Toronto man creates tiny mobile homes to help unhoused people escape the cold

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/1.7419805

by colinprince • 2 years ago

268 172 2 years ago

cbc.ca

tmsh• 2 years ago

https://www.gofundme.com/f/tiny-tiny-homes-affordable-housin...

kaycebasques4• 2 years ago

The cbc.ca article says that each home costs $10K but the GoFundMe page says this:

Each unit costs around $5000 (not including sweat equity) to build, and I will ensure that every penny is spent wisely to create a safe and comfortable home for those who need it the most.

So it sounds like the cost of materials has increased or Donais puts aside $5K of funds for every house built for his own living costs. Or maybe after starting the project and getting the larger construction space they can now accurately estimate the overall cost at $10K.

th0ma52• 2 years ago

Maybe your comment was meant to highlight costs and logistics or maybe it was meant to simultaneously undermine their project and projects like them, who can say? Do you think you'll be contributing or do you think there's fraud and you will dig into it? Hard to say you could have either motive, most any comment online could have either a good or nefarious motive. Maybe you're just wondering aloud or maybe you have an agenda.

riiii• 2 years ago

Materials have gone up. But there are other costs involved than just raw materials. Transport, bought expert services (electrician, etc), tool wear, ...

He also has to live and cover unexpected costs.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Another possibility is simply that the CBC article is incorrect. Or, more generously, that he told them a rough estimate of, e.g. "about $5-$10k" and they went with the higher number.

cf100clunk2• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42540975

bad_haircut72• 2 years ago

Some people at my local makerspace decided to build some of these "conestoga huts" to aid local homeless, which is basically a tiny house

https://www.communitysupportedshelters.org/conestoga-huts

as a shelter I would much prefer it over being homeless I guess, but there were issues

- Being made primarily out of wood it was cheap and easy to build, but it was HEAVY. I guess this is a good thing once its placed somewhere but it took 6 men to get it onto a trailer and because everyone is a volunteer its not easy finding a time when that many people can show up just to move a house (the building was the fun part)

- Where to put it? The city was more annoyed by our efforts (the actual organizers really since I just put in labor) than grateful because they started showing the houses off to people and saying "just as soon as the city tells us where to put it youll get a house"

- security on these was decent, I found out that primarily people wanted security from other homeless rather than even shelter

- without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be. Although it had 2 windows it was extremely dark inside

Overall I think these types of houses are not solving the root issues - if the city decided to do it and found the land, it would be way better to just tack-weld some metal boxes together and weigh it down with concrete blocks. Then it takes specialists to build though and that sucks the spirit out of volunteers who want to spend a Sunday physically building something, not throw in $200 for a contractor to build 50 of them, even though that would obviously be of more help

ibejoeb• 2 years ago

It is certainly not solving the problem. It is probably perpetuating it. Without the other complementary life-critical facilities, nothing changes.

These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto. If this did anything to address the actual problem, then there would be no homelessness problem in LA.

Quite a few cities have actually solved this problem. They provide housing and all of the additional services, like hygiene facilities, food, and security. Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable. That's going to lead to hot political quarreling, so it's a good place to stop.

There is no chance that these can provide the full spectrum of services required for a person to thrive. We absolutely can't handle the upkeep on 100,000 one-person boxes. We need to make the shelters better. Many are terrible, but there are better ones, and a lot of that comes down to who is working there. Everyone who is able should make time to volunteer, even just a few shifts, to see what it is and how it can be improved. (It's also a good way to meet people in your city.)

mmooss3• 2 years ago

While I agree with your general points,

These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto.

They are also useful because human beings need shelter, whether or not the exposure is life-threatening. They can't wait for your more ideal solutions.

somerandomqaguy• 2 years ago

Quite a few cities have actually solved this problem. They provide housing and all of the additional services, like hygiene facilities, food, and security. Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable. That's going to lead to hot political quarreling, so it's a good place to stop.

Most of those services are available AFAIK, there's charities in most major Canadian cities that provide those basics. Without them the homeless population would probably be triple what you can see, and from what I've heard the majority just need it short term to get back on their feet.

But they can only offer those to people without substance abuse problems (drugs and alcohol are banned in those shelters), and those are the folks you'll mostly see out and about. You'd need some sort of institution with far greater resources to handle those, like an asylum. North America just seems to have a sordid history with the like.

buckle80175• 2 years ago

Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable.

Those cohorts being women and children.

weitendorf2• 2 years ago

It quite literally does solve the problem of people being unsheltered. It doesn’t solve the problem of people being effectively unable to care for themselves, but that’s a separate (and intertwined) problem from homelessness itself. You don't need to solve those problems at a shelter per se, and from what I recall only about 1/3 of homeless people are too addicted/mentally ill to care for themselves (these are just the most visibly homeless and the most likely to sleep rough), in which case this actually seems like a preferable arrangement compared to a group shelter for the 2/3 of homeless who literally just need a place to live.

We can’t handle the upkeep

The main benefit of these is that they are effectively disposable, and they’re dispersed enough that you don’t have to deal with one person starting a flood or fire and wrecking a whole building.

If I were ever to become homeless I would much rather live in a tiny home than in a shelter, even if I had to go to a shelter or gym or something to take showers and interact with social workers. I feel like I’d never feel a sense of safety, privacy or autonomy in a shelter.

j45• 2 years ago

Much starts from shelter, food, and safety.

You have a very good point that further supports are needed, however living in an urban area, I don't know if I can watch another 20 years waiting for the entire chain of everything to be setup before starting.

THese types of solutions from the private/volunteer sector do things that can't be unseen and often initiate conversations about what progress looks like.

The new types of shelter buildings with integrated services right in them, like other things are postive beacons.

If something cna improve the day to day, it's hard to say I'm against it when I'm sitting inside and someone who I might be saying it about isn't sitting inside.

starkparker• 2 years ago

cf. Portland's Safe Rest camps composed of one-room tiny shelters with similar accommodations as the article's tiny houses (locks, bed, power, storage, water, in some cases mini-split heat/AC) but not built to be as mobile, as they're clustered in camps with centralized shower/toilet bathrooms and laundry, and also built with ADA-compliant ramps.

$17-24k each per city/county documents: https://www.portland.gov/shelter-services/city-shelter-villa...

s1artibartfast5• 2 years ago

The price sounds about right. The Oakland mayor was recently investigated for paying 800k each for a similar solution from a campaign donor.

People try to tell me that it was a good deal because houses are over a million, but those include the land

jklinger410• 2 years ago

Of course they're not solving the root of the problem. The issue of homelessness is not caused by a lack of homes.

zeroonetwothree• 2 years ago

It sure seems like the places with the most homeless have the most expensive housing markets.

grouchypumpkin• 2 years ago

I believe current research says the root cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing in a city. Drugs and mental illness are important, but still secondary factors.

no_wizard2• 2 years ago

For point one, it being so heavy, why not build each on the trailer so it doesn’t have to be moved on to it? Then when it’s ready it can simply be driven to its destination.

It may be impractical I realize but since the trailer has to fit it anyway, perhaps not

s1artibartfast5• 2 years ago

Not a bad idea if you have a flatbed trailer laying around unused

buckle80175• 2 years ago

Trailers are useful and thus expensive.

mindslight2• 2 years ago

Trailers generally require vehicle registration to be towed on the road, and tow vehicles are relatively expensive. Despite already being on wheels, individual residents would still be unable to move their shelter themselves in response to being told to move on. And any organization that helps out with tow vehicles creates a centralized target to attack.

The solution in the OP of building this as part of a dedicated tricycle is pretty damn slick. "Yes of course officer I am moving along, as fast as I can"

diggan• 2 years ago

Being made primarily out of wood it was cheap and easy to build, but it was HEAVY.

I'm not overly knowledgeable about the weather in Toronto, but heavy snow and heavy windows typically require things to be heavy so they don't get pushed by snow or wind. Maybe this is actually a feature of these type of huts.

Also, the huts in the article seem easier to move if what it states is accurate, that you can transport them in the bicycle lane legally and with bikes.

without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be.

What I've seen in my country (Spain) is that homeless tends to resolve to using tents, so if it's at least the same liveability but a little more protective against the elements, it sounds like an improvement.

The root issue of course isn't just that these people cannot find housing, but something about the reason why they aren't able to use the existing empty housing and how they became homeless in the first place. Be it because of costs, health, housing requirements or whatever.

hinkley• 2 years ago

You need some sort of light shelf or clerestory for those but I’m at a loss as to how to incorporate one cheaply. The clearance wouldn’t be good enough to bring the ceiling down and keeping the whole envelope water tight would be tricky.

owenpalmer• 2 years ago

Overall I think these types of houses are not solving the root issues

I don't think anyone has a solution to the root issues. At this point, the fastest way to fix homelessness is to let the currently homeless people die out, while trying our best to prevent people from becoming homeless.

crooked-v• 2 years ago

I found out that primarily people wanted security from other homeless rather than even shelter

This is one of the main reasons that many homeless people refuse shelter beds unless the weather makes it absolutely necessary. Phones and other important personal items get stolen constantly.

nothercastle2• 2 years ago

It’s because the hard “problem” isn’t the shelter piece.

The hard problem is how do you house a lot of mentally unstable people who can often be a danger to themselves and others at the same density as the rest of the city and at an affordable cost.

I don’t think it’s generally possible because as soon as you hit any kind of density with these you get problems, but you need a minimum density to provide bathrooms showers and services. The best solution that I’ve seen is forcing builders to incorporate 1-2 subsidized units into every new building, as that distributes the problem around in a manageable way. Still that likely will not yield a quick solution and may never hit the required number of units.

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

Boothbay VETS in Maine has been making not-quite-as-small towable shelters for homeless veterans in Maine since 2019. https://boothbay-vets.com/in-the-press/

_9za95• 2 years ago

For $250 one could build themselves a mobile nanoshelter of my design. Build instructions found at nanoshelters.com

kimjune01• 2 years ago

You might also be interested in designs by Paul Elkins. I like his use of coroplast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWpjnmL3B0&t=213s

euniceee34• 2 years ago

While his work is inspirational it is really not moving the needle on solving this problem. He is a tinkerer, wish he would put his idea's into motion to produce his designs like the dude making the wheelchairs in Utah.

lurn_mor• 2 years ago

Coroplast deteriorates quickly in UV light (like the sun). In 2-3 years, those pristine white panels will crumble under your fingertips. I just scrapped some coroplast windows that faced the sun after only 3 years.

exe34• 2 years ago

did your sketchup account get pushed out of free tier because of the traffic or something? it won't load up on chrome on android or Linux.

any chance you would be able to include a downloadable file in some common format please?

_9za95• 2 years ago

Interesting that the embed doesn't load but the URL in the embed does: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/embed/5b91607c-93df-4e7c-92...

euniceee34• 2 years ago

Nice design!

_9za95• 2 years ago

It is the 4th iteration of the design, I've honed it in.

bonzibuddy• 2 years ago

Awesome project. Any plans to include insulation instructions? In Toronto, and much of Canada, plywood alone couldnt provide shelter from the cold in the winter months

_9za95• 2 years ago

The instructions would be to trace the walls and pressure fit it all in but I could add the step. It would increase the cost slightly. Insulation is a secondary to getting the shelter in the first place.

ziofill• 2 years ago

the 3D model doesn't load

_9za95• 2 years ago

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/embed/5b91607c-93df-4e7c-92...

tomComb2• 2 years ago

Wow, the formatting of this CBC article is great. It looks like this is their 'low-bandwidth' site.

I wish all my news was presented like this.

soulofmischief• 2 years ago

It's a great format, only stained by the mention of advertiser tracking cookies at the very bottom.

tomcam5• 2 years ago

But you can opt out completely, so I’m fine with it

cf100clunk2• 2 years ago

The given link goes to CBC Lite version as opposed to their regular site at www.cbc.ca/news

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tiny-mobile-h...

dan353hehe• 2 years ago

Whole heartedly agree.

At first I was confused by there being no images/media, but then I was delighted that got to choose which ones to load.

No auto playing videos, or obstructive ads.

tomcam5• 2 years ago

I would actually pay for such news sites.

__turbobrew__• 2 years ago

CBC is “free” in that anyone can access it and it is funded by Canadian taxes.

dukeofdoom2• 2 years ago

CBC is government funded. Like 1.4 billion a year. With all the Bureaucratic overhead, they can only afford to hire a basic html guy. So it's accidentally great.

jszymborski• 2 years ago

Nice try, but there is a "non-lite" version (which is actually the default).

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tiny-mobile-h...

JasserInicide2• 2 years ago

unhoused

Can we stop with the language propaganda bullshit? They're homeless. We've used the term for decades

deadbabe• 2 years ago

Technically I’d say it’s more accurate to call some of these homeless as non-functional drug addicts.

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

Usually, mentally ill folks (which can include drug addicts). I've known plenty of "fully functional" drug addicts that make life much harder for everyone, than some schizoaffective dude on the sidewalk.

Before the 1980s, when they started shutting down the "warehouse" mental institutions, homelessness was a far less pervasive issue.

sergiotapia• 2 years ago

we're leaving this doublethink wordplay back in 2024 where it belongs.

archagon5• 2 years ago

Nah.

wizzwizz4• 2 years ago

The words "house" and "home" mean different things. "Houseless" is more correct than "homeless" – except that not all housing is houses, so you'd have to make it "housingless", and "unhoused" is far less clumsy. (I don't think this is one worth fighting: if you feel strongly about neologisms, best to pick your battles.)

tomcam5• 2 years ago

I read your comment three times and still can’t understand it

Gigachad• 2 years ago

I’m unhoused. I live in an apartment.

8f2ab37a-ed6c3• 2 years ago

Kindly use the more inclusive term "the differently-housedX" if you want to show respect to the less fortunate.

asdf69695• 2 years ago

It’s incredibly culturally insensitive to imply not having a house is a bad thing. I live in an apartment. My King lives in a palace. I have a friend who lives in a van on purpose. Most traditional shelters don’t resemble the American ideal of a detached single family dwelling. Just say what you’re really trying to say

_xerces_• 2 years ago

I think words like these are also used now as a means of signaling...well.. something about your views or beliefs or group identity.

Reminds me of the politically-correct nonsense in the 90s with *-challenged, like a short person is now vertically-challenged, a bald person is folliclly-challenged or adding *-technician to something like dish-cleansing-technician.

fiforpg• 2 years ago

Looks like this kind of soft / euphemistic language dates back to even earlier than that. Here is a YT clip of George Carlin railing against it in his 1990 special:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY

add-sub-mul-div2• 2 years ago

Language constantly evolves, everywhere, sorry it offends you. It's not a conspiracy.

JasserInicide2• 2 years ago

There's a difference between language naturally evolving via everyday use and usage being forced on us by those with vested interests. This is a case of the latter.

mhb4• 2 years ago

This is the sort of vapid meta-comment that someone has to make in all of these discussions. He's obviously interested in shaping the direction of the evolution. Don't be upset if not everyone agrees with your preferred evolutionary direction.

asdf69695• 2 years ago

pee pee poo poo

terminatornet• 2 years ago

question: who cares?

Eumenes• 2 years ago

The woke city council in my town spends the first 15 mins of every meeting on land acknowledgements, followed by 30 mins on how to divvy out needles to the "unhoused" ... followed by divesting from Israeli companies in their pensions (a good cause, but it just adds to the irony).

dave4420• 2 years ago

It is to distinguish between “homeless and living on the streets” from “homeless and living on friends’ floors”?

gopher_space• 2 years ago

Yeah, it alludes to the majority of homeless who work or are in school during the day and in shelters at night.

ternnoburn9• 2 years ago

They have homes, it's just that their home might be a tent under the on-ramp. Or a park bench. Or the city at large.

These people are your neighbors, your neighborhood is home to them, they just don't have houses.

euniceee34• 2 years ago

Man that is really selling it. I lived in a car and it was my house. I will meet you in the middle there. But a tent is not a home. Even by my liberal standards of calling a vehicle a home.

I think the best term that has the most impact is Sleeping Rough Outdoors. You read that and it does not matter what side you are one, you now how the person is living and it describes the plight that many homeless face when just needing to get some rest.

The concept you are describing is a "homebum" which describes a person who sticks to one area. This is different than a "hobo" who keeps moving and is not as much a nuisance of homeless. A "rubber tramp" is a homeless person who lives in a vehicle.

s1artibartfast5• 2 years ago

Why not call them the houseless then?

I think part of the linguistic shift is to imply social ownership. Unhoused describes both their state, but also a failure of someone who is responsible for housing them.

bloodyplonker22• 2 years ago

This comment is hilarious because the term used to be "vagrant", and then it was changed to "homeless" because people were offended by it. Society truly has reached a new level of being offended.

kadoban2• 2 years ago

Society is in a continuing state of being "offended" by the words that have become demeaning, and then we switch to new words. This is not a new thing, or anything you'd ever be able to change or stop.

archagon5• 2 years ago

It tends to make people who loathe the unhoused upset, so I think it’s worth doing for that reason alone.

And in any case, this is just yelling into the void. Language usage will not change just because you want it to.

mhb4• 2 years ago

What exactly is it that you think precipitates changes of language usage if not discussion and debate about people's preferences?

And who loathes the "unhoused"?

pxmpxm• 2 years ago

Is "unhoused" the one for homeless person that doesn't live in a shelter? Or was that "unsheltered"?

It does seem that vapid progressives love faux-academic jargon to get double plus good points.

sangnoir• 2 years ago

Pssh, can you stop with your 19th/20th century language propaganda bullshit: They are vagabond. We've used the term for centuries[1]. /s

Interestingly, the word "vagabond" is getting a rebound as "homeless" has become really unpopular lately, and as of 2022, "vagabond" saw more usage than "unhoused", which one might not have guessed given the bellyaching over other people's language.

1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vagabond%2Chom...

euniceee34• 2 years ago

Looks too nice for a stealth shelter. Make it look like a dumpster and nobody will be complaining.

johnklos• 2 years ago

I love the idea of small homes for everyone, and I'd want to help with similar projects in my areas. This is inspiring.

Separately, I absolutely love the "lite" aspect of this news web page. Clean, simple, quick, with an easy button to load an image? Yes, please! More of this!

osigurdson• 2 years ago

A house, that conforms to e-bike regulations? Photo please.

fldskfjdslkfj• 2 years ago

Zoning laws and housing regulations need to be abolished across the border.

kkfx2• 2 years ago

Non that much related, but inspired by: in the past southern States was the richest also thanks to the climate, and places where circadian delta was little was the most preferred. Than when heating became more automated (meaning you do not have to manually chop wood/dig for coal for most of the year) northern countries get richer, since there was still no A/C. I think we start to reverse again where some sufficiently mild climate zones, where p.v. is meaningful and with BIG circadian delta, to not need cooling in summer nights, will be again the richest a small step at a time as fossils get phased out.

At our current technological progress we still need nature to produce food and climate have an immense impact, so well... Try to really think about the not-so-near future, where in most northern/southern areas even if the climate will be less cold heating will be simply too expensive for most.

Introduce in the mix issues with melting permafrost and Canadian geological peculiarities... Canada seems to be probably a work zone for poor more than a wealthy country...

HPsquared• 2 years ago

Human factors are the most important thing these days to wealth, not geography.

kkfx2• 2 years ago

Energy is needed to be wealthy, and a country with too limited energy production can't be rich except small fiscal paradises...

Neonlicht• 2 years ago

American style tent cities or Brazillian style shanty towns are not the solution.

In my country there's a problem with providing shelters- you don't want to attract every Eastern European crackhead. On the other hand people have died and that's a bit embarrassing as well.

The solution was those crazy Christians from the Salvation army. They don't ask for ID and they are a private initiative which allows for full plausible deniability from the government.

s1artibartfast5• 2 years ago

How did that solve the crackhead problem?

phoronixrly• 2 years ago

They housed them no questions asked. That is how you solve the problem.

strken2• 2 years ago

Possibly by adding a strict set of rules like https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/wmicentral.com/... that require you to apply for 7 jobs a day and submit to mandatory daily room searches for porn, drugs, and alcohol. Perhaps these might be too onerous for the government to introduce.

MattGaiser2• 2 years ago

How did the Salvation Army solve the problem?

rmbyrro• 2 years ago

this [load image] button is so respectful and considerate, such a pleasant surprise to find on a random website in 2024's internet

araes• 2 years ago

That was my immediate response. Best web design in a long time. Instant bookmark (technically, WP landing homepage links)

This and https://neuters.de/ (Reuters Plaintext) are the best developments of the last half a decade in WWW news.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

A chief difference is that the CBC's lite page is the work of the CBC, whereas Neuters, as with Nitter (its inspiration), Invididious and Piped (both YouTube front-ends), Teddit (Reddit), Bibliogram (defunct) and Proxigram (Instagram), and more[1], are alternative front-ends to services.

--------------------------------

Notes:

1. Libredirect has a collection of such alternatives, for YouTube Music, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, IMDb, Bilibili, Pixiv, Fandom, Imgur, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Tekstowo, Genius, Medium, Quora, GitHub, GitLab, Stack Overflow, Reuters, Snopes, iFunny, Tenor, KnowYourMeme, Urban Dictionary, Goodreads, Wolfram Alpha, Instructables, Wikipedia, Wayback Machine, Search, Translate, Google Maps, Meet, Send Files, Paste Text, and Ultimate Guitar. See: <https://libredirect.github.io/>

Several of these are inspired: Snopes -> Suds, iFunny -> UNfunny, Tenor -> Soprnao, Urban Dictionary -> Rural Dictionary.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

I'm realising that this is CBC's "lite" website, similar to those of CNN (<https://lite.cnn.com>) and NPR (<https://text.npr.org/>).

Mind that these aren't perfect (I've been working on an improved, "sanified", CNN extractor, as described here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42535359>), but are a breath of fresh air compared with bloated sites, and almost always work well with terminal-mode browsers (w3m, lynx, elinks2, etc.)

CBC have release notes for this site (launched in 2021), here:

<https://medium.com/cbc-digital-labs/cbc-lite-release-notes-c...>

SECProto• 2 years ago

Thanks for posting this comment. I went to the link, didn't see any images, and loaded up the full strength cbc page to see the images (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tiny-mobile-h...). I came back to post the link and learned something new from your comment instead!

averageRoyalty• 2 years ago

Serious question, is there any nuanced difference between "homeless" and "unhoused", or is it just a rebranding attempt (like spastic, then handicapped, then disabled, then differently abled, etc).

I suppose in certain circles "homeless" leads to connotations of drug use, dirtyness and crazyness, where as "unhoused" (to me at least) conjures and image of a regular person in a temporary situation.

buckle80175• 2 years ago

It's purely a re-brand, the re-branders say that the "unhoused" have homes they're just not houses.

It's stupid.

pkkkzip• 2 years ago

if you look at the NGO that receive government grants they have been doing quite a bit of renovation. Simply changing their brand from "homeless industrial complex" to "unhoused industrial complex" they can bank on slow bureaucracy and continue to pay themselves tech salary to perpetuate the exact same situation that ultimately provides no uplift.

There's a correlation between "sanctuary ciies" and NGOs that ultimately hire based on political ideology rather than pragmatic policies.

If you do not remove the drugs from the equation the overall situation will not improve. There's a big contrast between homeless population in Japan vs West Coast America and the obvious reason is access to drugs.

MattGaiser2• 2 years ago

I understood it to be two different categories.

"Unhoused" being those literally without any shelter. "Homeless" can refer to anyone without a fixed address, but say couchsurfing.

Most "homeless" don't actually sleep outside.

8f2ab37a-ed6c3• 2 years ago

It's the main branch of housing.

erehweb• 2 years ago

This article talks a bit about it - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/20/homeless-unh... - from the purported original creator:

"They're unhoused. They have a home: Seattle is their home"

later excerpts

"...the word’s root emphasizes that the problem is a structural one linked to a lack of affordable housing, not a personal weakness."

"...those who have adopted it say it’s [...] to lessen stigma and to highlight that those lacking permanent roofs over their heads may still have communities or physical spaces they consider home."

strken2• 2 years ago

Man, that quote is completely out of line with the experiences I've heard about. At one point we had a friend couchsurfing with us, and he wanted a home that he had real control over. He was in a house, but he didn't have a home. I don't see how this next step on the euphemism treadmill is an improvement.

jimt1234• 2 years ago

George Carlin, "A War on Homelessness": https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=201&v=lncLOEqc9Rw

sixdimensional• 2 years ago

A different org that is building small intermediate shelters that I think is cool is Pallet: https://palletshelter.com/

I'm not affiliated with them, I just think it's a good idea and they are making some real traction.

crazygringo• 2 years ago

Obviously, for the three individual people who live in these, this is great.

But surely a single, government-run homeless shelter is far more cost-effective than building a bunch of individual tiny mobile homes? Plus it allows centralized access to services (medical, social, etc.), since the long-term goal is to get them into a job (if possible) and their own place.

It's hard for me to see how tiny mobile homes are helping in the long-term.

weitendorf2• 2 years ago

IMO these are more comparable to transitional housing or maybe even a lower quality version of section 8 than to a shelter. If you compare the costs of these to something like an SRO or cheap hotel (common transitional housing in SF) I'm betting these come out ahead. The going rate for SROs here, which I'm assuming isn't far off from any major city in a developed country, comes out to just about $10k/year, and it probably costs cities far more to put homeless people in cheap hotels. Of course, these tiny homes don't just cost $10k upfront because you have to put them somewhere, but as long as they last at least 1-2 years they seem just as cost effective as SROs.

Also, homeless shelters are only cost effective for people who put up with them. A lot of homeless people would rather sleep in a tent or a car than a shelter and I honestly can't blame them, I'd probably do the same. Since shelters are less preferable to literally living outside to so many people (even in the absence of drug addiction) they are IMO not cost effective at actually addressing homelessness.

qingcharles• 2 years ago

Having been homeless, the reason you see people sleeping rough and not in shelters is out of choice.

Firstly, there are lots of restrictions for entering shelters (many won't allow you to stay without ID), and then there are enormous amounts of rules for staying there which makes it akin to prison for the residents (most of whom are fresh out of the joint). The other issue is that if you are recovering from an addiction, then shelters are awful. Literally every person there is trying to sell you some kind of substance, and when they're not doing that they are trying to figure out some other form of crime that you can help them with to get money for their addictions.

Homeless people just often want to be left to their own devices, so I can see these tiny homes helping there.

farceSpherule• 2 years ago

People are homeless, not “unhoused” which is not even a word.

E-Reverance• 2 years ago

I wonder if something like Origami can help scale production and if a crease-able but insulating material even exists

kazinator• 2 years ago

I don't see how this "unhoused" term is an effective euphemism relative to "homeless".

"un-" is not any softer than "-less". For instance, it's not any better to be called "ungrateful" than "thankless".

The "home" to "house" change also shows no detectable movement along the euphemistic gradient.

This is just a bunch of woke people deciding to use a different word which has about the same sugar content, purely so that they could then feel superior to those who are not yet using the new word.

bffvhjnh• 2 years ago

What’s not to like? The person gets to pat themselves on the back for “raising awareness” or “supporting the cause/people” while accomplishing nothing of value. It’s win win!

genman• 2 years ago

Yes, it's better than freezing to death but Finland and Denmark demonstrate that there exists a much better and humane way to deal with the problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland

Toronto man creates tiny mobile homes to help unhoused people escape the cold

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