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ID students at Canada's Emily Carr University had an interesting class assignment to tackle last Spring: "Come up with a 64 square-foot living space for homeless citizens that would have a price point of $1,500."
Students in the 15-week course interviewed homeless people and directors of shelters and support agencies to design structures made of pine beetle wood and 30 per cent recycled building material.The result is cheap, basic shelters capable of giving homeless people a place to live. The concept would be to cluster 10 or 12 of the little houses around a communal kitchen and washroom. Improvements could be made for about what the government is paying to renovate a single suite in one of their Single Resident Occupancy (SRO) hotels scattered around the city.
Unfortunately, calls to municipal governments in Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster have failed to drum up any interest, despite the project's financial similarity to SRO renovations.
The takeaway: Design with even the best of intentions is nothing without (shudder) good marketing.
Video available at the link below.
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Comments
Homelessness is in most cases just a secondary problem.. Addictions, psychical problems and/or financial problems often are the real causes for people ending up on the streets.
Giving these people a roof over their head is therefore in most cases not a solution for the core problems of the homeless person.
The takeaway: an user centered design approach helps to really understand the people you're designing for. Thinking to solve homelessness by giving the homeless a cheap house is very naive.
As if this is something new. That's why 99.9999% design concepts never see the day light. It is not only marketing, it is timing and execution.
I think that this is a great Idea. I was homeless at one time and think that alot of people who are homeless are there by choice but there are people that are there not because the want to be, and this will be a great thing to do. I would have one in my community.