Due to many factors, now more than ever, LA architects have a responsibility to offer solutions and creative resources to solve this crisis immediately — as if our currently 59,000+ unsheltered Angelenos were displaced by an earthquake or a wildfire. — AIA|LA
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Situational homelessness can be mitigated with some of these proposals, but chronic homelessness cannot. Chronic homelessness is due to mental illness, drug addiction, and anti-social behavior disorders. If you’ve ever seen the documentary “Wild, Wild Country” you will see that taking the homelessness and putting them in a home or community does nothing to change their self destructive behaviors. Just will create more Skid rows...concentrated poverty... If we truly care about the homeless, and want to help, we need to realize the fact that a large portion of the homeless will always live on the fringes. I glazed through the AIA proposal...may have missed it...but spatial/amenity accommodations for these people ought to be integrated into public space and terrain vague of the city. More importantly, it should be spread out to avoid hubs of despair.
I can point all you architects in the right direction.
First take the base line amount that an incapable or disabled person gets through welfare, social security, or whatever. Let's say about $1000 per month, because that is about what it is. Not much more, maybe less.
Then guess how much that person has to spend to more or less live like a human being, i.e. not eating out of garbage dumpsters, drinking some hot coffee now and then, washing themselves and their clothes, and, you know, things like getting around on the bus now and then. Look those costs up. About $250 is the cost of food. Figure another $100 per month gets used up one way or another, and lets assume medical care is free.
So at the very most, that person has about $750 per month, and for many, that figure is probably about $500 or $600.
So to help solve this problem, simply make housing available that a poor person can rent for about $500 per month. That will get us going.
See, no problem at all.
What's the house on the cover picture? Is that an homeless housing? If it is an sfd it would be around $1,000,000 in an ok neighborhood in LA.
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