November 20, 2021

May all beings have a home.

It’s hard to tell how many people live there. It’s hard to know how many of the dozen cars over there actually function. Now, in addition to the double wide mobile home, there are two campers that are clearly occupied.

When we first moved to MossTerra more than forty five years ago the place across the road was well tended with flower and vegetable gardens. That was when grandmother Martha lived there. Now the place has changed dramatically. It’s a stark contrast to our forest sanctuary. We are grateful the abundance of trees blocks any view of it.

It’s been suggested we could report them to the County. Although the land use codes out here impose few restrictions, we are sure our neighbors are in violation of many of those codes including just dumping their garbage out the back door.  It’s likely the County would require many and significant changes. But we have decided to let this situation be for now. No, we are not at all happy with this. However, because our neighbors keep to themselves, we can only surmise that the living conditions, dismal as they seem to us, are home and shelter for these people. Likely the only home and shelter they can afford.

Driving through urban areas we see the increasing number of homeless shelters. Sadly even in our blue state these unhoused people are routinely ripped from their shelters without support. We cannot imagine being the cause of this for our neighbors.

NIMBY. Not in my back yard is a familiar battle cry. Often applied to unwanted developments like power plants, factories and prisons, it’s now being applied to the unhoused.

NIMBY. Out of sight and out of mind. It’s tempting. But we have decided we need to be reminded of what people are going through in our nation right now. We will not look away. So yes, these neighbors will remain in our back yard.

Beannacht,
Judith – judith@stonefires.com