It Takes a Village

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Jerry’s Meetup — is in the Trophy Room of Menlo Circus, just a few blocks from downtown Menlo Park. Menlo Circus is just like a YMCA, if your family plays Polo and owns a two-to-three-digit home (the millions are implied). The Trophy Room overlooks the Polo Field from an angle, and has a pleasant waterfall burbling away. There are only about twenty of us in the intimate space, so I have about twenty tries depending on how many I pitch at a time. While the mini lobster rolls are being passed around, I go for one of the big fish. “Hi Larry, how are things in Lanai?” “Very nice: it is where I created my ultimate garden and retreat: very Zen and reinvigorating. You should visit sometime” “That would be wonderful, but the drive will kill me.” I am quite sure the invitation was not sincere.

“Ha, most people fly, but I have heard you don’t” “Not until I get wings or my own private jet” “I understand the feeling” “I am sure you do” I say with a smile, knowing full well he is neither a vampire nor plebeian enough to touch a commercial plane. So he does not understand the feelings of ‘most people’ at all. But still, I have to chase the money. “I would like you to help with a problem” I continue. “I need a fair amount of land in the Bay Area, and I would like you to own it.”

“Prices in the Bay Area are a rip-off, even for me, can’t you just buy land in the Midwest or Hawaii?”

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“No, the people are here, and they don ’t have private jets either” “You are talking about the homeless I assume. Your reputation precedes you.” “Yes, homes for the thirty-five thousand homeless. I am targeting getting about 350 acres around the bay. That would house the homeless in about the same or higher density as Buena Vista” . Buena Vista is a 4-acre mobile home park in Palo Alto that is worth about the same as the lesser fishes houses: a bit under $100M. It houses 400 people, or about 100 people per acre. Larry is more used to 100 acres per person, so this may be hard for him to fathom. “That could be several billion dollars depending on where it was. ”

“It does not have to be quite that valuable of land. The goal would be to keep it under a billion.” “I bought Lanai for about that, assuming a third of a billion. Lanai is a paradise of 90,000 acres.” “Well, if you are offering 40 acres and a mule in Lanai, that is very generous if it includes travel”

“Um… no”

“OK, so returning to the easier-to-reach Bay Area. Google has 80 acres in San Jose, relatively close to the city, transit, and other resources. Wouldn’t you like to outshine them?” “By owning an 80-acre mobile home park?” “Well, it wouldn’t be mobile homes: they would look more like ‘normal’ houses except being really small” “So like a homeless village?” “Yes, but done more nicely. Basically trying to be as nice as a suburban village except at much higher density. The homeless

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would own their small homes. There would even be a HOA [Home Owners Association] to apply rules for keeping things looking good” “Co-governing homeless villages have not been doing well” “This isn’t co-governing, just normal home ownership. Except the lots are really small. That is also how it is different from mobile home parks where you are renting your lot vs. owning it.”

“OK. So I buy 40 acres in Fremont for a billion dollars; develop it for a few tens-of-millions to have water, sanitation, and power for the area; you figure out how to get four thousand people to build (or move) tiny homes onto it and we everyone is happy?” “Well… at least most of those four thousand would be quite ecstatic”

“And I get the warm fuzzies for giving away a billion dollars?”

The rest of the conversation — did not go well. My actual proposal was to do a proof of concept (POC) on a 4-acre plot, ideally in East Palo Alto or Redwood City, but Fremont would be fine also. Fremont just meant I had to cross bridges a lot, and ‘modern’ vampires don’t have problems with that or running water in general. If I did, I could always swing around the San Jose base of the peninsula. But Larry and others did not want to spend $100M (or less) on the land to house 400 people. Only special employees are worth $250K each because they can potentially cause a big-bump in stock price. Other people… “meh” . Apparently these homeless are worth something though: about $1,500 each. Although no one wanted to buy the land needed for the homes, they were willing to donate to the cause. By the end of the evening I had $50M in the Firehorse (501c3) bank account and various electronic equivalents. A few even gave me paper checks, which made ‘El Toro’ feel like an armored car on the drive home.

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Maybe I should upgrade it a bit more.

Coffee with Jerry did ultimately enable a successful fishing trip, I just didn’t catch as much as I was hoping for. But the Skuna Salmon that Circus served must have been tasty.

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CONVOY

The convoy starts moving at 1AM. Today is Saturday, July 2nd of the July 4th weekend, which we hope will be symbolic. It being a Saturday means the Tuesday–Thursday–Saturday dialysis groups will be affected first by our encampment, but all local dialysis patients outside will be affected by July 4th. Our fleet of 24 Freightliners (half electric, half diesel Cascadias) is pulling two dozen 40-foot containers. A dozen Ford 650 Box Trucks are carrying the tiny houses in collapsed form. And a dozen Ford F-450 Duallies pulled various 5th-wheelers, but predominantly Living Vehicle Pro models for their solar power and dual-bathroom units. Two tanker trucks were full of mostly diesel with some gasoline mixed in. There were also a large number of Jerry Cans within some of the containers, along with lots of other supplies (especially fresh water) redundantly dispersed around all two dozen. We spaced the departure of each truck by about a minute, and each went with an escort SUV. It took almost an hour to get the final of the 50 trucks on the road. The first half of the trucks had parked before the second even started, so we only needed a couple dozen escorts.

Our encampment — is the empty parking lot of the mostly vacant Peninsula Boardwalk shopping center. This used to be somewhat thriving with a Toys R’ Us and other magnet stores. But the universe killed those stores, and only a rarely patronized Sports Basement eventually took its place. The shopping center is notable in a few ways: first, it is right next to the 101 Freeway that is the major corridor up the peninsula side of the Bay Area. Billions of dollars and millions of people travel that road, many of them to Facebook/Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple. The parking lot is visible from the 101, so everyone will see our presence as of sunlight. It should be newsworthy. Second, the shopping center is right next to the canal to what was a low-cost housing area on the bay. People lived in house boats in the canal and marina on the Bay side of the freeway. Presumably the

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name ‘Boardwalk’ was meant to conjure being on the bay or ocean. But that inexpensive housing approach was recently 'transformed' into $1M+ homes at much lower density, and the house boats kicked out. Affordable housing became insanely unaffordable housing in exactly the same area of the city. Third, the parking lot is not being used even to 10% of its capacity because the car traffic to the shopping center is insignificant. All the people shopping there could easily use the nonfreeway side parking without having to compete for spaces. At worse they have to walk around or through the Kohl, like they would in any indoor mall. Fourth, the parking lot is quite large, and we can easily create a 600-foot x 150-foot (2 acres) space within it. The perimeter is established by the Cascadias and their trailers, where each is 70 feet long. Including some amount of overlap and redundancy, the perimeter is 3 + 9 + 3 + 9 = 24 rigs. Two of the rigs on each end are make-shift sliding doors. A hill to the 101 forms the North-East border, the Sports Basement forms the South-West, there is a bridge over the canal in the North-West entrance, and the main entrance is the rest of the parking lot to the South-East. Our encampment isn’t a fort, but you also couldn’t wheel up an armored battalion and just roll over us. At least without it being quite a scene to those on the 101.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark L. Fussell lives (or lived) with his wife Rebecca, and two daughters Maya and Katrina, in Palo Alto, California. He makes a living through consulting for companies including Apple, Intel, Sony, and HP. He makes a life through the loving relationships he has with family, friends, and even mere acquaintances. He was a little strange before this adventure, and now he is even more so.