Thanks for Martin Middlewood’s story about the Vancouver Housing Authority’s construction of housing during World War II to accommodate people who came to Vancouver to work in the shipyards (“Images From the Attic: Clark County History,” The Columbian, Dec. 27). It reminds me of what San Francisco authorities did after the 1906 earthquake, when thousands of tents were erected in city parks and thousands more “earthquake shacks” were built by union carpenters and made available for displaced citizens to live in temporarily and own at the end of paying two years’ modest rent: www.nps.gov/prsf/learn/historyculture/1906-earthquake-relief-efforts-living-accommodations.htm.
History shows that in an emergency, creative people can come up with solutions to homelessness. The answer to tent camps around the Burnt Bridge Creek Trail and other places around town is to temporarily establish tent cities, tiny homes, pods (now being used in Portland), and/or other weatherproof living quarters in some of the empty spaces around Vancouver and Clark County. While people are housed there, they can be provided services to help them find permanent housing.
We do need to clean up the city and make it viable for renewed vigor after COVID-19. We also need to help people displaced by economic inequality. The investment in temporary housing will pay off in many ways.
