How Encampment Sweeps Changed My Relationship to What I Carry
Johnny hopped in my passenger side door with just a backpack.
“Where’s your stuff?” I asked
“This is it.” He responded.
Johnny and I knew each other from the neighborhood. He lived in an encampment across the street from my apartment at the border of the San Fernando Valley.
During the early days of COVID, Johnny got a shelter spot in what’s misleadingly called a “Tiny Home,” but when the shelter went on quarantine, residents who were not on site when it was called often had to stay outside until it was over.
Johnny had been staying back with his former encampment mates for a few days. But quarantine was over now, and I was giving him a ride back to the shelter.
On the way, I asked him about the backpack. What he said changed my lifestyle.
Johnny had been shuffled around LA apartments, streets, tents, and shelters for years by this point. He was sick of hauling his stuff everywhere. So, on the one hand, he downsized to what he could easily carry. On the other hand, he got used to having it stolen from him by people, by weather, and by the government.
As wildfires ravage LA County, residents are grappling with emergency fire evacuations and must make a similar call about what to take. What’s in the “go bag?”
I moved so many people’s belongings between 2017-2022. Block to block, encampment to hospital, hospital to shelter, shelter to apartment, apartment to storage unit, storage unit to hotel.
It really makes you think about your own stuff. And it makes you wonder how well you’d recover from losing it.
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that Johnny did, which was to stay prepared for unpredictable conditions. To start traveling lighter and to rely more on shared community resources.
When I left LA to return to my hometown of Atlanta, I moved into communal living. I traded my one-bedroom apartment for a room in a house with 5 other people and 3 cats. I no longer have to carry around a whole set of pots and pans, a vacuum, or a dining room table just for myself. I share those things now with my housemates.
Outside our house, I live in a tight-knit neighborhood where people email each other before buying stuff at the store. My neighbors run a weekly potluck for us. As I’m writing this, someone who doesn’t live with me is outside shoveling snow off our front walkway.
It’s a subtle but important difference from the suburban subdivision I grew up in, where everyone generally just took care of their own property and household. Sure, people help each other there too, but it’s not the standard operating mode like it is where I live now.
Not everyone wants to live like this, but for me, it’s been incredibly freeing. The less stuff I have, the less space I need, the less rent I pay, and the less I have to work for money.
That’s not a universally true formula, but it’s true for me.
More of us are becoming homeless every year, even if only temporarily. We should continue to fight that tirelessly. It absolutely does not have to be that way, but I also think, practically, you have to prepare for what’s happening today.
Last October, a factory in Metro Atlanta exploded, sending toxic chemicals into the air, and it was unsafe for anyone to inhabit the area.
The day it happened, I was hosting an event, and one of the guys in our group showed me a video of the poison cloud from his street.
“You know that you can’t go home, right?” I asked him.
He didn’t want to hear that, and there’s a chance he might have ignored his own safety instinct because the alternatives were not great, but he agreed he needed a new plan. So we sat in my car, brainstorming where he could go. A friend’s house? A hotel? A shelter?
He ended up at a family member’s house an hour away, and luckily, the air cleared up enough, and he went home a few days later. But I could sense how uncomfortable it was for him to lean on people at this moment. He was so used to doing everything himself. Money couldn’t buy him out of this situation. Even the wealthiest among us are learning that now.
The more these emergencies happen, the more they become the only predictable thing.
We have to stay permanently prepared now like Johnny did, which is not really about the “go bag.” It’s about the mindset he took on. A thoughtful balance between what stuff is mine and what stuff we can share.
Preparing for our immediate future is about community infrastructure. It’s about figuring out who you turn to when your current shelter isn’t an option. It’s about knowing those people and being those people ourselves. It’s about sharing the supplies and sharing the work of rebuilding. And it’s about getting more comfortable with the fact that we’re all safer when we live that way full-time.
