The Problems with Shelters
To fully understand why we need to establish a better system to shelter the unhoused, we first need to dive into why the current one is ineffective. Homeless shelters, although obviously better than nothing, is still an extremely inefficient, expensive, and surface-level system. In addition, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it proved to be places where the virus could easily spread.
First, homeless shelters are incapable of providing shelter to a large number of people. The disparity between the number of people in need of somewhere to sleep and the number of beds actually provided is extremely large. In Los Angeles county, the government and various organizations can offer 900 beds. However, in contrast to the 5000 people in need of shelter, is it vastly inadequate. This mainly due to the high costs of providing and maintaining facilities. In both San Francisco, California, and Austin, Texas, each individual shelter means $40,000 taxpayer dollars.
Furthermore, the conditions of the shelters themselves is in and of itself an issue. Often, shelters are converted from buildings with previous different functionalities. The locations are extremely random, and do not take the people’s whereabouts into consideration, while the layout of the building itself is not designed to cater to the people, but to minimize management and costs. For example, a lack of kitchen space and bathrooms leading to a lack of efficiency, or a few large bedrooms with many strangers stuffed into it, leading to a severe lack of privacy and sometimes even conflicts. In addition, shelters fail to provide sufficient support for the disabled, which are common in the homeless community.
Building off of the physical inadequacies of shelters, the space and environment people are subjected to can have negative social and emotional repercussions. The tight schedule and lack of privacy offers little to no independence, making people feel as if they are less than human, which is supported by the generally defensive design of the shelters. There is an evident lack of respect for the unhoused. In addition, there have been many reports of sexual and physical abuse by management, which has potential to be deeply traumatizing and degrading, accomplishing the opposite of what it had promised to do.
A solution that could potentially fix all of these issues is the concept of a tiny house. The highly individualized space allows for privacy and independence, as well as social distancing during a time like the current pandemic. The costs of implementing this system is significantly cut down with its ability to be prefabricated, and its flexibility allows it to be moved around and transported with relative ease, overcoming the zoning issues.
