Home Sweet Home

Liza and I happened upon Matt and Ruka as Matt was cleaning out this cart getting ready to move in for a while. I've been watching these little abodes around the neighborhood for the last six months and have blipped them a couple of times, but I've never been present when one of the tenants was there.

Officially, they're called Bootstrap Homes but Matt says the residents call them Gypsy Carts. The mission, as stated on the blog is: to make living on the street more tolerable for EVERYBODY involved, and make people's stay on the street shorter and less harrowing... These are Boots, because without boots it's hard to find bootstraps to pull yourself up with.

Matt told me that taking up residence in a Gypsy Cart is an informal system. He said, "Last night I asked Trevor where Fairy's cart was and he told me Fairy left town, so her cart's up for grabs." He said sometimes the carts are left in pretty bad shape, and he was unloading a lot of trash from this one, as well as fixing up a broken wheel.

He had just retrieved Ruka from the dog shelter, where she'd spent the last couple of months. She was taken away from him when he had her running unleashed. "I was pretty drunk," he told me. He was obviously glad to get Ruka back - and Ruka was glad to be there, but was not too crazy about having Liza snooping around. "She's pretty protective," he said.

Matt and I agreed that there ought to be more of these mobile homes available to houseless people. He seemed very content to spend the cold winter nights snuggled in the tiny space, telling me there was plenty of room in there, and "it sure beats sleeping in a doorway." That's for sure.

A few more photos of Matt and Ruka are here in this slideshow.