Please don’t read this article or watch the video if you think you know how to solve the homeless problems in your city.
For quite some time I have spoken out against putting homeless people in garden shed communities. The idea that people want to live in a festively painted chicken coop, share kitchens, laundries, bathrooms, and keep their garden shed clean and neat is ludicrous.
The homeless have a variety of personalities. Some have truly become homeless through a series of unfortunate incidents but dig a little deeper and you’ll find a lot with mental instabilities, drug and alcohol abuse, criminals recently released from prison with no place to live and so on.
Now imagine you and your spouse or partner are told you must leave the tent or cardboard house you built, move into a garden shed with two beds and a couple of lights, share toilets with complete strangers that have abuse problems, thieves or worse.
Let’s go one step further. Imagine you are homeless and given a garden shed that you must share with a drug addict or a mentally challenged individual. What can you do at night when it’s just the two of you in an 8’ x 12’ wooden shed that was designed to house garden tools and fertilizer.
We’ve all seen housing projects fail after just a decade or two or become segregated from the surrounding community simply because the city government is not keeping up with maintenance, resident eligibility or security.
I actually applaud the efforts of people that want to help the homeless live a more dignified life but is housing them in garden sheds and shipping containers really the best we can do?
The sad part of this is people have been trying to figure out a solution for decades and we don’t seem any further ahead than we were then.
If you’ve followed along with me this far, please take the 8 minutes to watch this video from Belinda Carr, the YouTuber with videos on building science, and the latest products and technology disrupting the construction industry.
If you haven’t heard of Belinda, watch this video and subscribe to her YouTube channel.
Related Articles:
- Garden Sheds For The Homeless? We Can Do Better
- Are Nonprofits Skirting Local Zoning And Codes When Setting Up Homeless Villages?
- Regulations Suspended To Help House Homeless
Gary Fleisher is Editor in Chief of Modular Home Source and Offsite Builder magazine. Email at [email protected]
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