Ryan Donais started building the small modular homes this summer as he watched the city’s housing crisis becoming more dire. He said he didn’t want to go through another winter seeing people living on the streets, so he put his background in construction to use.

“I just don’t see any changes. It’s been many years with people outside and it’s not changing. I couldn’t imagine being outside for years, you know?”

Since then, Donais has built three homes at a cost of about $10,000 each, most of which has been paid for through donations to his GoFundMe page.

  • @Chip_Rat
    4•4 days ago

    I understand your concern, and the validity of it. On a microscale, I was personally involved with helping a Syrian refugee family get established as part of a group I am a member of. It was insulting to sit at the meeting while a few of the members basically played “house” with this family, trying to decide how to get them the cheapest beds and where to get them clothes, instead of just setting them up with the absolute basics and then handing over the rest of the cash and being available to help them with language training and familiarizing them with the city and its services and inviting them to social groups.

    But you seem like you have a chip on your shoulder. This person is using his labour, which is twice as valuable as any of the materials he is using, to make something, to help someone. The cure to homelessness is homes, and until the government actually starts caring about people like that, this guy is providing the best homes he can.

    If you want me to say “you are right, this isn’t optimized for peak efficiency, so why are we bothering.” Then I’m afraid that’s where we will have to disagree.

    • @[email protected]
      0•4 days ago

      I think you’ve missed the fact that he’s crowdsourcing the $10,000/home cost through a GoFundMe. He has the money in hand, and that money could be applied in other ways than the one he’s chosen. That’s where my criticism comes from. He’s actively choosing to focus on his preferred solution when that money could easily be used in other, more effective ways, if he wasn’t blinkered by the paternalistic way that we talk about homelessness.

      And I have absolutely bent over backwards to make it clear that I don’t hold any personal ill will towards this man for what he’s doing. I respect him as a person, my only argument is with his choice of solution, because it is emblematic of a much deeper societal problem that he is no way personally responsible for. I’m not going to go back and start quoting my own previous comments in this thread, because even the most cursory read of them would make it clear that this “chip on my shoulder” only exists in your imagination.