City
Ballard Group Wants to Build Showers on Wheels For Homeless Camps
A group of Ballard activists are working with neighborhood churches to provide shower and car-camping facilities for the homeless.
Sustainable Ballard volunteer Mary-Lee Mahar says her group —along with the Ballard Homes For All Coalition—has almost finished building their first portable shower—a 8x10 trailer on wheels—and is now looking for churches to open up their parking lots to car campers.
In the last few years, there’s been an increase in the number of homeless people living out of cars and camper vans in Ballard. Some campers had been parking in pay lots around the neighborhood, but nearby businesses complained about problems on the properties and most of the campers were forced out.
Mahar has been talking to churches in Ballard about allowing a few cars to park on their properties. “There’s 52 churches in Ballard. If each church took three or four campers, that’s a lot of campers [off the streets],” she says.
According to Mahar, Sustainable Ballard would like to build about 20 shower trailers, which cost about $2,000 each. “[Each one has] a little water heater. They’ll get once nice 5-10 minute shower,” Mahar says.
Mahar says each shower could be used by about 50 people a day.
Mahar says her group will be meeting with council members and neighborhood groups in the next few weeks to try to build support and find funding for the project.
The prototype shower trailer will be on display at the Sustainable Ballard festival this weekend.
Comments (13)
Good, I hate smelling nasty-assed homeless people who can't/won't shower!!
Posted by Andrew | September 25, 2008 2:48 PMBallard has a LOT of homeless people...it's rather puzzling
Posted by Non | September 25, 2008 2:59 PMThese car campers creep me out. Plus there is one that comes and goes near my house and he always leaves piles of empty of single shot vodka bottles in his wake.
Posted by Sad Comment | September 25, 2008 3:02 PMTo be the devil's advocate, do we really want to encourage this behavior? I know the spread of disease is a pretty bad thing but shouldn't this be a little extra motivation, "Wow I fucking smell horrible, maybe I should find a way to earn a little money"
Posted by Chris | September 25, 2008 3:09 PM#4: i just told the same thing to you 2 years in the future. why are you so stinky and lazy then!!! the 2010 economy is no excuse!!
Posted by jrrrl | September 25, 2008 3:25 PMI don't see how this is encouraging this behavior. A lot of them think "wow, I smell fucking horrible, nobody is going to hire me smelling like this, and there is no place where I can clean up".
Watch this video on CNN:
Posted by Fulvio Casali | September 25, 2008 3:34 PMhttp://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/19/homeless.mom/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Descending deeper and deeper into stank and bad hygiene hardly seems like a recipe for good self-esteem.
Posted by keshmeshi | September 25, 2008 3:49 PMIf the only thing preventing homeless people from showering is access to a free shower, i'm all for it. If the problem is that the homeless people who don't shower don't do so because they are mentally ill and can't function enough to care about showering or distrust social services, this just seems like an initiative to pat ourselves on the back for being so compassionate.
Posted by Bellevue Ave | September 25, 2008 4:01 PM"Ballard has a LOT of homeless people...it's rather puzzling"
Posted by Tiktok | September 25, 2008 4:25 PMBallard has a lot of people who appear to be smelly alcoholics.
We call them "old-timers".
@8, what if the problem is that homeless people don't have a place to shower? how about being nice so people are happier instead of only doing things if they increase our holy nation's gross domestic product?
Posted by mean ave | September 25, 2008 5:34 PM@9 - I thought we call them "Matador patrons"...
Posted by El Groucho | September 25, 2008 6:03 PMDear Mary-Lee Mahar,
Letting the homeless, the destitute, and the down-and-out shower and sleep on Church would be an act of Christian charity. We, the good Christians can't possibly be expected to take time out of our busy schedule of harrassing LGBT to bother with those in need or to waste precious $$$ on the necessitous. How would we fund the hatred and vitriol-sprewing Prop 8 ads in California?
Well, ta-ta, I'm off to save some souls.
Posted by Y.F. | September 25, 2008 6:52 PMSeems to me that being able to stay clean would be essential to holding down a job.
I would ask that folks give this idea a chance to work before passing judgement.
Posted by nwcitizen | September 25, 2008 10:22 PMComments Closed
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