Dead Euclid or Can We Create The Urban MIgrant Worker's Village

Dead Euclid

Yesterday I heard about a homeless man hiding out inside Rolling Acres Mall. And that brought me back to this post I had drafted.

The blogger of the hyper-link above gives us a little tour of Euclid Square Mall on a cold and snowy day. It makes me wonder what would happen if the mall owners, unions, and social agencies got together to provide safe and secure winter quarters for the homeless with the goal of rehabilitating the interior spaces. What would be needed in terms of infrastructure to support 500 people (100 families?) for 100 work-days. Produce a village that concentrates resources in one place.

1. Mall ownership provides spaces and utilities.
2. Village members clean and rehabilitate interior spaces.
2. Social agencies provide bedding, clothing, food rations.
3. Enforce a drug-free, alcohol-free, gun-free, and predominantly stress-free environment.

3. Trade unions provide training, apprenticeships, and supervision.
4. Quality-circle worker engagement, perhaps to the extent that a circle's membership can be taken to a vote.
5. All wages to be the same except that restroom attendants, child care workers and villager 'teachers', and anyone doing village infrastructure work can receive a village voted bonus.
4. A bank (or the state) to provide identification, direct deposit, and debit cards.
5. Open a restaurant/cafeteria to provide meals (and use aforementioned debit cards).
6. Use a smaller space for communal showers, placed close to restrooms.
7. Use a smaller space for a day-care / charter school program.
8. In regard to 7., rather than imposing an influx of children on the local school district, look to county funds and state vouchers and a teachers union school program mixed with home-schooling and computer-based programs.
9. 'Graduate' who you can to outside employment.


Winter is coming to an end. This is something someone should be planning now for next Winter. Where do we go from here?