The Phoenix: I need some suggestions

Maybe you could create a data base for your community where you could give direction to some of the independent places and people that perform these types of service . ie. Joe down the road that has a big herbal garden or a church that serves hot meals once a day of a Doctor that does a bit of charity house calling . Someone that can provide transportation . Kind of a indexed data base that could be acceded through the web . a reply to: undo

another thing that just came to mind. i'm a fan of video games. i've played quite a few since my 30s (i'm in my mid 50s now). and online games, where you enter a graphical world with other gamers, has always fascinated me as it is like moving art, all over the place.

i noticed while playing one of the first online games of that nature, that the environment was frequently quite dark and hard to see. later, i started playing another one, and noticed they kept the game environment well lit with what looked like their version of sunshine, all the time. this actually had a positive physiological effect on me, while playing (unless i had a headache (i 'm not prone to headaches so really wasn't an issue)) or was tired.

anyway, some inner cities are very desolate and drab and blah. and the light is dim or overshadowed by the height of the buildings. and the weather can be brutal, with the wind howling thru the skyscrapers and alleys. that can't be good for people, psychologically or physically. so the idea of having a housing structure kinda intact to the whole thing does sound nice cause then you could brighten the whole thing up and or tone it down, and adjust the temp, so the whole experience was healing. it's just so complicated.

a reply to: undo

I was just giving an example of using the caps. Didnt mean to give you a heart attack. lol

originally posted by: misskat1
a reply to: undo

I was just giving an example of using the caps. Didnt mean to give you a heart attack. lol

oh whew lol

The natives had long houses . Sometimes we think in standard normal ways that can move away from the things that really matter and count .Homeless people can be quite happy with a dry warm place .Lonely people only need to not be alone or feel alone .Yea colors can be shown to have a effect but I think the real basic stuff is tantamount , and the frills are a little bit of icing . Serve the function and let the imagination create . a reply to: undo

maybe temp housing, like hotel sized rooms that open unto a large inner court that is well lit with nice tropical plants/trees or what not. if they are on a regimen or something, so while there, they have a place to put their stuff and can leave and come back, as long as they are still on the regimen or whatever. i bet those rooms would be packed all the time. but they would have to be maintained around the clock, to keep the place safe and healing and not unsafe and non-healing. which requires enforcement officers, which equals police, which equals negative mental loop, which equals not gonna work.

There was a homeless shelter I stayed at for a short time and they had curfews .Nobody got to live there 24/7 and had to be out by ?? and couldn't get in after ?? There was a place to check their stuff in and out of when there or when leaving .It was done that way to help them get out and find work .Plus there were other places they could go hang out that had community activities and as I recall even some one on one counseling . a reply to: undo

i don't think the housing idea would work but i do like the long house concept as a shelter. just not sure how that could be worked into the idea.

i kinda envision the mental/emotional well being facilities as almost like a small mall, with different store fronts in the interior. like herbal and acupuncture and chiropractic and medical, all related to mental, physical and emotional well being, some classes on ways to heal yourself via diet and exercise, and a karate dojo and an exercise shop for yoga, and so on. not huge, but large enough that it would be pleasant to walk thru it, like a mall is.

originally posted by: the2ofusr1
There was a homeless shelter I stayed at for a short time and they had curfews .Nobody got to live there 24/7 and had to be out by ?? and couldn't get in after ?? There was a place to check their stuff in and out of when there or when leaving .It was done that way to help them get out and find work .Plus there were other places they could go hang out that had community activities and as I recall even some one on one counseling . a reply to: undo

your long house comment is sparking some ideas. yep it is. are we talking like the native american long house or the scandanavian long house?

okay i think i got an idea how housing could be rolled into it. i noticed there's a trend to reuse old metal shipping containers as urban housing. i just am unsure on how healthy it is to be living inside a metal box. although our bodies use metals, they are in very specific amounts, which vary in usefulness to your physiology as you age. aluminum is a big culprit indicated in diseases relating to old age, like alzheimers. heavy metals are bad for people. metal in your teeth = bad for you, and so on. so it doesn't help to propose something that's beneficial, physically, and then ruin it with a toxic sleeping environment.

although some metal is needed to insure the stability of structures, i would think having that metal incased in concrete would be the better route, like earthberm structures, which use cement shells, the ribbing is metal but covered in concrete. the problem is that earthberms, although very efficient with energy, they pose their own set of risks, such as specific types of radon energy, emitted from the ground being sort of trapped and building up, in the berm space. this requires extra engineering and expenditure to overcome. it also limits the amount of natural light and therefore would have that effect of drab, dank, living that has to almost exclusively derive its light from artificiality (which seems counterproductive to well being, not to mention it isn't very eco friendly).

so i was thinking it would be nice to have something drawn up, made of recycled natural materials, that are cheap to get, safe and healthy to be in/around for extended periods of time (particularly while sleeping), that can pass safety requirements for temporary housing units, provide adequate shelter from the extremes in environment, that are well lit from a natural source (the sun) but maintain privacy.

any kind of long house construction, would carry with it the expense of natural woods and their maintenance would be complicated by faster decay of the materials, not to mention treatments to the wood to offset the infestation of bugs like termites, poisonous spiders and roaches, creates yet another toxic environment.

so ideally, the material for the construction has to be something that can withstand bugs, be safe and natural as possible. this, unfortunately, leaves out wood. it also leaves out earthberm, which is not portable anyway. and having these temp housing units be portable, is the icing on the cake for the idea. but what kind of material is portable, non toxic, stable enough to use for a shelter, doesn't attract bugs, is capable of being well lit and private. that certainly isn't plastic or metal. glass does suit almost all those requirements but still needs to be stabilized by metal, can easily break and is not very light weight, effecting its portability. is there a lightweight type of break resistant glass that isn't toxic and doesn't contain aluminum, lead or plastic?

here is a liquid glass spray that can treat another material, which would make wood resistant to bugs without creating a toxic enviroment, but a single can is 8 dollars.
phys.org...

polycarbonate is interesting but is a type of plastic

Polycarbonate is a versatile, tough plastic used for a variety of applications, from bulletproof windows to compact disks (CDs). The main advantage of polycarbonate over other types of plastic is unbeatable strength combined with light weight. While acrylic is 17% stronger than glass, polycarbonate is nearly unbreakable. Bulletproof windows and enclosures as seen inside banks or at drive-throughs are often made of polycarbonate. Add to this the advantage that polycarbonate is just one-third the weight of acrylic, or one-sixth as heavy as glass.

plastic is so dang toxic. i wonder if this is also so for polycarbonate.

for example

Potential hazards in food contact applications
Main articles: Bisphenol A and Endocrine disruptor

The use of polycarbonate containers for the purpose of food storage is controversial. The basis of this controversy is their hydrolysis (degradation by water, often referred to as leaching) occurring at high temperature, releases bisphenol A:

1/n [OC(OC6H4)2CMe2]n + H2O → (HOC6H4)2CMe2 + CO2

More than 100 studies have explored the bioactivity of bisphenol A derived from polycarbonates. Bisphenol A appeared to be released from polycarbonate animal cages into water at room temperature and it may have been responsible for enlargement of the reproductive organs of female mice.[21] However, the animal cages used in the research were fabricated from industrial grade polycarbonate, rather than FDA food grade polycarbonate.

An analysis of the literature on bisphenol A leachate low-dose effects by vom Saal and Hughes published in August 2005 seems to have found a suggestive correlation between the source of funding and the conclusion drawn. Industry-funded studies tend to find no significant effects whereas government-funded studies tend to find significant effects.[22]

Sodium hypochlorite bleach and other alkali cleaners catalyze the release of the bisphenol A from polycarbonate containers.[23][24] A chemical compatibility chart shows that polycarbonate is incompatible with ammonia and acetone because it dissolves in their presence.[25] Alcohol is one recommended organic solvent for cleaning grease and oils from polycarbonate.

en.wikipedia.org...

sooo nope, not gonna work.

theres also gorilla glass, lotus glass, pyrex, borosilicate glass, and the ilk, but many of these are used in smaller things like digital displays, dishes and automobiles/aircraft. they would likely be very expensive.

here's a bit on borosilicate glass
en.wikipedia.org...

my husband proposed i look into graphene. unfortunately, that is way out of the ballpark of inexpensive materials for constructing low cost, temporary, portable shelter. if it was substantially easier to create and therefore, cheaper to buy, it would be ideal on many levels. but just a square inch of the stuff is worth millions. so it also is not going to work for this project.

here's a bit on graphene
www.newyorker.com...

a whole page of interesting ideas for homeless shelters made from various materials, most of which are not healthy to sleep in
weburbanist.com...

i'm coming back around to the idea of the native american long houses and just incorporating everything, except the vertical farm, into a series of them, situated in a sort of spoked circle, around the base of the vertical farm. so you could walk around and into the spoked long houses, from one to the next, each which would house a different set of health clincs but in a much looser environment, more akin to an outdoors exhibition, but with isolated pockets inside for the clincs, exercise areas and what not. and have homeless compartments built into some of them, like the longhouses do. that is, until i can come up with a solid, healthy, well lit but private portable homeless shelter.

heres a little graphic i made to show what i mean

p.s. probably the only solution for the immediate cost for the longhouses, would be to use those metal shipping containers, but we'd need some pretty big ones and some kind of interior surface (maybe a stucco?) to reduce the amount of metal particulates floating in the air. i like the idea of having each long house being open in the middle, like a huge breezeway, where fresh air and light, can flow into each structure and thru which you can walk to the next building if you wanted to.

like this

overhead of the roof of a longhouse

the idea is to make them utilitarian and solid, but capable of being embellished if the community wanted to decorate them in some fashion (graffiti, banners, holiday stuff, that kinda thing). they need to meld into the environment in a natural way. rather than having grass, i thought it would be nice to have some kind of tiled art on either side of the walkways.