Shopping Cart Storage: Housing organization to build storage lockers for the homeless

Wed, 07/15/2009 - 01:57 — Darren
Megaphone

Ray pushes a shopping cart, laden with electronics, CDs, a sleeping bag and two pairs of mannequin legs he found in a dumpster behind The Bay, uphill towards Cambie and Hastings.

On top of all his belongings, Ray balances his latest lion—one of maybe 900 he has painted and sold while living on the streets of Vancouver. But with no secure place to store his things, it could all be gone by tomorrow.

“That’s my biggest problem,” says Ray. “You start to get ahead a little and either the city takes it or the police confiscate it or someone rips it off.”

For Ray and other homeless people in Vancouver, the Portland Hotel Society (PHS) may soon have a fix—a set of 50 low-cost storage lockers.

Mark Townsend, director of the PHS, said the lockers would most likely go in what is now a boarded-up, single-story building along Pigeon Park at the corner of Hastings and Carrall.

Built big enough to hold a cart’s worth of belongings, each locker might cost $5 a month, says Townsend. People could access their possessions anytime and PHS staff would supervise all pick-ups and drop-offs.

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