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ksquared

07/16/22 5:52 PM

#377987 RE: ksquared #377980

Not a troll: Hobo builds house on the Manhattan Bridge
By Griffin Kelly July 16, 2022 7:45am Updated


It’s a bridge too far gone.

An industrious vagrant has built a 16-square-foot wooden home on the Manhattan Bridge bike path, right under the noses of city authorities — a new low for the once-great span that’s now a magnet for trash, graffiti and hobos.

The ramshackle shed was pieced together with plywood, two-by-fours and cardboard. It lacks indoor plumbing — but the homeowner has a green pail for that.

He also has a lounge chair to take in the fabulous views. The front door, which he latches shut with a bike lock, is more akin to a crawl space.

And he apparently commandeered a metal guard rail to serve as his own white picket fence.

“I don’t know how that guy sleeps in there, because it’s so small, but he wakes up every morning, looking happy. Then he walks around the neighborhood, trying to get food,” said Daniel Juarez, a homeless man living in nearby Forsyth Plaza.

The squatter is a Chinese man in his 50s or 60s who speaks in broken Mandarin. Approached by The Post on Thursday, he rambled on about Mao Zedong and executed acquaintances, according to a translator.

The Post visited the site four times last week and never saw police approach the shack.

On Saturday morning, the city Department of Homeless Services and other agencies conducted a cleanup in the area. Workers painted over graffiti near the shack, but did not approach the man or address his makeshift abode.

When alerted by The Post, locals and city officials were aghast at the brazen structure — and said the man and his shack are a tragedy waiting to happen.

“A structure like that is not regulated, it’s put together on a whim and it’s dangerous,” said Susan Lee, 44, who grew up in Chinatown and serves with the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment. “Someone could very well put the bike lock on that structure while the individual is inside and set it on fire. I hope he gets the help he needs.”

City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli said people can’t simply put down stakes wherever they like in the Big Apple.

“On one hand, I appreciate the ingenuity and dedication. On the other hand, we can’t allow favelas to pop up around New York,” he said in a text referring to the infamous Brazilian shantytowns.

Jan Lee, 56, grew up in Chinatown during the Dinkins Administration, another era when the Manhattan Bridge was notorious for homeless encampments and armies of squeegee men.

“That shack is an indication that the cancer is coming back,” he said.

Lee blames the city’s ineffectiveness to secure more healthcare workers to provide care for homeless and mentally disturbed people.

“We’ll see more shanties like this because that’s where people would prefer to stay instead of a shelter where no one cares for you,” he said.

Local progressive City Councilman Christopher Marte had a more simple approach — do nothing.

“We are not going to comment on this story and don’t want to bring more trouble to this man’s life. I know he has been there for over a year, but nobody from our office has seen the structure since last winter,” Marte’s chief of staff Caitlin Kelmar said in an email. “He seems to have some mental health issues based on our conversations with him. The Department of Sanitation has taken down the structure multiple times, and I know he has received outreach from either DHS or a local nonprofit because we witnessed it.”

The Department of Transportation would only say the site was cleaned up Saturday.

The Post reported in the fall that homeless encampments full of garbage and soiled tents plagued the bridge’s base and colonnade, which was built to emulate the striking architecture of St. Peter’s Square and the Arc de Triomphe in Europe.

“You’ve got to be careful over there,” Juarez said. “Those guys do a lot of drugs and are pretty dangerous.”

Lots more pictures at the link.
https://nypost.com/2022/07/16/hobo-builds-house-on-the-manhattan-bridge/

ksquared

07/22/22 7:50 AM

#378236 RE: ksquared #377980

‘My family of six lives in a toolshed, use a bucket as a toilet and love it’
By Asia Grace July 22, 2022 7:00am Updated
(What do they do in the winter? Not going to fly when the kids are teenagers. Sounds absolutely dreadful.)

NY Post photo composite

It’s a sheddy life — but mom-of-four Jessica Taylor wouldn’t have it any other way.

In June 2020, after facing financial difficulties due to the pandemic, she and her husband, Lath, decided to shed the comforts of their three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in northwest Arkansas. The family of six moved into a 500-square-foot toolshed. Friends thought it was a very bizarre way to downsize.

“One of the things people find really weird about us living in a shed is that we use a composting bathroom rather than a traditional toilet,” Taylor, 30, who now resides in a lofted shed in western Tennessee, told The Post.

“It’s a bucket system,” the former bartender-turned-home-schooler (or shed-schooler) explained of her hut’s outhouse. “And [when] you [urinate or defecate], you cover it with wood chips each time. After two days, whether the bucket is full or not, we dump [the waste] into a composting bin in the woods, and then after a couple of years, [the waste] turns into soil for ornamental plants.“

But indoor plumbing is one of the very few amenities the family’s lodge is missing.

“The shed is two stories and has electricity, running water, a heat/cooling system, a 65-inch flat-screen television, a stainless steel refrigerator, an electric stove and foldout futons that we use as beds,” said Taylor, who’s shared clips of the chic shack with her more than 66,700 social media followers.

After buying the wooden workshop for $6,000 at a roadside hardware stand, she and Lath, 42, invested another $7,000 in renovations, which included adding a staircase that leads to its lofted area, privacy walls and an outdoor porch.

The parents used monies from their tax returns, stimulus checks and unemployment to fund their housing project.

They also invested in a $4,000 well, which supplies them with water for drinking, cleaning and showering. (The family uses a long, retractable faucet that extends from their kitchenette to outside the shed, where they shower under the cover of trees.)


Taylor’s husband added a staircase, privacy walls, an outdoor porch and a second shed to their tiny home, which is stationed on an acre of her mom’s west Tennessee property.
Jessica Taylor

Their brood, with kids ranging in age from 3 to 9, is part of the growing number of folks ditching their sprawling, oft-expensive digs to live in outdoor storage units that typically house gardening equipment or sporting goods. It’s a no-frills take on the tiny house movement, with a dash of #VanLife for those looking for cozy, economical simplicity. On TikTok, shed dwellers have stamped videos of their hovels-turned-homes with the hashtag #ShedLife over 22.2 million times.

“More and more people are breaking free from the mindset that you have to have the big expensive, fancy house to feel like they’re making it,” said Taylor of the allure of shed life. “There’s value in living modestly. We’re able to spend more time together gardening and enjoying nature rather than working to afford lavish accommodations.”


The Taylors spent $6,000 on the shed and another $11,000 renovating the space to make it comfortable for six people.
Jessica Taylor

Fellow shed-living trendsetters Nick and Meghan Lucido recently went viral for sharing how they converted an 860-square-foot Tuff shed from Home Depot into a lavish two-level estate, complete with one bedroom, a finished bathroom, a laundry room and a walk-in closet. Footage of their revamped cottage has scored over 2 million views.

Like the Taylors, the couple downsized for financial reasons brought on by COVID.

“Right after the pandemic hit, me and Lath lost our jobs at a restaurant where we’d worked for years,” Taylor explained to The Post. “Before that, we were renting a big $1,100 brick house in Arkansas, but we just couldn’t afford it and our other household bills anymore.”


Taylor credits #ShedLife with helping her family get out of debt and granting her the opportunity of becoming a stay-at-home mom.
Jessica Taylor

After moving eight hours away and relocating onto her mom’s 6-acre property, where they’ve stationed their shed rent-free, the family’s monthly overhead has been reduced from more than $2,000 to a measly $400.

“Since we moved into the shed, we’ve become really financially stable, and we’re getting close to being debt-free,” said Taylor, adding that the cost-effective move has also allowed her to become a stay-at-home mom. Reducing their monthly expenses even allowed them to buy an $11,000 garden shed to use as a second home.

“The kids love [our new lifestyle] because we’re able to spend more quality time together than when I was working,” said Taylor. “It’s been really great.”

And #ShedLife isn’t just for families.

Mia Puhakka, 17, bypassed the stress of first-time apartment-hunting by setting up camp in her parents’ backyards.

“My mom and dad like having me at home, so I don’t pay rent [while I’m living in the shed],” Puhakka, a part-time office assistant from Ontario, Canada, told The Post. Clips of her humble abode have garnered upward of 1.3 million views.

Her family purchased and renovated the 12-foot-by-24-foot structure for about $9,300 from shed-dealers Old Hickory Buildings in 2019. Puhakka has since decked out the space with finished cedar and birch floors and walls, a mounted flat-screen television and a working fireplace.

And when she needs to use the restroom, she commutes a few feet to mom and dad’s. It’s a perfect setup for someone on the verge of adulthood.

“I get my own space without having to pay for an apartment or a house, and I don’t pay for Wi-Fi or electricity because my shed is just connected to my [parents’] house,” said Puhakka.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/we-moved-our-family-of-six-into-a-shed-after-we-lost-our-jobs/