ARTIST
FILMMAKER
ACTIVIST
RECOGNITION
"Live simply so that others may simply live." Box Houses are rain proof, lockable, and can be staked down for heavy winds. Can be fitted to standard abandoned railroad tracks. Can float in protected water. The Honeymoon Suite Model is for two. Can also be fitted with solar panels for light, television and/or radio, small swamp cooler; sky light for bird observation or just watching the stars go by. Models include: Honeymoon Suite, Floatable with trolling motor, and Super Deluxe. Multi-use: Camping, ice fishing, children's play house, overflow accommodation, and emergency housing in a natural or man-made disaster. Box houses are totally one-person mobile. They can be moved as easily as a wheelbarrow, or towed behind a bicycle. The objective is near zero use of gasoline.
The idea for the box houses came from my experience of being mistaken for a homeless person and told to 'move-on'. I realized what it feels like to be unwanted and have no place to go. Box houses could help. A person who is homeless because he or she does not have the skills to live in society, could very easily move the box house to a place on public lands and become quite invisible by camouflaging the box with tumbleweeds and mud.
I am hoping soon to have a box house workshop - living experiment at various locations in Arizona, California, and New Mexico, where they might be especially needed.. An experiment in living comfortably with modern technology, at, or below, a third world level. Participants can experience living without gasoline. They can experience what its like to live in an environment outside the US where we use 40% plus of the world's resources and are 7% of the world's population. Are we a little pampered? It will give participants an opportunity for quiet time, to meditate, to think about ways to experience the joys of less stress. And for those who would like to do so in a communal situation, a chance to slow down and contemplate the true purpose of life which might not be the accumulation of personal property and credit card debt. This is an opportunity to unchain oneself from the excessive chemical addiction to gasoline. While at the workshop, each participant will have the opportunity to fabricate, paint, and develop new ideas for box house designs. Completed box houses will be donated to homeless individuals and shelters that could use additional overflow capabilities. One such shelter is being considered in Naco, Sonora, Mexico, where unsucessful border crossers are dumped. Thr existing shelter there is many times overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
Between 700,000 and 2,000,000 people are homeless every night in America.
36% of them are families with children, 13% are single women, and 44% are single men, 33% of them are veterans .
To learn more about the homeless in America visit:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/faculty/jkaret/cbny96/ap8kyopap.htmll