HAYWARD CITY COUNCIL | Hayward Councilmember Francisco Zermeno’s heart may be in the right place, but he has another wild idea to help the city’s homeless. This time, he’s floating the idea of converting old steel shipping containers into dwellings for the homeless.
On Instagram and Twitter, Zermeno posted this:
If Starbucks can sell coffee out of empty containers, surely we can outfit them to house our homeless. http://t.co/CJpZRu2fmo
— JFrancisco ZermeñoC (@FranciscZermeno) February 17, 2015
The idea is not entirely novel. Others cities have studied recycling shipping containers into tiny homes for the less fortunate, but the idea may do little to treat the underlining issues that lead to homelessness–lack of jobs, mental health, age, and disability.
A blithely proposed idea to help the homeless in Hayward is nothing new for Zermeno. In 2013, after he and others on the City Council prohibited free food-sharing in city parks without funding an alternative for hungry residents, Zermeno mentioned fig and kumquat trees on public land are teeming with fruit near Southland Mall.
Zermeno’s insinuation being: the city’s homeless could grab a free snack near the mall or for Hayward to allow fruit-bearing trees on city sidewalks. City staff, though, demurred and, added, fallen fruit on the sidewalk pose a major liability to the city.
ebcitizen.com 
Fran David, the entire City Council and The Hayward Loop are liabilities to the City of Hayward!
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By MW:
We should fill up any and all large empty containers with lawyers and politicians, then ask the EPA if we need to put labels on them declaring that they contain toxic waste, and then finally, and as a free gift, ship them to some far away foreign country that we hate.
In fact right after the 9-11 attacks a member of law enforcement (it might have been the Secret Service, but do not remember) picked up one of the most prominent liberals in California's Congressional delegation (I think it was Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer and carried her to safety, and the incident got some publicity primarily because she lost her shoe) and quickly carried her to safety. And when I read about it, I said to myself if I had been that member of law enforcement, in a desire to improve our country I would have deposited her in the nearest dumpster and then told the city dump to ship her to some place extremely far away.
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