America and the Homeless Housing Crisis:
In the United States, we have historically had less housing dedicated to housing homeless people in comparison to the rest of the world. This is due to the fact that we as a country are unwilling to consolidate funds for homeless shelters. Here in Portland, the local government has decided to buy tents for thew homeless to give them some shelter from the rain and cold. However, living in a tent in the streets is hardly a way to live. In the end what we have come up with are tiny homes for homeless people. These houses are little more than a small shed in a vacant lot surrounded by other tiny sheds serving the same purpose.
The problem with Tiny Houses:
The concept of these tiny houses is great. They offer a small space to sleep and some hygiene services all while you live in a small community of people in similar situations to your own. One of the problems with this type of housing is they only offer housing for 6 months to a year, but many people have been homeless for much longer than that. How are people supposed to turn around their life if they are offered a hard deadline for when they need to become a productive person in society? Another one of the problems is that about half of the people who go through these tiny home shelter programs go straight back out to the streets after their time there. This is a decent statistic, however the amount of money invested into such projects and the value extracted are heavily weighted to being cost inefficient. Even at the low-cost investment of these tiny home villages they only have a fifty percent success rate – which would be a failure fifty percent of the time. These are not good figures to defend these tiny home projects as something that can endure in the long run. Another main problem with these communities is that they require more land area than a typical homeless shelter because they have no possibility of expanding upwards in levels.
What is the Solution?
Part of the solution is that we need housing that also offers easy access to physical and medical treatments. One criterion for these housing projects would be they need to be in a dense urban environment setting where there are plenty of jobs within a walkable distance. These services would help people facing homelessness get back on their feet in a comfortable and safe manner at their own pace. One solution from Seattle is to use an older building and convert it to a 24/7 in patient housing for homeless called the Navigation Center. The Navigation Center is focused on bringing up to 74 people into the housing project at a time and offering a wholistic approach to solving homelessness. They do this by offering healthcare services, low barrier to entry as well as helping people find jobs in the downtown area of Seattle, Washington.
Sources:
https://www.portland.gov/ryan/saferestvillages
https://www.desc.org/what-we-do/survival-services/navigation-center/
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