Desperate times call for desperate measures they say, and a man who lost his home and fought and protested for years to have it back but failed is a proof of that.
Michael Townsend resided in a warehouse loft region of Providence Rhode Island and his incredible story of how he lived in a mall for years without being unnoticed made headlines back in 2007. Many were stunned to learn how he and a couple of his friends pulled something like that off.
Namely, Michael was left without his home when the district he lived at was bought and torn down. At that same period, around twenty-something years ago, mall development was becoming massive.
Providence Rhode Island was getting one of those enormous malls.
As Michael passed by the construction site each day, he spotted a section which seemed like a fail in the design plan. He wondered what that area would be used for. As it turned out, that section became neither room nor store.
That’s when this clever man came up with an idea to try and spend a week there without being noticed. He wasn’t alone, however, but shared his thinking with a couple of friends who found it challenging. The group of seven people, which called themselves ‘Trummerkind,’ a German term for “Children of the ruins,” started working on their plan.
Watching the mall being built, they were very familiar with every corner of it, thus knew of a void that could help them enter the section they tend to spend time at.
The section had no plumbing or electricity, but it was a challenge the group was willing to try and answer to. After giving it some thought, they decided to wire in from other hidden areas of the mall. They brought blankets, a TV, and even a couch, and decided to try and live there permanently.
The group set about building a wall to hide their secretive condo and installed a plain white utility door to help them hide their “place” from the rest of the world. As they didn’t have running water, Michael and his friends used the movie theatre bathroom late at night.
Having had a huge number of visitors, the mall was always crowded and that let the group go in and out of their secret condo unnoticed. Some times, they stayed in the mall up to 3 or 4 weeks at a time.
The friends never told anyone about their secret condo, but then, one day in 2007, someone kicked in the utility door and stole their playstation and their art. The rest of the stuff, such as the TV and the couch were left untouched.
Since they couldn’t alert the police of their stolen belongings, because they would end up being arrested for trespassing, the Trummerkind decided to leave the place.
Believe it or not, they spent 4 years there before they decided it was enough.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace
