What are some homeless shelter innovations?

Question

For example, it seems like most homeless shelters have tons of beds all together in one big room. But in my experience that would make it pretty hard to sleep with all the snoring and other noises. Is there some type of individual sleeping pod that would be better? What other innovations can you think of for the homeless?

benrutter · Accepted Answer

I used to work in social housing The biggest innovation in homeless is the "housing first" policy in Finland. No clever tricks or anything but homeless people are given social housing regardless of engagement with services, addition problems etc. (This is the exact opposite of how things normally work where someone has to engage well with services before being elligible for state housing).
The outcomes are basically as close to ending homelessness as you can get.
Link if people want to find out more: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/eradicating...

notaustinpowers · Answer

The solution for homelessness isn't something like a sleeping pod or capsule hotels. The solution for homelessness is 3-fold:
- Secure, stable housing
- Free mental health care, substance abuse care
- Reliable and robust public transportation
Without those 3 things minimum, any other solution to the homelessness crisis will not succeed.
Access to jobs, food, and sanitary conditions is limited without stable housing. Without mental health care and substance abuse care, those with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems will not be able to adapt to the changing environment, become employable, or maintain long-term housing. And without reliable transportation, getting to grocery stores, work, etc is nearly impossible in most US cities, let alone smaller towns.
Any other solution is slapping a Hello Kitty bandaid on a gunshot wound and kicking the can further down the road for someone else to deal with.
EDIT: An organization that's local to me here in Atlanta that is succeeding very well is the Trans Housing Coalition(1). While they specifically focus their efforts on PoC transwomen in the Atlanta area they've been very successful in their work.
1: https://www.transhousingcoalition.org

pasabagi · Answer

The main question is, why are houses not like every other commodity? You never see anybody who is literally too poor to afford shoes. A car, despite being an industrial miracle assembled out of precision parts, is far cheaper than a house. Food insecurity is largely manageable for most people in rich countries.
The answer is, of course, politics - and that's also why you'll never solve homelessness with a better capsule hotel.
A friend of mine works for the city in Strasbourg, and the mayor's office wanted to improve the situation of the homeless, so they installed some basic amenities for a homeless camp. Within a fortnight, the police had trashed the amenities. If you make the situation better for the homeless in a state that wants the homeless to go elsewhere, the politics will unsolve your solution.

csnover · Answer

Places like Avivo Village[0][1] which put single-room homes into unused commercial/industrial spaces and offer them up to unhoused people without most of the strings attached to traditional shelters: families are allowed, pets are allowed, people without ID are allowed, addicts are allowed.
[0] https://avivomn.org/avivovillage/
[1] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/10/04/resident-of-tiny-ho...

throwaway4aday · Answer

Cities need to rewrite their laws on rooming houses. It's been many decades since they were put in place and their current form is a hindrance rather than a help. There aren't many in between options for people falling on hard times. Roommates, cheap apartment, motel room or you stay at some form of shelter. Proper rooming houses could fill that gap by being less expensive but still affording you your own space and perhaps be easier for some people such as the elderly or disabled if meals are provided.

freitzkriesler2 · Answer

The reason you don't see any innovations for homelessness comes entirely down to city planning and code restrictions.
There isn't a reason why you can't have capsule hotels or shared dorm style housing other than the zoning boards saying no.
Back in the day, boarding houses used to take care of this but we're quietly phased out during the post war boom. As we revert to the mean again, this type of living is going to become normal.

ProllyInfamous · Answer

Ice is among the prized [and expensive] luxuries for summertime homeless. When you add the daily expense, annual refrigeration approaches the cost of cell phone service.Adding an industrial ice machine to your local food kitchen can unburden a major expenditure for homeless' ice boxes. Just make sure you clean it [full defrost] every few months!

hooverd · Answer

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy

FooBarBizBazz · Answer

There are plenty of places where you can get a plot of land for under $50k, and there are plenty of ways to live on it for under $30k. You can have a warm insulated shelter, with heat, and a little electricity from solar. You can set up a composting toilet. It would be better than many Americans had at the start of the 20th century. But it will be illegal. It will not be up to code. We have attempted to solve poverty by making it illegal not to have enough money.Granted, there are people who cannot look out for themselves or be this self reliant. But the people who can, are not even left in peace to do it.

fardo · Answer

Most innovation in the homeless &ldquo;housing&rdquo; space has focused on relocation, both benevolent (trying to reconnect them with family members and friends willing to house them and get them off the street) and self-interested (without regard to the well-being of the individual, just focused on getting them on a bus going somewhere far away).When it works, it&rsquo;s actually a great boon for the individuals at question, as well as dramatically out-competes alternatives on price, as there&rsquo;s a four orders of magnitude difference in price between the cost of buying and building housing and shelters, particularly in some of America&rsquo;s most expensive and overzoned real-estate markets, versus buying them a ride home to somewhere they&rsquo;re expected. [1]That said, these programs have mixed results - sometimes great and life-changing, sometimes ruinsome due to poor vetting of the opposite side and being used as a high-pressure removal tactic [2] - but cities have broadly embraced doing it because in either case, it is effective at the political goal of moving one&rsquo;s homeless problem somewhere else.[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-homeless-bus-homew...[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/dec/...

ShamelessC · Answer

> What other innovations can you think of for the homeless?Go down to the shelter and volunteer. That will do substantially more than whatever capsule hotel/sleeping pod/innovation you can come up with. No disrespect. But it's becoming sort of a cliche here that hackers will save the world with code and bayesian priors. Perhaps best to remember all the damage some of tech's "innovations" have caused to society.

poulsbohemian · Answer

Our small town has won awards for its approach to homelessness, so FWIW... they have several sections... there is a building that is dorm style, and these are intended for walk-ins / very temporary needs. Then they have exactly what you suggest - small tilt-up pods that have power and heating. There is a shared shower building and I believe a separate "services" building. There's very much a program to get people through the system and ideally into long-term housing, with the pods in particular as a temporary dwelling. Apart from this program, there are of course warming shelters (generally church affiliated) with the big-room style shared space -- these are ultra-temporary and by anecdote appear to attract the majority of serious mental / drug issues, whereas the homeless program I described above is more people caught in bad economic / life decision scenarios.

rented_mule · Answer

The Delancey Street Foundation focuses on adjacent / overlapping problems - recovery from substance abuse, convicted criminals re-entering society, and the homeless situations that often come with those situations. They have been remarkably successful and financially self-sustaining. I lived next to their development in San Francisco for 5 years and regularly patronized their retail businesses. For the first year or so, I had no idea about the foundation behind the businesses (or that their members were the employees) until I read something posted on the wall at one of them.
http://delanceystreetfoundation.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delancey_Street_Foundation

incomingpain · Answer

Homeless shelters in north america are missing a feature. Many features are possible.
Switzerland for example uses their bomb shelters as homeless shelters.
But north america doesn't have that same war fears. We don't have bomb shelters everywhere.
One thing which always made me curious. Why don't storage lockers act as cheap housing? It's 1 light, maybe an outlet. But they all disallow people living out of them.
Homeless have their stolen shopping carts full of junk. Wouldnt storage spot of 8'x8' be enough to at least offer people housing when they need it? Safely store their stuff and get out of the elements. Constructing these is trivial as well. We could produce a ridiculous number of storage lockers at virtually no cost. People can use them for whatever reason they want.

helph67 · Answer

Have been donating to this charity for years (originally known as Swags.org). The backpack provides a portable home with many advantages. https://backpackbed.org/au/

blockwriter · Answer

I've been doing research into the high-rise housing projects in Chicago. One of the things I'm curious about when it comes to advocacy for more housing and to have that housing be accessible regardless of mental health or substance abuse issues is, does that not pretty much look like high-rise housing projects? If you want more diffuse housing that is accessible and also available regardless of other contributing factors, then it seems to me you would have to build this well outside of urban centers, as the land is too expensive, but then I doubt urban homeless would find satellite housing desirable.

liveoneggs · Answer

Shelters are full of rules. People need houses and freedom, even if they are very very small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YbjKxdfE8Q
A big innovation would be to add campground-like amenities (showers, water + power hookups, basic laundry nearby) to those "safe parking lots" - basically urban and suburban RV parks - would seriously help a lot of people.
It's better to prevent new people from landing on the actual street than to wait until they get there to do stuff.

scumola · Answer

My concept for a modular shelter: http://badcheese.com/blog/2024-02-02-ideas-for-modular-homel...

hiAndrewQuinn · Answer

A buddy of mine up north is building what is basically an autonomous capsule hotel with a breathalyzer on it to carrot-and-stick his way into providing very cheap accommodations at the ends of public transport lines. Alcohol obviously isn't the only drug homeless folks have problems with but it's by far the most common, especially up there.He says the biggest cost is heat. I'm rooting for him.

willmeyers · Answer

I met Bas, the inventor of Shelter Suit (https://sheltersuit.com) before Covid. Crazy dude, but in the best way possible.

carabiner · Answer

I think they're constrained by money and 99% of innovations are contrary to the goal of minimizing $/person in shelter costs.

freen · Answer

Just paying people&rsquo;s rent is cheaper and has substantially better outcomes.The solution to homelessness is to give people homes.Shelters are a major reason why there are street homeless. They are dangerous, dirty, loud, and the use of them is likely a parole violation in and of itself.https://www.cbpp.org/research/supportive-housing-helps-vulne...

mandolingual · Answer

Probably the shift to (or supplementing of shelters with) tiny home villages would be the biggest one over the last few years.

egberts1 · Answer

Nothing beats comfort than learning from the Inuit tribe of Yukon Territory as well as the nomads of Sahara Desert.

alexb_ · Answer

Legalize small housing. That's literally it. You do not have to do anything else, just legalize building.

andy99 · Answer

This came to mind, ymmv I have no idea how useful it is https://www.fastcompany.com/90962654/this-simple-design-turn...

spcebar · Answer

We have good solutions we know work for some unhoused people. They're just expensive, complicated, not one size fits all, and require a lot of political will. The first thing we have to say is, "we're going to use our resources to help people who need help" and not ask what's in it for us.
Housing isn't the silver bullet for homelessness. For some homeless people, especially people who are just down on their luck and homeless for financial reasons, it can be, but housing isn't enough for the chronically unhoused who may have substance abuse problems, mental health problems, medical problems, or life skill problems that prevent them from thriving in housing.
Conditions in homeless shelters can be bad, but snoring isn't the biggest problem. Theft is a problem in homeless shelters, as can be violence, both physical and sexual. Many homeless people have pets, and pets generally aren't allowed in shelters. Many shelters require sobriety, which excludes tons of homeless people with addictions, which might be the reason they ended up on the street in the first place.
I think sleeping pods would be a bad idea, but maybe for some people it would be desirable. Some homeless people find shelters to be like jails, and avoid them for that reason. If you've experienced traumas that put you in that mindset I can only imagine what a claustrophobic sleeping space would be like.
Mental healthcare, medical care, social services, good housing (with accessible transit), and compassion are means of treating homelessness. They're complicated, and they're expensive, and they're going to take a lot of political will to make happen. Any one of them alone is not enough to end homelessness.
Donate to shelters if you can, buy a homeless person a meal if you can, treat them with dignity if you can. Not all homeless people are addicts, not all homeless people are grifters, not all homeless people are mentally ill. They're all in hard times and they're all humans, like you.

nektro · Answer

the solution to homelessness has been known for years. make housing cheaper.

ijhuygft776 · Answer

checkout capsule hotels in Japan

brudgers · Answer

Public housing.That allows:drinking, smoking, guests, and dogs.Good luck.

samstave · Answer

I have countless thought-hours and emotional input in this space. I have an Akashic record in me about my inputs on why I, also, would like to solve this problem.I looked at the SFDPH homeless stats, (I built services for these folks including being a primary tech designer for SFGH pre zuck)I have worked with and for home manufacturers, such as Buffetts' Clayton Homes, Wind River Tiny Homes, City of Alameda...AND - I have attempted to map out the Bicycle industry... I have a ton of input on a topic nobody wants to discuss..-I have looked at the behavior of homeless over the last decade as I experienced them, through observation, empathy, [all the emotions].I built a joke thing back in the early days of the internet when internet advertising was obviously ridiculous which was "Hobo Housing" (cant find it today, but it was along the lines of Cards Against Humanity: Offering Free Hobos Housing in foldable cardboard sheds that advertised Realtor Businesses printed on them.Or food stipends for Hobos pulling a cart with marketing for a particular brand, high end, like Perfume... (designed a backpak strap for one to pull a shopping cart, rather than push, off road carts, etc)--I did this as to highlight how fucked up our economy is.I have worked (against) with with City of alameda on municipal Tiny home reformation, their adherence to Corp Media (common.net, comcast) "We sold our media rights to comcast, thus we will never allow municipal internet in Alaameda"