Across a diverse landscape, L.A's hidden homeless live hard lives in fanciful 'homes'
More than 20 years ago, Charles Ray Walker spotted green bamboo shoots growing along a drab warehouse by the Los Angeles River in Boyle Heights. A Texan, Walker turned a wedge of urban wasteland into a wildly colorful wonderland of vegetables and thousands of toys arrayed along carved, earthen terraces.
He built a shack under the shade of a tree and even a home entertainment room with a television set and sofa.
Largely hidden from the world, “Bamboo Charlie” nevertheless welcomed visitors, taking pride in the awe that his creation inspired. And yet, Walker was a homeless man whose life was weighed down under the hardship that came from living how he did. He suffered from terribly painful ulcers, had to defend his turf from other homeless people and in the end, at 61, died alone, gaunt and curled up in his fanciful home.
When people think of the homeless, their mind often takes them to standard images of who they are and where they supposedly live. Splayed out on the concrete of skid row; inside of tents lining major boulevards or underpasses; scrunched in a fetal position with a thin blanket in the doorway of a business late at night or early in the dewy morning. But such is the diversity of Southern California’s landscapes that there is a scarcely a corner of the region that homeless men and women have not adapted to. They take pride in their creations, however dystopian or unfortunate.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hidden-homeless-20181230-htmlstory.html
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