as a shelter I would much prefer it over being homeless I guess, but there were issues
- Being made primarily out of wood it was cheap and easy to build, but it was HEAVY. I guess this is a good thing once its placed somewhere but it took 6 men to get it onto a trailer and because everyone is a volunteer its not easy finding a time when that many people can show up just to move a house (the building was the fun part)
- Where to put it? The city was more annoyed by our efforts (the actual organizers really since I just put in labor) than grateful because they started showing the houses off to people and saying "just as soon as the city tells us where to put it youll get a house"
- security on these was decent, I found out that primarily people wanted security from other homeless rather than even shelter
- without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be. Although it had 2 windows it was extremely dark inside
Overall I think these types of houses are not solving the root issues - if the city decided to do it and found the land, it would be way better to just tack-weld some metal boxes together and weigh it down with concrete blocks. Then it takes specialists to build though and that sucks the spirit out of volunteers who want to spend a Sunday physically building something, not throw in $200 for a contractor to build 50 of them, even though that would obviously be of more help
ibejoeb 20 days ago [-]
It is certainly not solving the problem. It is probably perpetuating it. Without the other complementary life-critical facilities, nothing changes.
These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto. If this did anything to address the actual problem, then there would be no homelessness problem in LA.
Quite a few cities have actually solved this problem. They provide housing and all of the additional services, like hygiene facilities, food, and security. Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable. That's going to lead to hot political quarreling, so it's a good place to stop.
There is no chance that these can provide the full spectrum of services required for a person to thrive. We absolutely can't handle the upkeep on 100,000 one-person boxes. We need to make the shelters better. Many are terrible, but there are better ones, and a lot of that comes down to who is working there. Everyone who is able should make time to volunteer, even just a few shifts, to see what it is and how it can be improved. (It's also a good way to meet people in your city.)
weitendorf 20 days ago [-]
It quite literally does solve the problem of people being unsheltered. It doesn’t solve the problem of people being effectively unable to care for themselves, but that’s a separate (and intertwined) problem from homelessness itself. You don't need to solve those problems at a shelter per se, and from what I recall only about 1/3 of homeless people are too addicted/mentally ill to care for themselves (these are just the most visibly homeless and the most likely to sleep rough), in which case this actually seems like a preferable arrangement compared to a group shelter for the 2/3 of homeless who literally just need a place to live.
> We can’t handle the upkeep
The main benefit of these is that they are effectively disposable, and they’re dispersed enough that you don’t have to deal with one person starting a flood or fire and wrecking a whole building.
If I were ever to become homeless I would much rather live in a tiny home than in a shelter, even if I had to go to a shelter or gym or something to take showers and interact with social workers. I feel like I’d never feel a sense of safety, privacy or autonomy in a shelter.
nothercastle 20 days ago [-]
You can’t separate the services problem from the housing problem. These tiny houses need additional services for bathrooms showers and food nearby and for that you be viable you need 25-50 units near each other.
somerandomqaguy 20 days ago [-]
>Quite a few cities have actually solved this problem. They provide housing and all of the additional services, like hygiene facilities, food, and security. Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable. That's going to lead to hot political quarreling, so it's a good place to stop.
Most of those services are available AFAIK, there's charities in most major Canadian cities that provide those basics. Without them the homeless population would probably be triple what you can see, and from what I've heard the majority just need it short term to get back on their feet.
But they can only offer those to people without substance abuse problems (drugs and alcohol are banned in those shelters), and those are the folks you'll mostly see out and about. You'd need some sort of institution with far greater resources to handle those, like an asylum. North America just seems to have a sordid history with the like.
bsder 20 days ago [-]
> You'd need some sort of institution with far greater resources to handle those, like an asylum. North America just seems to have a sordid history with the like.
Does anywhere not have a sordid history with asylums? I'm genuinely asking as it seems like such facilities always devolve into pseudo-prison for the undesirable no matter what.
buckle8017 20 days ago [-]
The thing about asylums is that they're always going to be terrible, but the standard isn't good, it's better.
Is a terrible asylum better or worse than living on the streets?
carlosjobim 20 days ago [-]
Worse for the inmates, better for the general public.
wahnfrieden 20 days ago [-]
Shelters in Toronto are full and unable to house everyone in need on a daily basis
buckle8017 20 days ago [-]
> Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable.
Those cohorts being women and children.
j45 20 days ago [-]
Much starts from shelter, food, and safety.
You have a very good point that further supports are needed, however living in an urban area, I don't know if I can watch another 20 years waiting for the entire chain of everything to be setup before starting.
THese types of solutions from the private/volunteer sector do things that can't be unseen and often initiate conversations about what progress looks like.
The new types of shelter buildings with integrated services right in them, like other things are postive beacons.
If something cna improve the day to day, it's hard to say I'm against it when I'm sitting inside and someone who I might be saying it about isn't sitting inside.
mmooss 20 days ago [-]
While I agree with your general points,
> These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto.
They are also useful because human beings need shelter, whether or not the exposure is life-threatening. They can't wait for your more ideal solutions.
carlosjobim 20 days ago [-]
You're a sitting duck for people who want to attack you when you're inside one of these.
mmooss 20 days ago [-]
Has someone said that's a risk or an issue for the people who use them? They probably also are bad in a flood, but is that a real risk? Isn't that true of most shelter?
carlosjobim 20 days ago [-]
Yes, I said it in the comment right above yours. In a conventional homeless shelter there are more people around and staff, meaning you're at least not alone with an attacker. Homeless people do get attacked by other homeless and street thugs.
knowitnone 20 days ago [-]
I have a solution for that. No shelter.
mmooss 19 days ago [-]
I mean, is there evidence that this is a concern - your comment isn't evidence.
> In a conventional homeless shelter there are more people around and staff, meaning you're at least not alone with an attacker.
I don't know if it really works out that way - plenty of homeless people say the shelters aren't safe - but regardless, it isn't working.
sgarland 20 days ago [-]
As opposed to a tent?!
carlosjobim 20 days ago [-]
Clearly much better than a tent.
20 days ago [-]
dkkergoog 20 days ago [-]
[dead]
diggan 20 days ago [-]
> Being made primarily out of wood it was cheap and easy to build, but it was HEAVY.
I'm not overly knowledgeable about the weather in Toronto, but heavy snow and heavy windows typically require things to be heavy so they don't get pushed by snow or wind. Maybe this is actually a feature of these type of huts.
Also, the huts in the article seem easier to move if what it states is accurate, that you can transport them in the bicycle lane legally and with bikes.
> without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be.
What I've seen in my country (Spain) is that homeless tends to resolve to using tents, so if it's at least the same liveability but a little more protective against the elements, it sounds like an improvement.
The root issue of course isn't just that these people cannot find housing, but something about the reason why they aren't able to use the existing empty housing and how they became homeless in the first place. Be it because of costs, health, housing requirements or whatever.
starkparker 20 days ago [-]
cf. Portland's Safe Rest camps composed of one-room tiny shelters with similar accommodations as the article's tiny houses (locks, bed, power, storage, water, in some cases mini-split heat/AC) but not built to be as mobile, as they're clustered in camps with centralized shower/toilet bathrooms and laundry, and also built with ADA-compliant ramps.
The price sounds about right. The Oakland mayor was recently investigated for paying 800k each for a similar solution from a campaign donor.
People try to tell me that it was a good deal because houses are over a million, but those include the land
crooked-v 20 days ago [-]
> I found out that primarily people wanted security from other homeless rather than even shelter
This is one of the main reasons that many homeless people refuse shelter beds unless the weather makes it absolutely necessary. Phones and other important personal items get stolen constantly.
nothercastle 20 days ago [-]
It’s because the hard “problem” isn’t the shelter piece.
The hard problem is how do you house a lot of mentally unstable people who can often be a danger to themselves and others at the same density as the rest of the city and at an affordable cost.
I don’t think it’s generally possible because as soon as you hit any kind of density with these you get problems, but you need a minimum density to provide bathrooms showers and services.
The best solution that I’ve seen is forcing builders to incorporate 1-2 subsidized units into every new building, as that distributes the problem around in a manageable way. Still that likely will not yield a quick solution and may never hit the required number of units.
hinkley 20 days ago [-]
You need some sort of light shelf or clerestory for those but I’m at a loss as to how to incorporate one cheaply. The clearance wouldn’t be good enough to bring the ceiling down and keeping the whole envelope water tight would be tricky.
21 days ago [-]
no_wizard 20 days ago [-]
For point one, it being so heavy, why not build each on the trailer so it doesn’t have to be moved on to it? Then when it’s ready it can simply be driven to its destination.
It may be impractical I realize but since the trailer has to fit it anyway, perhaps not
mindslight 20 days ago [-]
Trailers generally require vehicle registration to be towed on the road, and tow vehicles are relatively expensive. Despite already being on wheels, individual residents would still be unable to move their shelter themselves in response to being told to move on. And any organization that helps out with tow vehicles creates a centralized target to attack.
The solution in the OP of building this as part of a dedicated tricycle is pretty damn slick. "Yes of course officer I am moving along, as fast as I can"
buckle8017 20 days ago [-]
Trailers are useful and thus expensive.
no_wizard 20 days ago [-]
General assumption maybe I shouldn’t be making, is that the trailers are already owned by the organization responsible for this and would already only be used for this purpose.
Perhaps the fact that you could build these theoretically faster than doing on a trailer makes it a moot point, then again if trailers are your bottleneck maybe it’s possible to schedule building around that to keep delivery smooth
s1artibartfast 20 days ago [-]
Not a bad idea if you have a flatbed trailer laying around unused
jklinger410 20 days ago [-]
Of course they're not solving the root of the problem. The issue of homelessness is not caused by a lack of homes.
grouchypumpkin 20 days ago [-]
I believe current research says the root cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing in a city. Drugs and mental illness are important, but still secondary factors.
zeroonetwothree 20 days ago [-]
It sure seems like the places with the most homeless have the most expensive housing markets.
wongarsu 20 days ago [-]
Because those are the most desirable places to live. Homeless people move too.
Granted, there are homeless people who have a stable life but work a job that just doesn't pay enough to afford a home, or people who are between jobs and are temporarily homeless. But those people generally sleep in a car, cause few problems, are largely invisible, have most of their needs met in some way, and are generally not the people we are concerned about when talking about "the homeless".
The Homeless™ usually have more complex issues like untreated psychological issues, drug problems, etc. And while the previous group would rejoice about small cheap housing, it does little to solve the issues of The Homeless™.
jeffalyanak 20 days ago [-]
Most expensive homes yes, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of livable homes and apartments that are _empty_ at any given time. Canada has a lot of vacant houses.
Maxatar 20 days ago [-]
Canada has one of the lowest home vacancy rates among the OECD countries and currently at the lowest rate it's been in 40 years:
That paper doesn't disprove my point. It indicates ~7% home vacancy, which means the total number of vacant homes is higher than the number of people without homes.
owenpalmer 20 days ago [-]
> Overall I think these types of houses are not solving the root issues
I don't think anyone has a solution to the root issues. At this point, the fastest way to fix homelessness is to let the currently homeless people die out, while trying our best to prevent people from becoming homeless.
averageRoyalty 20 days ago [-]
Serious question, is there any nuanced difference between "homeless" and "unhoused", or is it just a rebranding attempt (like spastic, then handicapped, then disabled, then differently abled, etc).
I suppose in certain circles "homeless" leads to connotations of drug use, dirtyness and crazyness, where as "unhoused" (to me at least) conjures and image of a regular person in a temporary situation.
buckle8017 20 days ago [-]
It's purely a re-brand, the re-branders say that the "unhoused" have homes they're just not houses.
It's stupid.
pkkkzip 20 days ago [-]
if you look at the NGO that receive government grants they have been doing quite a bit of renovation. Simply changing their brand from "homeless industrial complex" to "unhoused industrial complex" they can bank on slow bureaucracy and continue to pay themselves tech salary to perpetuate the exact same situation that ultimately provides no uplift.
There's a correlation between "sanctuary ciies" and NGOs that ultimately hire based on political ideology rather than pragmatic policies.
If you do not remove the drugs from the equation the overall situation will not improve. There's a big contrast between homeless population in Japan vs West Coast America and the obvious reason is access to drugs.
buckle8017 20 days ago [-]
SF should just buy some large area of land 2 hours away from the city and offer anybody downtown openly doing drugs free drugs if they leave.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 20 days ago [-]
We have an immense amount of free space in CA, it's just nowhere people find desirable, or nowhere the local community would appreciate you parking the temporarily dysfunctional members of society. You could build a fantastic homeless campus in Lancaster CA, there's abundant space, real estate is about as cheap as it gets, you have access to an airport, LA is not too far, it's already practically Meth Mecca.
There's fundamentally no reason for cramming 10k people in some of the most unaffordable NIMBY real estate land of one of the most expensive CoL countries in the world. Even if these folks were able to overcome years of raging addiction, what will they do in SF? Learn machine learning? Become a wealth manager? A teacher? A cop? How are they going to make enough to live in the city when even most regular middle class professions can barely make it there?
"They're unhoused. They have a home: Seattle is their home"
later excerpts
"...the word’s root emphasizes that the problem is a structural one linked to a lack of affordable housing, not a personal weakness."
"...those who have adopted it say it’s [...] to lessen stigma and to highlight that those lacking permanent roofs over their heads may still have communities or physical spaces they consider home."
strken 20 days ago [-]
Man, that quote is completely out of line with the experiences I've heard about. At one point we had a friend couchsurfing with us, and he wanted a home that he had real control over. He was in a house, but he didn't have a home. I don't see how this next step on the euphemism treadmill is an improvement.
stonogo 19 days ago [-]
The term for your buddy is "underhoused". Part of the push for the term "unhoused" is to establish that housing is a matter of degree.
robertlagrant 20 days ago [-]
It's not - euphemism is great for middle class dinner party conversation, but it doesn't really help. The opposite could equally be true: a family could have a house, but it's one shared with a load of other people, so it's not a home.
"Unhoused" being those literally without any shelter. "Homeless" can refer to anyone without a fixed address, but say couchsurfing.
Most "homeless" don't actually sleep outside.
aaron695 20 days ago [-]
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crazygringo 20 days ago [-]
Obviously, for the three individual people who live in these, this is great.
But surely a single, government-run homeless shelter is far more cost-effective than building a bunch of individual tiny mobile homes? Plus it allows centralized access to services (medical, social, etc.), since the long-term goal is to get them into a job (if possible) and their own place.
It's hard for me to see how tiny mobile homes are helping in the long-term.
qingcharles 20 days ago [-]
Having been homeless, the reason you see people sleeping rough and not in shelters is out of choice.
Firstly, there are lots of restrictions for entering shelters (many won't allow you to stay without ID), and then there are enormous amounts of rules for staying there which makes it akin to prison for the residents (most of whom are fresh out of the joint). The other issue is that if you are recovering from an addiction, then shelters are awful. Literally every person there is trying to sell you some kind of substance, and when they're not doing that they are trying to figure out some other form of crime that you can help them with to get money for their addictions.
Homeless people just often want to be left to their own devices, so I can see these tiny homes helping there.
weitendorf 20 days ago [-]
IMO these are more comparable to transitional housing or maybe even a lower quality version of section 8 than to a shelter. If you compare the costs of these to something like an SRO or cheap hotel (common transitional housing in SF) I'm betting these come out ahead. The going rate for SROs here, which I'm assuming isn't far off from any major city in a developed country, comes out to just about $10k/year, and it probably costs cities far more to put homeless people in cheap hotels. Of course, these tiny homes don't just cost $10k upfront because you have to put them somewhere, but as long as they last at least 1-2 years they seem just as cost effective as SROs.
Also, homeless shelters are only cost effective for people who put up with them. A lot of homeless people would rather sleep in a tent or a car than a shelter and I honestly can't blame them, I'd probably do the same. Since shelters are less preferable to literally living outside to so many people (even in the absence of drug addiction) they are IMO not cost effective at actually addressing homelessness.
Neonlicht 20 days ago [-]
American style tent cities or Brazillian style shanty towns are not the solution.
In my country there's a problem with providing shelters- you don't want to attract every Eastern European crackhead. On the other hand people have died and that's a bit embarrassing as well.
The solution was those crazy Christians from the Salvation army. They don't ask for ID and they are a private initiative which allows for full plausible deniability from the government.
s1artibartfast 20 days ago [-]
How did that solve the crackhead problem?
strken 20 days ago [-]
Possibly by adding a strict set of rules like https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/wmicentral.com/... that require you to apply for 7 jobs a day and submit to mandatory daily room searches for porn, drugs, and alcohol. Perhaps these might be too onerous for the government to introduce.
phoronixrly 20 days ago [-]
They housed them no questions asked. That is how you solve the problem.
s1artibartfast 20 days ago [-]
Then the story doesn't make sense. The argument was that if the city tried to do that, then people would come from all around and make the problem worse.
MattGaiser 20 days ago [-]
How did the Salvation Army solve the problem?
NewJazz 20 days ago [-]
[flagged]
rmbyrro 20 days ago [-]
this [load image] button is so respectful and considerate, such a pleasant surprise to find on a random website in 2024's internet
Mind that these aren't perfect (I've been working on an improved, "sanified", CNN extractor, as described here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42535359>), but are a breath of fresh air compared with bloated sites, and almost always work well with terminal-mode browsers (w3m, lynx, elinks2, etc.)
CBC have release notes for this site (launched in 2021), here:
Thanks for posting this comment. I went to the link, didn't see any images, and loaded up the full strength cbc page to see the images (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tiny-mobile-h...). I came back to post the link and learned something new from your comment instead!
araes 20 days ago [-]
That was my immediate response. Best web design in a long time. Instant bookmark (technically, WP landing homepage links)
This and https://neuters.de/ (Reuters Plaintext) are the best developments of the last half a decade in WWW news.
dredmorbius 20 days ago [-]
A chief difference is that the CBC's lite page is the work of the CBC, whereas Neuters, as with Nitter (its inspiration), Invididious and Piped (both YouTube front-ends), Teddit (Reddit), Bibliogram (defunct) and Proxigram (Instagram), and more[1], are alternative front-ends to services.
--------------------------------
Notes:
1. Libredirect has a collection of such alternatives, for YouTube Music, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, IMDb, Bilibili, Pixiv, Fandom, Imgur, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Tekstowo, Genius, Medium, Quora, GitHub, GitLab, Stack Overflow, Reuters, Snopes, iFunny, Tenor, KnowYourMeme, Urban Dictionary, Goodreads, Wolfram Alpha, Instructables, Wikipedia, Wayback Machine, Search, Translate, Google Maps, Meet, Send Files, Paste Text, and Ultimate Guitar. See: <https://libredirect.github.io/>
Several of these are inspired: Snopes -> Suds, iFunny -> UNfunny, Tenor -> Soprnao, Urban Dictionary -> Rural Dictionary.
jauntywundrkind 21 days ago [-]
Boothbay VETS in Maine has been making not-quite-as-small towable shelters for homeless veterans in Maine since 2019. https://boothbay-vets.com/in-the-press/
denuoweb 20 days ago [-]
For $250 one could build themselves a mobile nanoshelter of my design. Build instructions found at nanoshelters.com
kimjune01 20 days ago [-]
You might also be interested in designs by Paul Elkins. I like his use of coroplast
While his work is inspirational it is really not moving the needle on solving this problem. He is a tinkerer, wish he would put his idea's into motion to produce his designs like the dude making the wheelchairs in Utah.
robertlagrant 20 days ago [-]
Is there anything stopping anyone from doing that with his designs?
lurn_mor 19 days ago [-]
Coroplast deteriorates quickly in UV light (like the sun). In 2-3 years, those pristine white panels will crumble under your fingertips. I just scrapped some coroplast windows that faced the sun after only 3 years.
bonzibuddy 20 days ago [-]
Awesome project. Any plans to include insulation instructions? In Toronto, and much of Canada, plywood alone couldnt provide shelter from the cold in the winter months
denuoweb 20 days ago [-]
The instructions would be to trace the walls and pressure fit it all in but I could add the step. It would increase the cost slightly. Insulation is a secondary to getting the shelter in the first place.
exe34 20 days ago [-]
did your sketchup account get pushed out of free tier because of the traffic or something? it won't load up on chrome on android or Linux.
any chance you would be able to include a downloadable file in some common format please?
Non that much related, but inspired by: in the past southern States was the richest also thanks to the climate, and places where circadian delta was little was the most preferred. Than when heating became more automated (meaning you do not have to manually chop wood/dig for coal for most of the year) northern countries get richer, since there was still no A/C. I think we start to reverse again where some sufficiently mild climate zones, where p.v. is meaningful and with BIG circadian delta, to not need cooling in summer nights, will be again the richest a small step at a time as fossils get phased out.
At our current technological progress we still need nature to produce food and climate have an immense impact, so well... Try to really think about the not-so-near future, where in most northern/southern areas even if the climate will be less cold heating will be simply too expensive for most.
Introduce in the mix issues with melting permafrost and Canadian geological peculiarities... Canada seems to be probably a work zone for poor more than a wealthy country...
HPsquared 20 days ago [-]
Human factors are the most important thing these days to wealth, not geography.
kkfx 19 days ago [-]
Energy is needed to be wealthy, and a country with too limited energy production can't be rich except small fiscal paradises...
hollerith 19 days ago [-]
Japan has basically no internal energy production. Ditto Switzerland, Sweden and Finland I think.
(Being reliant on energy imports definitely makes it harder for these countries to guarantee their national security in time of war, tho.)
Also the Southern US states were never richer than the North.
sixdimensional 20 days ago [-]
A different org that is building small intermediate shelters that I think is cool is Pallet: https://palletshelter.com/
I'm not affiliated with them, I just think it's a good idea and they are making some real traction.
kazinator 20 days ago [-]
I don't see how this "unhoused" term is an effective euphemism relative to "homeless".
"un-" is not any softer than "-less". For instance, it's not any better to be called "ungrateful" than "thankless".
The "home" to "house" change also shows no detectable movement along the euphemistic gradient.
This is just a bunch of woke people deciding to use a different word which has about the same sugar content, purely so that they could then feel superior to those who are not yet using the new word.
bffvhjnh 20 days ago [-]
What’s not to like? The person gets to pat themselves on the back for “raising awareness” or “supporting the cause/people” while accomplishing nothing of value. It’s win win!
johnklos 20 days ago [-]
I love the idea of small homes for everyone, and I'd want to help with similar projects in my areas. This is inspiring.
Separately, I absolutely love the "lite" aspect of this news web page. Clean, simple, quick, with an easy button to load an image? Yes, please! More of this!
euniceee3 20 days ago [-]
Looks too nice for a stealth shelter. Make it look like a dumpster and nobody will be complaining.
E-Reverance 20 days ago [-]
I wonder if something like Origami can help scale production
and if a crease-able but insulating material even exists
JasserInicide 20 days ago [-]
unhoused
Can we stop with the language propaganda bullshit? They're homeless. We've used the term for decades
_xerces_ 20 days ago [-]
I think words like these are also used now as a means of signaling...well.. something about your views or beliefs or group identity.
Reminds me of the politically-correct nonsense in the 90s with *-challenged, like a short person is now vertically-challenged, a bald person is folliclly-challenged or adding *-technician to something like dish-cleansing-technician.
fiforpg 20 days ago [-]
Looks like this kind of soft / euphemistic language dates back to even earlier than that. Here is a YT clip of George Carlin railing against it in his 1990 special:
It dates back to one generation after language was invented. And bitching about it dates to one week later.
20 days ago [-]
pxmpxm 20 days ago [-]
Is "unhoused" the one for homeless person that doesn't live in a shelter? Or was that "unsheltered"?
It does seem that vapid progressives love faux-academic jargon to get double plus good points.
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
They have homes, it's just that their home might be a tent under the on-ramp. Or a park bench. Or the city at large.
These people are your neighbors, your neighborhood is home to them, they just don't have houses.
euniceee3 20 days ago [-]
Man that is really selling it. I lived in a car and it was my house. I will meet you in the middle there. But a tent is not a home. Even by my liberal standards of calling a vehicle a home.
I think the best term that has the most impact is Sleeping Rough Outdoors. You read that and it does not matter what side you are one, you now how the person is living and it describes the plight that many homeless face when just needing to get some rest.
The concept you are describing is a "homebum" which describes a person who sticks to one area. This is different than a "hobo" who keeps moving and is not as much a nuisance of homeless. A "rubber tramp" is a homeless person who lives in a vehicle.
s1artibartfast 20 days ago [-]
Why not call them the houseless then?
I think part of the linguistic shift is to imply social ownership. Unhoused describes both their state, but also a failure of someone who is responsible for housing them.
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
Because that's what someone decided on and people settled on. Houseless vs unhoused... shrug language follows use, and that's what some folks use.
robertlagrant 20 days ago [-]
In this case a use is being pushed by certain outlets that operate in lockstep. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's silly to pretend that it's an organic change.
dave4420 20 days ago [-]
It is to distinguish between “homeless and living on the streets” from “homeless and living on friends’ floors”?
gopher_space 20 days ago [-]
Yeah, it alludes to the majority of homeless who work or are in school during the day and in shelters at night.
bloodyplonker22 20 days ago [-]
This comment is hilarious because the term used to be "vagrant", and then it was changed to "homeless" because people were offended by it. Society truly has reached a new level of being offended.
kadoban 20 days ago [-]
Society is in a continuing state of being "offended" by the words that have become demeaning, and then we switch to new words. This is not a new thing, or anything you'd ever be able to change or stop.
wizzwizz4 20 days ago [-]
The words "house" and "home" mean different things. "Houseless" is more correct than "homeless" – except that not all housing is houses, so you'd have to make it "housingless", and "unhoused" is far less clumsy. (I don't think this is one worth fighting: if you feel strongly about neologisms, best to pick your battles.)
asdf6969 20 days ago [-]
It’s incredibly culturally insensitive to imply not having a house is a bad thing. I live in an apartment. My King lives in a palace. I have a friend who lives in a van on purpose. Most traditional shelters don’t resemble the American ideal of a detached single family dwelling. Just say what you’re really trying to say
Gigachad 20 days ago [-]
I’m unhoused. I live in an apartment.
specialist 20 days ago [-]
FFS. Unhoused is a subset of homeless people. Many homeless people have some kind of shelter. Couch surfing, vehicles, etc. IIRC, unhoused specifically means sleeping rough, eg outdoors.
These distinctions are being made because
silver bullet policies are failing,
most laypersons equate homelessness with the visibly unhoused,
and the homeless population is much bigger than just the unhoused.
For a bunch of pendantic nerds who debate the finer points of type systems, the emotional rejection of an ontology meant to foster better policy is rather bewildering.
tomcam 20 days ago [-]
I read your comment three times and still can’t understand it
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
Great, glad you are trying to understand. Let me break it down a bit for you and if you still have questions, ask away.
> The words "house" and "home" mean different things.
A house is a physical dwelling unit for humans to occupy. It's a building. A home often implies a place you reside, where you find safety and joy. The difference between these concepts gives rise to the common expression "make this house a home".
People can have homes, even without a house. For instance, a digital nomad might live in an RV or van. They would call it home, but not a house.
> "Houseless" is more correct than "homeless"
If we decouple the idea of a physical house from the idea of a home, then "homeless" people might actually have homes -- a spot they feel secure in, a place they return to.
So calling them homeless is incorrect. One can have a home but not have a house.
> except that not all housing is houses, so you'd have to make it "housingless",
Many things aren't "houses" per se, though they are housing. Apartments aren't houses, condos aren't houses, RVs aren't houses, etc. The umbrella term for house structures is "housing". These people lack housing of any type, not homes, so they could be called "housingless".
> and "unhoused" is far less clumsy.
This person would rather say "unhoused" vs "housingless", because they find it easier to say.
Hope that's clarifying. I'm not interested in discussing whether the terms are good or bad. You can disagree with their use and keep using "homeless" for all I care.
I just want you to understand the post being presented. Again, feel free to disagree, I just don't want you to feel like "I don't understand the reasoning".
robertlagrant 20 days ago [-]
> People can have homes, even without a house. For instance, a digital nomad might live in an RV or van. They would call it home, but not a house.
I don't understand the logic at this point. The person living in an RV wouldn't be counted as homeless (RV is home) but should be counted as unhoused (RV isn't a house or any sort of fixed building)?
If someone has somewhere they have shelter and feel safe, that they return to, then great, they aren't homeless. Shouldn't we be worrying about the other people, who don't have homes?
specialist 20 days ago [-]
Policy wonks attempt to address this cognitive failure by coining terms to distinquish subsets of people without a permanent shelter (not by choice).
Sadly, some people struggle with words having multiple meanings, sometimes dependent on context.
While others revel in willfully refusing to understand what's what. Because arguing about correct use of language (oh the irony) distracts from taking action. A technique popularized by the OSS's WWII era field manual of sabotage.
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
I genuinely don't know the answer to your question. It seems like a reasonable possible interpretation?
Second question, absolutely. I think we should be worrying about those people. (I personally think safe housing is a right, and something our government should provide, but now we're veering away from Tern's explaining terms to Tern's ideas on housing policy.)
tomcam 19 days ago [-]
Thanks for your hard work. To me unhoused vs homeless still seems not to be worth the additional cognitive load but I suspect you’re just way smarter than I am about these things. I was homeless briefly and I wouldn’t care what you would have called me.
ternnoburn 18 days ago [-]
I was homeless for a year. Totally felt the same. Call me whatever.
tomcam 18 days ago [-]
Damn son. You rock, seriously. Very happy to hear you got out.
ternnoburn 18 days ago [-]
Weren't great times. But learned a lot and developed a fair bit of trauma. It was thirty years ago, or thereabouts. People were.... different about it then. Better and worse about it. A lot fewer people calling for imprisonment, but a lot fewer people willing to extend a hand to help you.
asdf6969 20 days ago [-]
What’s wrong with not having a house? If somebody has a home they’re fine the way they are. I don’t have a house and it’s not a big deal.
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
I don't think anyone here made any statements about the value of having a house?
asdf6969 20 days ago [-]
Ok. I guess we all agree that being unhoused is not a problem
ternnoburn 20 days ago [-]
I don't think anyone said that either?
You've twice now made some pretty bad faith assertions.
asdf6969 19 days ago [-]
You are the stupidest person on this website
ternnoburn 19 days ago [-]
That seems unlikely. I'm open to the possibility. You'd have to provide some evidence though.
staticman2 20 days ago [-]
>>> If we decouple the idea of a physical house from the idea of a home, then "homeless" people might actually have homes -- a spot they feel secure in, a place they return to.
You're clearly missing something here. Nobody is using the term "homeless" to refer to people with a spot they feel secure in.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 20 days ago [-]
Kindly use the more inclusive term "the differently-housedX" if you want to show respect to the less fortunate.
deadbabe 20 days ago [-]
Technically I’d say it’s more accurate to call some of these homeless as non-functional drug addicts.
ChrisMarshallNY 20 days ago [-]
Usually, mentally ill folks (which can include drug addicts). I've known plenty of "fully functional" drug addicts that make life much harder for everyone, than some schizoaffective dude on the sidewalk.
Before the 1980s, when they started shutting down the "warehouse" mental institutions, homelessness was a far less pervasive issue.
sergiotapia 20 days ago [-]
we're leaving this doublethink wordplay back in 2024 where it belongs.
archagon 20 days ago [-]
Nah.
terminatornet 20 days ago [-]
question: who cares?
20 days ago [-]
sangnoir 20 days ago [-]
Pssh, can you stop with your 19th/20th century language propaganda bullshit: They are vagabond. We've used the term for centuries[1]. /s
Interestingly, the word "vagabond" is getting a rebound as "homeless" has become really unpopular lately, and as of 2022, "vagabond" saw more usage than "unhoused", which one might not have guessed given the bellyaching over other people's language.
Language constantly evolves, everywhere, sorry it offends you. It's not a conspiracy.
mhb 20 days ago [-]
This is the sort of vapid meta-comment that someone has to make in all of these discussions. He's obviously interested in shaping the direction of the evolution. Don't be upset if not everyone agrees with your preferred evolutionary direction.
mindslight 20 days ago [-]
And the comment it's replying to is vapid meta discussion as well. Yes, the euphemism treadmill exists. Yes, it's a tedious in-group out-group classlike thing. If there is one way it indisputably helps, it's shaking out people who are focused on tone policing (either way) rather than actually solving problems.
Very few of the comments here are discussing the posted article, and it's downright shameful. Creating a reproducible substantive shelter on permanent wheels that can be moved by its resident themselves is novel, at least to me. Underhousedness (/whatever you want to call it) is not even a pet issue of mine. But I respect a good hack, and this is a great hack.
archagon 20 days ago [-]
A random HN user will have zero effect on shaping the evolutionary direction of language.
mhb 20 days ago [-]
I'm sure you can understand why the counterargument to that nihilistic contention need not even be articulated? Presumably you think your participation in this discussion will change the course of history.
archagon 19 days ago [-]
Why is some random user getting upset over the usage of a word any more or less valuable than another random user telling them that language will evolve despite their wishes? If anything, the only "vapid meta-comment" in this thread is your own.
mhb 18 days ago [-]
You're the one asserting that there is no reason to discuss the preferred direction of the language's evolution. And yet you persist. I would have thought it difficult to mix up which of us is making which argument, but you seem to have achieved it.
JasserInicide 20 days ago [-]
There's a difference between language naturally evolving via everyday use and usage being forced on us by those with vested interests. This is a case of the latter.
add-sub-mul-div 20 days ago [-]
What's the vested interest here?
asdf6969 20 days ago [-]
pee pee poo poo
Eumenes 20 days ago [-]
The woke city council in my town spends the first 15 mins of every meeting on land acknowledgements, followed by 30 mins on how to divvy out needles to the "unhoused" ... followed by divesting from Israeli companies in their pensions (a good cause, but it just adds to the irony).
ars 20 days ago [-]
[flagged]
Eumenes 20 days ago [-]
I don't think its antisemitic to divest from a country involved in a questionable war ... but thats not really a conversation for this thread. Fwiw, I disagree with it in general, because small town politics should be focused on small town issues, not active management of pension fund allocations based on political issues.
archagon 20 days ago [-]
It tends to make people who loathe the unhoused upset, so I think it’s worth doing for that reason alone.
And in any case, this is just yelling into the void. Language usage will not change just because you want it to.
mhb 20 days ago [-]
What exactly is it that you think precipitates changes of language usage if not discussion and debate about people's preferences?
And who loathes the "unhoused"?
archagon 20 days ago [-]
I've seen threads on this very site where HN users proudly described laughing at people out in the street. These were not greyed out comments, either.
You don't have to dig very far to see the hate. At the root is a deep, inhumane entitlement to keep "undesirables" out of sight and mind, plus a conviction that anyone in that situation did something bad to deserve it.
farceSpherule 20 days ago [-]
People are homeless, not “unhoused” which is not even a word.
osigurdson 20 days ago [-]
A house, that conforms to e-bike regulations? Photo please.
tomComb 20 days ago [-]
Wow, the formatting of this CBC article is great. It looks like this is their 'low-bandwidth' site.
I wish all my news was presented like this.
cf100clunk 20 days ago [-]
The given link goes to CBC Lite version as opposed to their regular site at www.cbc.ca/news
At first I was confused by there being no images/media, but then I was delighted that got to choose which ones to load.
No auto playing videos, or obstructive ads.
tomcam 20 days ago [-]
I would actually pay for such news sites.
__turbobrew__ 20 days ago [-]
CBC is “free” in that anyone can access it and it is funded by Canadian taxes.
bbarnett 20 days ago [-]
And advertising.
soulofmischief 20 days ago [-]
It's a great format, only stained by the mention of advertiser tracking cookies at the very bottom.
tomcam 20 days ago [-]
But you can opt out completely, so I’m fine with it
dukeofdoom 20 days ago [-]
CBC is government funded. Like 1.4 billion a year. With all the Bureaucratic overhead, they can only afford to hire a basic html guy. So it's accidentally great.
jszymborski 20 days ago [-]
Nice try, but there is a "non-lite" version (which is actually the default).
The cbc.ca article says that each home costs $10K but the GoFundMe page says this:
> Each unit costs around $5000 (not including sweat equity) to build, and I will ensure that every penny is spent wisely to create a safe and comfortable home for those who need it the most.
So it sounds like the cost of materials has increased or Donais puts aside $5K of funds for every house built for his own living costs. Or maybe after starting the project and getting the larger construction space they can now accurately estimate the overall cost at $10K.
riiii 21 days ago [-]
Materials have gone up. But there are other costs involved than just raw materials. Transport, bought expert services (electrician, etc), tool wear, ...
He also has to live and cover unexpected costs.
kaycebasques 20 days ago [-]
> Materials have gone up.
The GoFundMe campaign was created on June 30th, 2024. Has Canada (or the world) had a big bout of inflation in the last 6 months? (Serious question, I'm not up-to-date with global macroeconomics.)
stackghost 20 days ago [-]
Canadian here. The retail price of a 2x4 has fluctuated wildly over the last 18-24 months, mostly disconnected from inflation and due more to global supply chain issues.
At one point my local hardware store in a medium sized city was selling a single 8-foot spruce 2x4 for upwards of $14, when pre-COVID it was probably closer to $4.
kaycebasques 20 days ago [-]
I remember when prices exploded during covid. Has that happened again in the last 6 months in Canada? Global prices look mostly flat over the last year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU081
stackghost 19 days ago [-]
Maybe not in the last 6 months (haven't been to the hardware store recently) but the data in TFA could be from 2023, which would fit
karaterobot 20 days ago [-]
Another possibility is simply that the CBC article is incorrect. Or, more generously, that he told them a rough estimate of, e.g. "about $5-$10k" and they went with the higher number.
th0ma5 21 days ago [-]
Maybe your comment was meant to highlight costs and logistics or maybe it was meant to simultaneously undermine their project and projects like them, who can say? Do you think you'll be contributing or do you think there's fraud and you will dig into it? Hard to say you could have either motive, most any comment online could have either a good or nefarious motive. Maybe you're just wondering aloud or maybe you have an agenda.
tomComb 20 days ago [-]
People asking tough questions and being careful consumers are exactly what most good charities and other initiatives need.
So, I think comments like yours are the ones undermining those good initiatives, which have a hard time being heard in a sea of scams.
th0ma5 20 days ago [-]
Accusing organizations of fraud without evidence isn't great.
kaycebasques 20 days ago [-]
I don't know why people are assuming malice in my comments. It's great work and I'm just curious about the cost breakdown.
I also figured that other HN visitors would have similar questions and I could save them a few minutes of digging around.
And yes, I did just donate.
wetpaws 19 days ago [-]
[dead]
renewiltord 21 days ago [-]
[flagged]
101008 21 days ago [-]
This is the view of someone who never had to spend a night in the street, in the cold, that never suffered something like this. Yeah, in a perfect world any of this would be needed. But I can assure you that any homeless person would be more than happy to have this instead of spending another night outside. This comment is completely out of touch.
renewiltord 20 days ago [-]
Yeah, this is exploitation of people because they have no other option. You should care enough for people to make things good for them. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it. This tech bro mentality of move fast and break things doesn’t work with people’s lives. Read a humanities book once in a while instead of being obsessed with technology.
101008 19 days ago [-]
> You should care enough for people to make things good for them. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it. This tech bro mentality of move fast and break things doesn’t work with people’s lives.
Yeah, it would be much betterto spend years finding the "right solution" while some people die out there. /s
renewiltord 17 days ago [-]
Ideally, yes. We should not do anything to anyone anywhere until we can exhaustively determine what the consequences are. Remember Chesterton's fence and never forget that regulations are written in blood.
denuoweb 20 days ago [-]
These are my design: nanoshelters.com
We build despite haters like yourself.
ChrisMarshallNY 20 days ago [-]
Good show!
Thanks for your Service!
fragmede 20 days ago [-]
California has the privilege that most of it doesn't get snowfall, and thus living in a tent in winter is closer to uncomfortable than life threatening. Toronto has no such luxury. Given the choice between living in a shoebox and being dead, some will prefer the shoebox.
Plus, there have been some attempts at tiny home community in LA and SF that are pretty similar.
If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you, so please stop posting like this to HN.
ilrwbwrkhv 19 days ago [-]
sorry. i thought this was meaningful commenting here.
smnrchrds 21 days ago [-]
I don't know how your comment is related to the article under discussion. If innovation could solve homelessness, San Francisco wouldn't have had the crisis it currently does. I don't know how changing Toronto to be more like SF in terms of tech companies is supposed to solve homelessness. At best, these are orthogonal issues.
gruez 20 days ago [-]
>If innovation could solve homelessness, San Francisco wouldn't have had the crisis it currently does.
You can't innovate when zoning regulations and building codes prevent you from doing so.
sokoloff 20 days ago [-]
Taxis and short-stay-rentals got innovated, even when there were pretty clear regulations that had to be broken/ignored.
I suspect the bigger problem here is that there's no (or not nearly enough) money at the end of the rainbow of solving the homelessness problem.
retrac 20 days ago [-]
I don't see housing as something that really needs innovation. We historically solved the problem; in the 1980s rough sleeping in Canada was at levels you see in like Finland today -- estimates for Toronto were a couple hundred individuals (so like 10% the rate today).
What's fascinating to me is everyone seems to know and agree what would help (loosen zoning, increase welfare) and there's broad popular support for these (increasing disability polls at like 85% yes) and political parties sometimes campaign on these - yet because of the way politics works in Canada with three levels of government - it runs into deadlock and never materializes. Public drug insurance coverage is a similar story. The ruling party campaigned on it and 90% of the population wants it and yet the political system seems unable to realize what everyone wants. Americans will sympathize with that circumstance, I imagine.
We need constitutional reform honestly but it'll never happen because the mechanism to pass such an amendment is just as paper-jammed.
gruez 20 days ago [-]
Sounds like the actual issue is that everyone agrees that "something" needs to be done, but can't agree on the details, so it flames out when it comes to the implementation stage. Your proposal for "constitutional reform" mirrors this. What "constitutional reform" would solve this? Moving to a unitary system?
retrac 20 days ago [-]
Canadian federalism relies on an interworking of government levels. To use an example, criminal law is written federally, the prosecutors are funded and run provincially, the superior courts are run provincially but the federal government appoints the judges.
It's a nice idea but as you say when we run into governments with different views on how to realize things, it can result in a log-jam.
I don't think anything as dramatic as a unitary state is needed; just make healthcare and housing the sole jurisdiction of either the feds or the provinces. The current system of joint funding seems to have caused a game of jurisdictional hot potato.
morkalork 20 days ago [-]
I'm not sure of the specifics but there are domains of responsibility split between the levels, one example is the healthcare system. Healthcare is a provincial responsibility and the federal government is not allowed to overstep or interfere on how its run, however significant funding for it comes from the federal government so there's some weird disconnects where money is prodivded for one aspect and used for another by the province. Would it take a constitutional change to address this problem? If so, then it will never be fixed.
tokioyoyo 20 days ago [-]
It’s not true thar people agree on it though. Housing is expensive, we could bring it down, but bringing it down would crush our economy, so we don’t do it. Supermajority of people also own their homes, and if you bought in the last 10 years for some incredibly high price, you wouldn't want your investment to go down.
For homeless people it’s tough, and a good chunk of people got severely desensitized in the last 20 years. So they’ve become an after thought, and people are pushing for “out of sight out of mind” policies. Can’t really blame them either.
forinti 21 days ago [-]
You need to build houses. The government has to plan neighbourhoods, finance the building, extend public transport.
The market is great at selling gadgets, but health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.
orangecat 20 days ago [-]
You need to build houses.
Correct.
health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.
This is not at all clear. In the case of housing, government's major contribution has been to forbid people from building more homes, so perhaps we could start by not doing that.
chollida1 20 days ago [-]
80% of Toronto's shelter space is taken up by refugees and new immigrants to Canada. Canada has a problem with letting way more people in than it can take care of.
In 2023 it was 44%.
maxglute 20 days ago [-]
Basically, certain diasphoras have figured out how to game the system last few years, from asylum claims to getting beds at various transitional housing programs. On one hand they are taking up space previously used to shelter Canadians, on the other hand many of them do diligently work through transitional programs and make their way into Canadian society, but they're not exactly skilled labour and substantially contributing to the economy. On the third hand, my understanding is they're much easier to deal with for shelther staff.
atlintots 21 days ago [-]
With the state of the housing market, no one bothers investing in anything else -- it's just not "worth it" when housing is already such a good investment. Not to mention the issue of monopolies.
ilrwbwrkhv 20 days ago [-]
This. People sit on houses like lecherous dragons instead of funding risky startups which can take over the world. There are no stars in Canada. Growing the pie is frowned upon. That "mediocrity" thinking falls all the way down to the local governance level and housing.
llamaimperative 21 days ago [-]
Ah yes, if only Canada had a lion (?) to reduce capital gains tax (?) you’d get more startups (?) which would then magically solve the problem of homeless people being cold in winter.
Or you could, you know, look at perverse housing policy across more or less the entire developed world.
21 days ago [-]
marxisttemp 21 days ago [-]
[flagged]
fldskfjdslkfj 20 days ago [-]
Zoning laws and housing regulations need to be abolished across the border.
https://www.communitysupportedshelters.org/conestoga-huts
as a shelter I would much prefer it over being homeless I guess, but there were issues
- Being made primarily out of wood it was cheap and easy to build, but it was HEAVY. I guess this is a good thing once its placed somewhere but it took 6 men to get it onto a trailer and because everyone is a volunteer its not easy finding a time when that many people can show up just to move a house (the building was the fun part)
- Where to put it? The city was more annoyed by our efforts (the actual organizers really since I just put in labor) than grateful because they started showing the houses off to people and saying "just as soon as the city tells us where to put it youll get a house"
- security on these was decent, I found out that primarily people wanted security from other homeless rather than even shelter
- without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be. Although it had 2 windows it was extremely dark inside
Overall I think these types of houses are not solving the root issues - if the city decided to do it and found the land, it would be way better to just tack-weld some metal boxes together and weigh it down with concrete blocks. Then it takes specialists to build though and that sucks the spirit out of volunteers who want to spend a Sunday physically building something, not throw in $200 for a contractor to build 50 of them, even though that would obviously be of more help
These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto. If this did anything to address the actual problem, then there would be no homelessness problem in LA.
Quite a few cities have actually solved this problem. They provide housing and all of the additional services, like hygiene facilities, food, and security. Granted, they only solve it for certain cohorts, but it demonstrates that it is rather trivially solvable. That's going to lead to hot political quarreling, so it's a good place to stop.
There is no chance that these can provide the full spectrum of services required for a person to thrive. We absolutely can't handle the upkeep on 100,000 one-person boxes. We need to make the shelters better. Many are terrible, but there are better ones, and a lot of that comes down to who is working there. Everyone who is able should make time to volunteer, even just a few shifts, to see what it is and how it can be improved. (It's also a good way to meet people in your city.)
> We can’t handle the upkeep
The main benefit of these is that they are effectively disposable, and they’re dispersed enough that you don’t have to deal with one person starting a flood or fire and wrecking a whole building.
If I were ever to become homeless I would much rather live in a tiny home than in a shelter, even if I had to go to a shelter or gym or something to take showers and interact with social workers. I feel like I’d never feel a sense of safety, privacy or autonomy in a shelter.
Most of those services are available AFAIK, there's charities in most major Canadian cities that provide those basics. Without them the homeless population would probably be triple what you can see, and from what I've heard the majority just need it short term to get back on their feet.
But they can only offer those to people without substance abuse problems (drugs and alcohol are banned in those shelters), and those are the folks you'll mostly see out and about. You'd need some sort of institution with far greater resources to handle those, like an asylum. North America just seems to have a sordid history with the like.
Does anywhere not have a sordid history with asylums? I'm genuinely asking as it seems like such facilities always devolve into pseudo-prison for the undesirable no matter what.
Is a terrible asylum better or worse than living on the streets?
Those cohorts being women and children.
You have a very good point that further supports are needed, however living in an urban area, I don't know if I can watch another 20 years waiting for the entire chain of everything to be setup before starting.
THese types of solutions from the private/volunteer sector do things that can't be unseen and often initiate conversations about what progress looks like.
The new types of shelter buildings with integrated services right in them, like other things are postive beacons.
If something cna improve the day to day, it's hard to say I'm against it when I'm sitting inside and someone who I might be saying it about isn't sitting inside.
> These are useful for solving one particular facet: people die from exposure in Toronto.
They are also useful because human beings need shelter, whether or not the exposure is life-threatening. They can't wait for your more ideal solutions.
> In a conventional homeless shelter there are more people around and staff, meaning you're at least not alone with an attacker.
I don't know if it really works out that way - plenty of homeless people say the shelters aren't safe - but regardless, it isn't working.
I'm not overly knowledgeable about the weather in Toronto, but heavy snow and heavy windows typically require things to be heavy so they don't get pushed by snow or wind. Maybe this is actually a feature of these type of huts.
Also, the huts in the article seem easier to move if what it states is accurate, that you can transport them in the bicycle lane legally and with bikes.
> without power or plumbing its not clear to me how actually livable these things would be.
What I've seen in my country (Spain) is that homeless tends to resolve to using tents, so if it's at least the same liveability but a little more protective against the elements, it sounds like an improvement.
The root issue of course isn't just that these people cannot find housing, but something about the reason why they aren't able to use the existing empty housing and how they became homeless in the first place. Be it because of costs, health, housing requirements or whatever.
$17-24k each per city/county documents: https://www.portland.gov/shelter-services/city-shelter-villa...
People try to tell me that it was a good deal because houses are over a million, but those include the land
This is one of the main reasons that many homeless people refuse shelter beds unless the weather makes it absolutely necessary. Phones and other important personal items get stolen constantly.
The hard problem is how do you house a lot of mentally unstable people who can often be a danger to themselves and others at the same density as the rest of the city and at an affordable cost.
I don’t think it’s generally possible because as soon as you hit any kind of density with these you get problems, but you need a minimum density to provide bathrooms showers and services. The best solution that I’ve seen is forcing builders to incorporate 1-2 subsidized units into every new building, as that distributes the problem around in a manageable way. Still that likely will not yield a quick solution and may never hit the required number of units.
It may be impractical I realize but since the trailer has to fit it anyway, perhaps not
The solution in the OP of building this as part of a dedicated tricycle is pretty damn slick. "Yes of course officer I am moving along, as fast as I can"
Perhaps the fact that you could build these theoretically faster than doing on a trailer makes it a moot point, then again if trailers are your bottleneck maybe it’s possible to schedule building around that to keep delivery smooth
Granted, there are homeless people who have a stable life but work a job that just doesn't pay enough to afford a home, or people who are between jobs and are temporarily homeless. But those people generally sleep in a car, cause few problems, are largely invisible, have most of their needs met in some way, and are generally not the people we are concerned about when talking about "the homeless".
The Homeless™ usually have more complex issues like untreated psychological issues, drug problems, etc. And while the previous group would rejoice about small cheap housing, it does little to solve the issues of The Homeless™.
https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/data/datasets/affor...
I don't think anyone has a solution to the root issues. At this point, the fastest way to fix homelessness is to let the currently homeless people die out, while trying our best to prevent people from becoming homeless.
I suppose in certain circles "homeless" leads to connotations of drug use, dirtyness and crazyness, where as "unhoused" (to me at least) conjures and image of a regular person in a temporary situation.
It's stupid.
There's a correlation between "sanctuary ciies" and NGOs that ultimately hire based on political ideology rather than pragmatic policies.
If you do not remove the drugs from the equation the overall situation will not improve. There's a big contrast between homeless population in Japan vs West Coast America and the obvious reason is access to drugs.
There's fundamentally no reason for cramming 10k people in some of the most unaffordable NIMBY real estate land of one of the most expensive CoL countries in the world. Even if these folks were able to overcome years of raging addiction, what will they do in SF? Learn machine learning? Become a wealth manager? A teacher? A cop? How are they going to make enough to live in the city when even most regular middle class professions can barely make it there?
"They're unhoused. They have a home: Seattle is their home"
later excerpts
"...the word’s root emphasizes that the problem is a structural one linked to a lack of affordable housing, not a personal weakness."
"...those who have adopted it say it’s [...] to lessen stigma and to highlight that those lacking permanent roofs over their heads may still have communities or physical spaces they consider home."
"Unhoused" being those literally without any shelter. "Homeless" can refer to anyone without a fixed address, but say couchsurfing.
Most "homeless" don't actually sleep outside.
But surely a single, government-run homeless shelter is far more cost-effective than building a bunch of individual tiny mobile homes? Plus it allows centralized access to services (medical, social, etc.), since the long-term goal is to get them into a job (if possible) and their own place.
It's hard for me to see how tiny mobile homes are helping in the long-term.
Firstly, there are lots of restrictions for entering shelters (many won't allow you to stay without ID), and then there are enormous amounts of rules for staying there which makes it akin to prison for the residents (most of whom are fresh out of the joint). The other issue is that if you are recovering from an addiction, then shelters are awful. Literally every person there is trying to sell you some kind of substance, and when they're not doing that they are trying to figure out some other form of crime that you can help them with to get money for their addictions.
Homeless people just often want to be left to their own devices, so I can see these tiny homes helping there.
Also, homeless shelters are only cost effective for people who put up with them. A lot of homeless people would rather sleep in a tent or a car than a shelter and I honestly can't blame them, I'd probably do the same. Since shelters are less preferable to literally living outside to so many people (even in the absence of drug addiction) they are IMO not cost effective at actually addressing homelessness.
In my country there's a problem with providing shelters- you don't want to attract every Eastern European crackhead. On the other hand people have died and that's a bit embarrassing as well.
The solution was those crazy Christians from the Salvation army. They don't ask for ID and they are a private initiative which allows for full plausible deniability from the government.
Mind that these aren't perfect (I've been working on an improved, "sanified", CNN extractor, as described here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42535359>), but are a breath of fresh air compared with bloated sites, and almost always work well with terminal-mode browsers (w3m, lynx, elinks2, etc.)
CBC have release notes for this site (launched in 2021), here:
<https://medium.com/cbc-digital-labs/cbc-lite-release-notes-c...>
This and https://neuters.de/ (Reuters Plaintext) are the best developments of the last half a decade in WWW news.
--------------------------------
Notes:
1. Libredirect has a collection of such alternatives, for YouTube Music, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitch, TikTok, Instagram, IMDb, Bilibili, Pixiv, Fandom, Imgur, Pinterest, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Tekstowo, Genius, Medium, Quora, GitHub, GitLab, Stack Overflow, Reuters, Snopes, iFunny, Tenor, KnowYourMeme, Urban Dictionary, Goodreads, Wolfram Alpha, Instructables, Wikipedia, Wayback Machine, Search, Translate, Google Maps, Meet, Send Files, Paste Text, and Ultimate Guitar. See: <https://libredirect.github.io/>
Several of these are inspired: Snopes -> Suds, iFunny -> UNfunny, Tenor -> Soprnao, Urban Dictionary -> Rural Dictionary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWpjnmL3B0&t=213s
any chance you would be able to include a downloadable file in some common format please?
At our current technological progress we still need nature to produce food and climate have an immense impact, so well... Try to really think about the not-so-near future, where in most northern/southern areas even if the climate will be less cold heating will be simply too expensive for most.
Introduce in the mix issues with melting permafrost and Canadian geological peculiarities... Canada seems to be probably a work zone for poor more than a wealthy country...
(Being reliant on energy imports definitely makes it harder for these countries to guarantee their national security in time of war, tho.)
Also the Southern US states were never richer than the North.
I'm not affiliated with them, I just think it's a good idea and they are making some real traction.
"un-" is not any softer than "-less". For instance, it's not any better to be called "ungrateful" than "thankless".
The "home" to "house" change also shows no detectable movement along the euphemistic gradient.
This is just a bunch of woke people deciding to use a different word which has about the same sugar content, purely so that they could then feel superior to those who are not yet using the new word.
Separately, I absolutely love the "lite" aspect of this news web page. Clean, simple, quick, with an easy button to load an image? Yes, please! More of this!
Can we stop with the language propaganda bullshit? They're homeless. We've used the term for decades
Reminds me of the politically-correct nonsense in the 90s with *-challenged, like a short person is now vertically-challenged, a bald person is folliclly-challenged or adding *-technician to something like dish-cleansing-technician.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25I2fzFGoY
It does seem that vapid progressives love faux-academic jargon to get double plus good points.
These people are your neighbors, your neighborhood is home to them, they just don't have houses.
I think the best term that has the most impact is Sleeping Rough Outdoors. You read that and it does not matter what side you are one, you now how the person is living and it describes the plight that many homeless face when just needing to get some rest.
The concept you are describing is a "homebum" which describes a person who sticks to one area. This is different than a "hobo" who keeps moving and is not as much a nuisance of homeless. A "rubber tramp" is a homeless person who lives in a vehicle.
I think part of the linguistic shift is to imply social ownership. Unhoused describes both their state, but also a failure of someone who is responsible for housing them.
These distinctions are being made because
For a bunch of pendantic nerds who debate the finer points of type systems, the emotional rejection of an ontology meant to foster better policy is rather bewildering.> The words "house" and "home" mean different things.
A house is a physical dwelling unit for humans to occupy. It's a building. A home often implies a place you reside, where you find safety and joy. The difference between these concepts gives rise to the common expression "make this house a home".
People can have homes, even without a house. For instance, a digital nomad might live in an RV or van. They would call it home, but not a house.
> "Houseless" is more correct than "homeless"
If we decouple the idea of a physical house from the idea of a home, then "homeless" people might actually have homes -- a spot they feel secure in, a place they return to.
So calling them homeless is incorrect. One can have a home but not have a house.
> except that not all housing is houses, so you'd have to make it "housingless",
Many things aren't "houses" per se, though they are housing. Apartments aren't houses, condos aren't houses, RVs aren't houses, etc. The umbrella term for house structures is "housing". These people lack housing of any type, not homes, so they could be called "housingless".
> and "unhoused" is far less clumsy.
This person would rather say "unhoused" vs "housingless", because they find it easier to say.
Hope that's clarifying. I'm not interested in discussing whether the terms are good or bad. You can disagree with their use and keep using "homeless" for all I care.
I just want you to understand the post being presented. Again, feel free to disagree, I just don't want you to feel like "I don't understand the reasoning".
I don't understand the logic at this point. The person living in an RV wouldn't be counted as homeless (RV is home) but should be counted as unhoused (RV isn't a house or any sort of fixed building)?
If someone has somewhere they have shelter and feel safe, that they return to, then great, they aren't homeless. Shouldn't we be worrying about the other people, who don't have homes?
Sadly, some people struggle with words having multiple meanings, sometimes dependent on context.
While others revel in willfully refusing to understand what's what. Because arguing about correct use of language (oh the irony) distracts from taking action. A technique popularized by the OSS's WWII era field manual of sabotage.
Second question, absolutely. I think we should be worrying about those people. (I personally think safe housing is a right, and something our government should provide, but now we're veering away from Tern's explaining terms to Tern's ideas on housing policy.)
You've twice now made some pretty bad faith assertions.
You're clearly missing something here. Nobody is using the term "homeless" to refer to people with a spot they feel secure in.
Before the 1980s, when they started shutting down the "warehouse" mental institutions, homelessness was a far less pervasive issue.
Interestingly, the word "vagabond" is getting a rebound as "homeless" has become really unpopular lately, and as of 2022, "vagabond" saw more usage than "unhoused", which one might not have guessed given the bellyaching over other people's language.
1. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vagabond%2Chom...
Very few of the comments here are discussing the posted article, and it's downright shameful. Creating a reproducible substantive shelter on permanent wheels that can be moved by its resident themselves is novel, at least to me. Underhousedness (/whatever you want to call it) is not even a pet issue of mine. But I respect a good hack, and this is a great hack.
And in any case, this is just yelling into the void. Language usage will not change just because you want it to.
And who loathes the "unhoused"?
Elon Musk recently claimed that homelessness was a "lie" and that unhoused people were actually "violent drug zombies with dead eyes": https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
You don't have to dig very far to see the hate. At the root is a deep, inhumane entitlement to keep "undesirables" out of sight and mind, plus a conviction that anyone in that situation did something bad to deserve it.
I wish all my news was presented like this.
At first I was confused by there being no images/media, but then I was delighted that got to choose which ones to load.
No auto playing videos, or obstructive ads.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-tiny-mobile-h...
> Each unit costs around $5000 (not including sweat equity) to build, and I will ensure that every penny is spent wisely to create a safe and comfortable home for those who need it the most.
So it sounds like the cost of materials has increased or Donais puts aside $5K of funds for every house built for his own living costs. Or maybe after starting the project and getting the larger construction space they can now accurately estimate the overall cost at $10K.
He also has to live and cover unexpected costs.
The GoFundMe campaign was created on June 30th, 2024. Has Canada (or the world) had a big bout of inflation in the last 6 months? (Serious question, I'm not up-to-date with global macroeconomics.)
At one point my local hardware store in a medium sized city was selling a single 8-foot spruce 2x4 for upwards of $14, when pre-COVID it was probably closer to $4.
So, I think comments like yours are the ones undermining those good initiatives, which have a hard time being heard in a sea of scams.
I also figured that other HN visitors would have similar questions and I could save them a few minutes of digging around.
And yes, I did just donate.
Yeah, it would be much betterto spend years finding the "right solution" while some people die out there. /s
Thanks for your Service!
Plus, there have been some attempts at tiny home community in LA and SF that are pretty similar.
LA: https://hopethemission.org/our-programs/tiny-homes-villages/
SF: https://dignitymoves.org/
This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Edit: we've unfortunately had to ask you about this repeatedly for a long time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41577037 (Sept 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39281820 (Feb 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656288 (April 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 (Feb 2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18585046 (Dec 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18575831 (Dec 2018)
If you keep it up, we're going to have to ban you, so please stop posting like this to HN.
You can't innovate when zoning regulations and building codes prevent you from doing so.
I suspect the bigger problem here is that there's no (or not nearly enough) money at the end of the rainbow of solving the homelessness problem.
What's fascinating to me is everyone seems to know and agree what would help (loosen zoning, increase welfare) and there's broad popular support for these (increasing disability polls at like 85% yes) and political parties sometimes campaign on these - yet because of the way politics works in Canada with three levels of government - it runs into deadlock and never materializes. Public drug insurance coverage is a similar story. The ruling party campaigned on it and 90% of the population wants it and yet the political system seems unable to realize what everyone wants. Americans will sympathize with that circumstance, I imagine.
We need constitutional reform honestly but it'll never happen because the mechanism to pass such an amendment is just as paper-jammed.
It's a nice idea but as you say when we run into governments with different views on how to realize things, it can result in a log-jam.
I don't think anything as dramatic as a unitary state is needed; just make healthcare and housing the sole jurisdiction of either the feds or the provinces. The current system of joint funding seems to have caused a game of jurisdictional hot potato.
For homeless people it’s tough, and a good chunk of people got severely desensitized in the last 20 years. So they’ve become an after thought, and people are pushing for “out of sight out of mind” policies. Can’t really blame them either.
The market is great at selling gadgets, but health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.
Correct.
health, transport, education, housing, have to be directed by the government.
This is not at all clear. In the case of housing, government's major contribution has been to forbid people from building more homes, so perhaps we could start by not doing that.
In 2023 it was 44%.
Or you could, you know, look at perverse housing policy across more or less the entire developed world.