Archinect - News

The debate around tiny homes for the homeless has inserted itself into L.A.’s mayoral race in a big way

2022-03-28T20:19:00-04:00

At a time when permanent supportive housing takes years to build and the average cost per unit has climbed to nearly $600,000, the cost of these tiny homes came to about $68,000 each, or roughly $35,000 per bed, according to De León’s office. In his speeches, De León likes to ask, “in what parallel universe” is it better to leave people on the street than move them into various forms of temporary housing while awaiting more permanent housing?

LA Times columnist Steve Lopez visited the second-newest in a string of tiny home developments opened in November in a space that had previously been sparsely used as a parking lot for the Eagle Rock Recreation Center and co-owned and operated by the city, county, and utilities giant SoCal Edison. At 224 beds, it is reported to be the largest of its kind anywhere in the United States and was proceeded by four similar Lehrer-designed projects across northern Los Angeles, all of which are run by a local charity called Hope in the Valley.

A frequent criticism lobbed at the mayoral frontrunner Kevin de León echoes a debate within the architectural community as to whether or not such a confined (each cabin is only 64 square feet) and, in the case of the Arroyo Seco Tiny Homes, shared space truly aligns with a humane vision of housing justice championed by de León an...

Oakland Councilwoman wants to house 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship

2019-12-20T11:28:00-05:00

An Oakland City Council member’s plan to house up to 1,000 homeless people on a cruise ship in the bay could actually set sail. Because the International Maritime Organization is imposing more stringent emissions regulations in 2020, and some ships won’t be able to upgrade their engines to the new standards in time...Instead, they could dock them at the Port of Oakland or a private dock and plug into electricity...

Led by City Council president Rebecca Kaplan, the plan seeks to create affordable housing through a creative approach grounded in history. According to the East Bay Times, ships were used to house relief workers responding to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas this past September; FEMA chartered cruise ships to house people in 2017 during the hurricanes in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and in 2005 during Katrina.

Port officials have expressed doubt regarding the proposal, reports . the East Bay Times, but Kaplan still believes "the idea is worth at least exploring."

Yves Béhar teams with tech-infused charity for world's first 3D printed community

2019-05-09T15:01:00-04:00

Yves Béhar, the founder of the San Francisco-based design firm fuseproject, has teamed up with building startup ICON and housing charity New Story to bring about what they describe as "the world's first 3D-printed community."

Last year, ICON and New Story went to SXSW 2018 and announced the successful printing of their first permitted 3D-printed home. Now, the companies are employing that technology to build much-needed housing in Latin America. Béhar, who recently launched a line of prefabricated ADUs, has designed the series of small homes and is working with the two to begin printing this summer.

Photo by Terilyn Steverson.

Future residents of the 3D printed neighborhood have been involved in the planning process from the get-go, providing feedback on land selection, community layout, and home designs. Through this engagement, the design has come to reflect a desire for different programs, climate factors, and growth. As examples, the designer created an outdoor kitchen in respon...

The Danish government looks to the Skaeve Huse as a solution to Homelessness

2017-07-17T19:32:00-04:00

The Danish term “Skaeve Huse” roughly translates to special houses for special people. Since the early aughts, the government has been using this form of temporary housing to help shelter individuals who suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and/or have trouble adapting to normal living environments. Tiny house villages have become a common solution for cities experiencing high rates of homelessness. Even in the U.S., cities like Portland and Seattle are piloting similar programs.

Placed in settlements of 8-12 small single-family homes, residents are provided with homes through a conventional tenancy agreements. Social workers pay regular visits with the underlying idea being that with some supervision, residents can come to themselves and social frictions will disappear from the neighborhood. While most Skaeve Huses are temporary, Trudo Housing Corporation wanted to create a community that offered permanent, energy-neutral homes that could offer long-term benefits.

Studio Elm...

Gimme (customizable) shelter: pop-up modular homeless housing project tailor-made for each community

2017-03-23T12:44:00-04:00

Assembled from containers placed within a scaffolding net, WE Architecture's Jagtevj 69 aims to create alluring public space while simultaneously providing temporary housing for the homeless.

The proposal stresses that it's a temporary solution; by creating a variety of different spaces for different activities, the project ultimately provides an opportunity for social networking for both the community and the homeless population in "urban gardens and semi-public activities." These activity-specific spaces, which include workshops, yoga studios, and offices, form each modular unit, making it easy to swap out or add different functions as needed.

Currently envisioned for a site in Copenhagen, the proposal is designed to be disassembled and then reassembled in different locations, making it a kind of traveling social aid that is also custom tailored to the needs of its particular community.

Homelessness decreased this year in the US, but increased in cities including LA

2016-11-21T13:40:00-05:00

Accurately tracking a population that has no permanent home has always been a challenge for those who attempt to put together figures on homelessness. Many studies elect to count transients one night each year in order to create some form of consistency. Using that method, a study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that figures for homelessness seem to down overall across the nation as of January 2016, while certain cities such as Los Angeles and Washington D.C. have experienced significant upticks. As NPR explains:

"But some areas bucked the trend. Washington, D.C., saw a 14.4 percent increase in homelessness, over 1,000 more people, and there were an additional 2,680 homeless people in Los Angeles County, an increase of 6.5 percent. The Dallas and Seattle areas also had big increases, 21.3 and 6.0 percent, respectively."

For more on homelessness:

Calais refugee architecture to be recognized at London Festival of Architecture

2016-06-09T13:37:00-04:00

The festival has been curated by Robert Mull, former dean of the Cass School of Art... His journey then took him to the Calais camp, where he, too, was struck by how “vibrant” the makeshift town was. “Obviously that has to be caveated: it’s a hell of a place and utterly distressing in so many ways, but it was fascinating to see how different groups were establishing a kind of urbanism which felt very authentic, very deeply rooted in their cultures.”

At his pithy yet nuanced best, the Guardian's Olivier Wainwright documents the formation of a makeshift town by refugees in Calais, and the subsequent decision to display some of their works in the London Festival of Architecture.

For more on the architecture of transience and nomadism:

Increasing development translates to more homeless housing

2016-05-18T13:06:00-04:00

When Amazon donated an empty South Lake Union hotel for use as a homeless shelter, it was investing in a model that Mary’s Place, the service provider, has perfected: turning vacant or transitioning buildings into temporary shelter.

According to decades of research conducted on real-life case studies, providing housing for the homeless is actually cheaper than not doing so. Thriving real estate markets also make it easier to provide permanent shelter, as noted in the article:

It’s perhaps counterintuitive, but Executive Director Marty Hartman says the boom times for the local real estate market have created more opportunities for Mary’s Place than the recession. As companies expand, it’s development more than abandonment that stocks the vacant building pool.

Seattle officials have begun to pivot toward 24-hour shelters as a new approach toward the issue. This is modeled after San Francisco’s Navigation Center, which houses people so they can devote their energy away from survival and toward creating stability in their lives.

For more on homelessness:

A closer look at riza3's low-cost housing plans for the homeless

2016-04-14T18:22:00-04:00

Last year, the team took part in the 'Tiny Home Community' competition, set up by members of the North Carolina branch of the American Institute of Architects. The competition was asking participants to design low-cost homes with prefabricated elements, that could house the homeless folk of Raleigh, North Carolina. More than 100 architectural offices from all over the world answered the call, including some well-established companies, but first prize was eventually awarded to riza3.

Although Elemental, the firm of Pritzker Prize winning Alejandro Aravena, released plans for "incremental" low-cost housing meant to be assembled partly by individuals and partly by a larger social infrastructure, they're not the only ones with ideas for long term sustainable housing. Greek firm riza3's competition winning ideas for low-cost houses differ in that they use prefabricated elements, and assume that there will be some integration into a preexisting urban fabric. Here's a look at a few plans and renderings:

The individual units, which measure 20'4" by 9'8" can be integrated into a community plan, with a separate work space and common area.

For more on homelessness and its possible solutions:

Homes of the homeless, seized: L.A. cracks down on free housing

2016-02-25T14:35:00-05:00

Escalating their battle to stamp out an unprecedented spread of street encampments, city officials have begun seizing tiny houses from homeless people living on freeway overpasses in South Los Angeles. Three of the gaily painted wooden houses, which come with solar-powered lights and American flags, were confiscated earlier this month and seven more are planned for impound Thursday, a Bureau of Sanitation spokeswoman said.

Does providing homes for the homeless solve the problem? Studies would indicate that it does, based on our coverage of the development of programs across the globe to help provide permanent, individualized shelter for the homeless, including those in Utah, Seattle, and London.

Here's a sampling:

Seattle builds village for the homeless

2016-01-21T12:54:00-05:00

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, volunteers put the finishing touches on small houses with the kind of basic amenities you don't see in Seattle homeless camps. "The difference is you have electricity and a lock on the door," said Steve Tucker, a member of the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, which is hosting what organizers are calling Seattle's first tiny house village.

Seattle joins several other pioneering cities and states across the U.S. that have chosen to provide housing for the chronically homeless. These programs have shown that the housing actually saves governments money and eventually reduces the overall rate of transient recidivism. Here's a sampling of our coverage:

Archinect's comparison of transient-oriented architecture

2015-08-26T21:55:00-04:00

In 2003 in Utah, government officials decided to try a radical solution to homelessness: giving people who would otherwise be on the street permanent housing. Twelve years later, the surprisingly cost-effective program is a success: almost all of the people given homes remained in them, and the number of people out on the streets in the state has dropped nearly to zero. So what works and what doesn't architecturally in homeless housing?

James Furzer, a 26-year old architectural technician for the U.K.-based Spatial Design Architects, is currently crowdsourcing funds to build single-person housing modules that attach to preexisting buildings in dense urban centers like London, where 7,500 people routinely sleep on the streets.

The Fakro’s Space for New Visions award-winning design is a great emergency shelter idea, but doesn't foster a sense of permanence, unlike Utah's Sunrise Metro Apartments, which take the form of a traditional (relatively aesthetically boring) apartment building ...