Friday, April 3, 2009

"Everybody Deserves a Roof"


A thank you to franco folini for sharing this photograph on flickr.

As I wrote about on this blog before, I feel a great affinity with the homeless among us. I particularly empathize with a need to have more privacy than what is afforded by a homeless shelter. I was heartened, therefore, to find this website about the EDAR (Everybody Deserves a Roof) project. You may want to go visit the site and see and read more there. Here is bit of history.

"Peter Samuelson began counting the homeless people on his bicycle route from Westwood, Los Angeles to the beach in Santa Monica and return. There were 62 homeless people on those streets, including many women and several children. Peter interviewed all 62 of them and then conceptualized a mobile single-person device that would facilitate recycling (a principal source of income for many who are homeless) by day and at night convert into a dry, safe tent-like enclosure for sleeping, raised off the concrete, with privacy and storage space.

"Peter sponsored an EDAR design competition at the Pasadena Art Center College of Design. As a result, Peter met designers Eric Lindeman and Jason Zasa, who won the prize, and they have been working pro bono ever since. Wire design and fabrication have been provided free of charge by John Ondrasic and Mike Orozco of Precision Wire Inc."

(Read more here.)


2 comments:

Putz said...

when i was in the national guard, i slept with no roof and duce and a half's racing around all night, and felt i would be run over ....that is what your picture reminds me off, and like you cry for the homeless...i love my home

Unknown said...

I love this. There are a couple of homeless people that I notice all the time around town... I always want to talk to this one guy who walks up and down one of the main streets, but I get too scared, because my mom's voice at the back of my head tells me homeless people are dangerous.
How strange, that I can't bring myself to talk to another human being. Also that a whole section of our society seems invisible almost all the time.

Tell us more if this takes off... I'd be interested in participating in something like this.