The 30 dwellings at Opportunity Village[, in Eugene, are] made of prefab donated materials, cost “around $3,300 a unit.” The savings come from the fact that they are basically detached bedrooms, with no utilities or running water....A commenter named RoughSleeper:
[And] Dignity Village, two hours’ drive north, on the outskirts of Portland... began in 2001 as a “tent city”, and a protest against the city’s harassment of homeless people... From 2003, the tents were replaced with tiny homes. Since then, the village has successfully offered housing on the communalist model that Opportunity Village is patterned on.
They look like sheds on allotments. In which case, can we have chickens and grow our own food? Will there be some kind of community policing to stop a yardy culture growing?Chickens and growing your own food? I assumed "yardies" were something like "foodies" and filed away the new slang to use the next time Meade fantasizes about putting a chicken tractor and greenhouse in our backyard.
But that's not what RoughSleeper was talking about. Urban Dictionary says — I'll quote the more polite definition — "Yardy is another word for a Jamaican, specifically one from a difficult socio-economic area. The term stems from the slang name given to occupants of government yards in Trenchtown, a neighborhood in West Kingston, Jamaica. Trenchtown was originally built as a housing project following devastation caused by Hurricane Charlie. Each development was built around a central courtyard with communal cooking facilities. Due to the poverty endemic in the neighborhood, crime and gang violence became rife, leading the occupants of Trenchtown to be in part stigmatized by the term 'Yardie.'"
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Home Depot has it covered
It's racist to use the 'y' word.
Now the goddamn Jamaicans are Otherized by some fucking bum in Oregon.
The fucking bum is in England, I think, home of the Guardian. An American wouldn't use the word " allotments" like that, I don't think. Or, obviously, "yardy."
"It's racist to use the 'y' word."
I assume it is. Good thing I didn't run with my imagined definition.
Who knew? Slums are created by people with good intentions.
Urban Dictionary is not exactly a linguist expert.
That word can travel around and mean different things. Consider "fag". It's not the same in different cultures. We in the lower 48 are not taking our slang terms from Jamaica very often.
Good thing I didn't run with my imagined definition.
I'd love to hear your imagined definition, but it's probably best to leave us wondering.
Are they watching the hypocrites?
I care as much about Trevor Noah/Noah Trevor's (I've heard it both ways) future in comedy as I do about Al Franken's opinion about that guy Dave Something who used to have a late night television show.
There is here, and probably everywhere, a certain number of people who are vocally resentful of anything perceived to be 'reception of government benefits'... apart from veterans' benefits etc. But OV seems to be working and most welcome that, so far as I can tell, specially since the place is as orderly and crime-free as almost anywhere else in Eugene. There is still that very visible number of homeless people on the streets, though, some of whom need continuing medical and other professional support even if a similar sort of housing arrangement could be devised for them; I know folks who won't drive into Eugene without carrying, chiefly because of a somewhat irrational fear of 'the homeless'.
I know folks who won't drive into Eugene without carrying, chiefly because of a somewhat irrational fear of 'the homeless'
I was on the phone with a friend in Seattle recently when there was a terrific commotion in her backyard; she recognized it immediately as a regular occurrence. It was a gaggle of homeless men, 10-12, who were going down the alley behind her house rummaging through garbage cans and knocking them over (hence the noise). She went out on her porch and shouted at them to get out of her yard and keep moving, and some of them yelled back and were belligerent. It was a little unnerving for me to listen to over the phone, and if I were home alone I would be quite nervous. These particular homeless folks were aggressive and belligerent and many were, if statistics are to be believed, mentally ill or substance abusers. I don't think it's irrational to be afraid of such folk.
And naming the place "Dignity Village" seems so condescending. What a pat on the head.
"Opportunity Village"
"Dignity Village"
So what is Madison, Wisconsin? Perhaps we need a Althouse Poll?
My vote is for "Village of the Damned"
Oregon’s tiny houses – “But Heben’s version is less Henry David Thoreau, more Emma Goldman. Partly influenced by the solidarity between the housed and unhoused that he witnessed as a participant in the Occupy movement, the model he facilitates emphasises not self-reliance, but mutual aid. That ethic is the real core of this experiment.”
The ghost of Emma Goldman lives on in the “Occupy Movement”. My grandmother always remembered the day “Red Emma” came to town for the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike in Lawrence Massachusetts. She rode past the strikers in an open motorcar waving the red banner, calling out the scabs and cursing the police. Women didn’t do that sort of thing back then. It made a big impression on my grandmother. That was the only strike that the socialists IWW union ever won.
I think "allotments" refer to parcels of land set aside where the gentry can rent little plots to grow vegetables for their own table use.
Some years ago this was quite popular in Britain, and may well still be in vogue.
Leftist Cannibalism, love it.
Los Angeles had a successful privae program running for several years providing microhousing to homeless families of color.
Then the owner of the property found out the project found out the promoter was a black Republican activist, Ted Hayes, and refused to renew their lease.
His literal quote, "If I had known you were a republican I would never have let you do this."
No similar program has ever replaced it, government or private, and the black families are back on the street.
JSD... women are flighty creatures and easily swayed by superficial dramatics. That's why the 19th Amendment was such a disaster for the nation... *g*
As a Eugenian, I'm always shocked when I travel at the relative, or sometimes complete, lack of homeless and panhandlers. Eugene boasts panhandlers on any street corner with moderate traffic, many times one for each corner in an intersection. I can't go more than a couple days without being hit up for gas money in a parking lot somewhere. Our riverbanks are trashed by campsites. It's gotten worse. When I was a kid and hanging out downtown a lot I didn't see much sleeping or pissing in public and the panhandlers were the run-of-the-mill older bearded guy with a sign claiming vet status. Majority now are young and able-looking.
I've got other things to do, and so I don't mean to comment and then abandon a conversation but, ctk777, honestly, surely if you re-read your comment you'll notice the exaggerations? Camping by the river is a problem in certain areas, yes. There are overly aggressive panhandlers? doubtless there are. Worse these things may be than... when? The problems of homelessness and public begging are interrelated but distinguishable, I think, and while obnoxious people being objectionable is regrettable that doesn't devalue the good that OV accomplishes, in its limited way.
IHMMP, I agree that your friend was rightly apprehensive etc in the circumstances you describe. OV and like projects are partial solutions to a set of problems not easily resolved in any humane way. Sometimes naming things using the proper words-- dignity, honor, responsibility-- is precisely what a situation calls for and not at all patronising.
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