Why Can’t Y’All Go Live in Abandoned Ghost Towns?

For crying out loud, some people are dumb and over privileged. I am not sure how much of it I am capable of absorbing before my head starts spinning round and I projectile vomit like some 1970s horror movie chick.

To live we need water. Now you might not think too much about what comes out of the faucet, but trust me, once you don’t have ready access to clean and plentiful water, it becomes real important, real fast. Putting in a well, let alone a big producing well is costly. Very often they just don’t produce well enough to provide for the people, animals and crops they have to. They are not cost effective. In areas which are cheap to find land, water is almost impossible. Drilling through rock, only to find the water is contaminated, like in parts of Southern Oregon, or just not there, is a hugely expensive and risky business. Running electric to very remote places is not always possible, but if it is it is costly. Generators are costly. Solar and wind aren’t always options. Without power and water it is a total bust.

Just living on the road, not always having water or power was a huge issue…as was a signal for the cell phone and wifi. Sewer. Water. Electric. Somewhere close by to buy food – whole swathes of the USA are food deserts. Somewhere to work. Somewhere to live and do stuff. Doctors. Hospitals. Infrastructure. I spent some time up near Bly and the Christmas Valley in Oregon. Trust me, it is never going to be able to be a viable area for a cheap community. It is wild lawless land up there. Water is precious and sparse. The weather is brutal. The soil is poor. It is a dustbowl. It is an empty dustbowl, with farms and ranches dotted around the more hospitable areas, like Bonanza, who are all fighting each other for the trickle of water available. Water wars are a real thing out there, as are wild fires.

The unhoused need supportive infrastructure, somewhere to shop, to get medical care, to work, for fucks sake! You can’t just bundle people off out into the wilderness with a pile of wood to build a shack and tell ’em to get on with it.

What on earth is wrong with some people! You like going to bars? Cinemas? Farmer’s markets? You need grocery stores that actually sell fresh food? You need roads and jobs? Electric and water? So do the unhoused!

No….it is not possible to just throw the unhoused out into ghost towns and the wilderness and tell them to get on with making something out there. There is a reason that land hasn’t been developed – it is shit! It is unfarmable, no water, hard living out there. Brutal. There is room for everyone in the already formed urban and semi urban centers, and existing habitations. Except when the rich and uber privileged want their air bnbs and their vacation homes, and their empty hotels which could be used to house people that need shelter.

It is a case of judging the poor on their poverty, and equaling being rich to being virtuous, and being poor to being somehow morally and intellectually lacking. In short, what the rich are saying is it is all the fault of the people suffering, not of a cruel and brutal society which is inherently unequal. No, people can’t be cast out into a brutal wilderness. No people cannot be shoved out into areas where there is no possibility of surviving or thriving. Areas where there is no food, no work, terrible weather, poor land, and no water! No.

Sharing is the key. Those that have need to share their space and their civilization and all the good that comes out of that, like clean water, with those that do not have. The fact that in 2021 USA we even have to argue that everyone needs clean water is absolutely disgusting. It is luxury for some, and for others some serious third world bullshit.

Share damnit!

….and here endeth todays rant…