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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
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... View full entry
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...
— East Bay Times
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.”
— The Guardian
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... View full entry
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. — Crosscut.com
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... View full entry
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. — Vice
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... View full entry
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.
— The Los Angeles Times
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... View full entry
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.
— Kiro TV
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
