

“It’s my seat tracker,” Edward answered. “I log how many times I drive with the seat in each position. Forward. Back. Forward recline. Back recline. Up, down…you know, so I make sure and use them all equally.”

I often recall this incident to rationalize my current behavior. I share it with you to demonstrate self-awareness. I know what weird looks like.

And it’s not that I didn’t gravitate toward a routine before the pandemic. I spent 30 years and one month in the Air Force. Some of the time, I was responding with a “checked, checked, checked,” to the copilot’s checklist queries. Most of the time, I sat behind my desk (or a folding table under a tent while in the desert) and put X’s in the little boxes I’d made on my long “to-do” lists. Just a diagonal if I’d started an item but not finished it.

Not weird. Meticulous.

Then, boom. Retirement and a pandemic hit like a one-two combo. The retirement punch hadn’t been an issue. I started helping with my boys’ wrestling club, joined Chaffee County Search & Rescue, and, after a severe arm-twist, won an election for a board position on our homeowner’s association (unopposed—imagine that!). Enough involvement to keep from being one of those post-retirement heart attack statistics.

But that second punch? The pandemic? Oof! Houston, we have a problem.

It isn’t like our family feels we can’t do anything. We do tons. We hike. We climb mountains, we fixed up the camper van and use it. A lot. The problem is that at the end of the day, I pull up my news feed (which so conveniently remembers the news I tend to read) and none of that news is good. And there is nothing I can do about it.

When I worked, I felt like I had a micro influence on the rest of the world. When I retired, I felt like I had a micro influence on my community. During the pandemic? Feeling kind of powerless.

So, I count. And track. And schedule.

My 2020 day planner will surely inspire in my grandkids the same kind of strange look I initially gave my father-in-law after the “seat tracker” incident.

– 41 fishing trips—165 fish caught*

– 10 14er’s climbed

– 33 nights in the camper

– 22 Search & Rescue calls

– 15 snowshoe hikes

And the list continues. You get the point, even without me adding in our miles hiked, ping pong games, tennis matches with my wife (hard to track victories on that one…), etc.

Day planners aren’t a problem, right? But I’ve moved my 2020 data over to a spreadsheet on the computer. I’ve got 2021 set up in the same template with the same categories as last year. And a few more. Aiming to break some of 2020’s records.

So, when people ask how I’m dealing with the pandemic and all, I give them my stock answer.

“Enjoying the time with the family.”

But now you know the truth.

I count.

* Note for the game warden and math majors—most trips included my boys!

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