Though I lived in the P.O.W. House for two stretches in the early 1990's, I didn't have a video camera at the time,so I shot very little video there. So here's a bit of Dave Parrick's video footage of Keith Treanor in the backyard, then Dave Clymer on the spine ramp out front, about 1992-93.
Sometime around 1989, a group of BMX racers formed, rented a house, and dubbed themselves the Pros Of Westminster, or P.O.W.'s. It was the first serious BMX rider house, a four bedroom, two bath, single story place, on Iroquois Road in Westminster. There was a total of 22 riders that lived in the house, officially, over the course of about five years. There were also at least 200 or more traveling riders, from across the U.S. and around the world, that spent one or more nights there at some point. The best known members of the P.O.W. house were Dave Clymer, Chris Moeller, Alan Foster, Brian Foster, John Paul Rogers, Todd Lyons, and Jay Lonergan.
A few riders, Dave Clymer, in particular, were there for long stretches, years, and others were there for a few months,at a time. Riders were moving in and out over the life of the P.O.W. House. Generally there were two guys in each bedroom, usually on single matresses on the floor, sharing the bedrooms. It wasn't as freaky as it sounds, it was just a bunch of 20-something, hardcore BMX riders, living cheap during the long recession of the early 1990's. We had 8 to 12 paying roommates pretty much all the time, though often several were away traveling. Rent on the house then was around $900 a month, I think. With utilities, each guy paid from $90 to maybe $120 a month for rent and utilities. At the time, renting a room in a nice apartment, in a traditional California roommate situation, was $350 to $400 a month. A one bedroom apartment was $600 or so. With rent and bills right around $100 a month, we could spend a lot less time working, and a lot more time riding our bikes and traveling, which was our main priority then, other than beer and women.
For about $1,200 initial rent and deposit, the P.O.W. House's changing group of roommates provided a dirty, rowdy, fun, and CHEAP, but sort of decent, place ot live. It worked for that time period, and for our group of guys, a couple of women, and Bob the Dog. No one was trying to escape homelessness, but we had a cool, if usually dirty, self-directed, super low cost, housing solution for all the guys looking for a super cheap place ot live in Southern California. Another house, the H.B. House, took over a couple years later, for more young BMXers, in the mid and late 90's.
Just to be clear, to me a "flophouse" is a house or apartment with a lot of mostly unrelated people living there, with cheap rent being a priority. In my mind, it's not a drug den, though there may be people getting high. Those places are crackhouses, a completely different thing, in my mind. The P.O.W. House was a bunch of us living cheap so we could ride our bikes more, basically. Artists and musicians and many college students have been living cheap for generations, and it's normal among action sports people and punk rock musicians to crash on people's couches and floors while traveling. I'm not trying to diss the P.O.W. House, just use it as a personal example of living cheap, compared the the homeless world.
Now, I realize it's 30 years later, and everything, except pizza, oddly enough, have gone up in price. OK, $5 pizzas are now $6 at Little Caesar's or 7-11 with their bonus program. Anyhow, rent has gone up dramatically, and the whole internet age has happened since.
In addition, the population of chronically homeless people, here in the L.A. metro area, and in nearly all major cities, has exploded. One of the resources being used to house some of these homeless people is called "Tiny Homes." These small, 8 foot by 8 foot, prefab shelters are built in little groups, on obscure pieces of land, since land is so expensive in Southern California. The people in these little communities share bathrooms, showers, and get some food from the people who run the places. They get to keep their foodstamps, to help them eat other meals.
It gets people off the streets, and into semi-permanent places, under a roof. These are temporary housing, while homeless people work through programs to get permanent housing, Section 8 or something like it, paid for by a group of government resources, aka your taxi dollars.
So far, that makes sense to most people. Give people a small place to live temporarily, get them off the streets, and into programs for whatever issues they are dealing with. But as a homeless guy myself, and a blogger, I've learned there aren't really programs for people who want to actually earn a real living again. The housing people talked to all of us in my current area, for a while, about the options. My first option was to share a tiny home with a street friend, a raging (though very funny) drunk, occasional meth user, who was prone to violent outbursts. I declined. I asked a lot of questions, since I've stayed long times in shelters while I was back east. I know theft, daily backed up toilets, lots of drama, and occasional fights, are always issues when you put a bunch of fucked up people in close proximity to each other.
I also did a bit of research. Having spent a long time in various forms of homelessness, I know that homelessness is now an industry in certain aspects. There are people working at non-profit organizations, and some businesses, making their living from "the homeless problem." I have no issue with businesses making profits, that's a major point of business. But back east, I learned how many crony deals work between non-pofit organizations, taking in donations, grant money, and taxpayer money, and funneling it into their buddies' businesses. Old fashioned cronyism. Some organizations are legit, but there's a lot of shadiness as well.
So I began to wonder how much these "tiny homes" actually cost. It was hard to find good numbers at first. One article said the tiny homes cost $7,000 and up. Another source I saw a while back said they cost $17,000. For quite a while, I had no idea what these "tiny homes" cost.
The subject came up while chatting with someone on Facebook, and so I took another look. I found this report, which comes up at the top of Google now. According to this report, by an organization that has been digging through records for years, to bring obscure info like this to the public.
It turns out L.A.'s "tiny homes" for the homeless, cost from $32,712 per bed, to $60,047 per bed, for an average of $42,344 per bed, for the 224 beds in the "tiny homes communities, built, at the time of the report. The report also says the service providers who are running the camps get $55 a night, per bed, for the services they provide on a continuing basis.
OK, this is a SHITLOAD of money to house 224 of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county these days. Yes, Pallet, the company making these tinyhomes, is doing well, really well, their business has increased 7,000% in a couple of years early in the pandemic. Again, I have no problem with businesses making a solid profit. The "tiny homes" idea makes sense as one way to work on the huge homelessness issue in major cities.
My point here is that a bunch of us young BMX riders, 30 years ago, figured out a way to house ourselves for about $100 a month, which would equal $218 today, per bed, per month, figuring in inflation. We lived in a flophouse, a BMX rider themed flop house. That was during the long, double dip recession, and era somewhat like today's, in that sense.
My point is, I'm pretty sure we can do better, here in California. We are close to 40 million people as a state. That includes many of the most innovative people in the country. I'm pretty sure a few businesses here could build what are bascially pre-fab tool sheds, with a power outlet, and some portable bathrooms and showers, for less than $84,000 each (tiny homes are made for two people). You can buy a 8' X 12" tool shed, which is 50% larger than the "tiny homes," for $3,700 at Home Depot (link below).
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of contractors who could safely wire tiny homes for a single power outlet, in a small community. There are companies, like this one in California, that make good portable restrooms and showers. There are also lots of other types of small housing options that could potentially work to house homeless people, like myself, at many different price points. YouTube "real estate whisperer" Kristina Smallhorn has a bunch of videos on these options. Here are a few:
Pallet's Tiny Homes, and other small house ideas...
LA Currents segment on Pallet Tiny Homes - The ones L.A. is using now, for and average of $42,000 per bed average.
These ideas don't included using empty houses, empty retail buildings, empty office properties, buying current motels out, renting apartments, houses, and any other possible options.
Way back in about 1997, before my struggle with homelessness began, I worked as a furniture mover. one day we were moving a dirty Dogloo, an igloo-shaped, molded plastic dog house. Joking around, I asked my co-worker, "Why don't they make these things for homeless people, call them Bumgloos?" We laughed, and kept working.
The idea stuck in my head, and at one point, while homeless, years later, I was thinking about writing a novel about a guy who starts making the Bumgloos, (8 foot diameter, four foot high walls, with a domed roof that fits over them- so several could be packed on a flatbed truck) and builds a community for the homeless. That also winds up housing some artists, and BMXers and skateboarders who want to live super cheap. They build a skate/bike park, art studios, a mini mart, a miniature golf course, a P.O. Box shop (homeless need mail) and Kinko's type office place (computer rental for homeless people). Those businesses help put some of the people to work, and help pay for the community, drawing in business from the local city people. That was the basic idea, not just housing, but work and fun as well. I never wrote the novel, but I thought it out pretty extensively, while homeless, and unable to find any job, when I was in North Carolina (2009-2012, 2017-2018).
Obviously, that idea is similar to the current tiny home communities, happening in many parts of the U.S.. What you might not believe is that even Andres Duany, a major urban designer, and proponent of the New Urbanism movement, has been paid big bucks to share somewhat similar ideas, with his clients.
Several years ago, he was hired for a sizeable sum to help re-design, and help kickstart Highpoint, North Carolina's business development and economic prospects. Highpoint is a former industrial city, a leader in the furniture industry, that got hit hard by factories closing down in the 1980's-2000's. One asset they had was the dying Oak Hollow mall, a now fairly typical "dead mall." Duany's team suggested, (are you ready?) turning the mall property into a business incubator, using lots of shipping containers to let entrepreneurs and artists build the containers into live/work spaces, as well as using the mall's indoor area for similar purposes. Duany understands, and says so in the long videos of those Highpoint meeetings, artist, small business people, and entrepreneurs all need the same thing: CHEAP places to live and work. Cheap live/work places help them get their ideas off the ground.
Build a place where these people can do that, and you'll attract a lot of people with new ideas, who can then bounce off each other's creativity while living in this incubator community. In my nomeclature, this is nurturing "Creative Scenes." The leaders of Highpoint did not see benefit in the "crazy" shipping conatiner ideas, and they didn't apply any of these ideas. But I believe Duany and team are right on track for what's needed in so many places around the U.S. now. These same ideas could be used to house the currently homeless, as well as other groups of people looking to live really cheap for a while.
So there it is, a whole bunch of potential ideas to help chip away at the homeless issue in L.A., and anywhere else. Sheare your ideas and thoughts on Facebook, if you want to weigh in.
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