Are there better, more efficient ways to accomplish this? Yes. Am I glad they at least did something though? Also yes.
Americans will build literal shoeboxes instead of 1 apartment building
When dealing with homeless and mentally ill this setup of isolation from other units is better. Dealing with unsanitary living, smells, fires, sounds, are all are easier to mitigate in this setup. Also America is not hurting for wide open spaces to build this type of thing.
Nor is Canada, where this is.
I dunno, wouldn’t it be cheaper to make and wouldn’t be easier to look after as well? (Having all the plumbing, heating, wiring, AC in one place)
Independent homes require a lot of work and maintenance, compared to shared Apartment buildings.
Sanitary wise, I could see it being a problem in both the cases. It really depends on the people.
Besides, just because you have land doesn’t mean you should use it. Trust me, living in a place where there’s virtual no trees to look at, I’d prefer to just live in a shared Apartment and enjoy the view (that’s going by the picture and if there’s one).
Americans are too scared of apartment buildings because it reminds them of the projects, imo. That apartments are a poor person thing.
There are cities where they have tried like in old hotels or old apartments that got refurbished. Usually just ends up in a broke down roach infested place. There are videos on YouTube. I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube about this very thing recently lol
Yo
Idea
What if ALL the houses we build are for reducing homelessness?
At least think about it
There’s a lot of negativity from armchair experts in this thread but this seems like a genuine case of somebody putting a lot of thought and a lot of effort into actually helping the homeless. It’s not just dropping a bunch of tiny houses and saying “job done”.
It’s deadass exhausting seeing people whinge whenever anything that improves the world happens. Always enough time for criticism, never enough to do something anywhere near as positive IRL.
yep, image has been accurate for a long time now.
Agree. Imperfect, enemy, good; you know the spiel. We all know it by now.
Probably stems from powerlessness and endorphin release from online interactions (tbh, guilty) taking place of actual, uh, I guess praxis is the term.
It’s hard not to be jaded. I bounce between both sides constantly.
Either way, this guy did an incredible thing.
Incredible read, thank you for sharing this
I think most likley that is actually the case. Y’all are masters at the sophist uno card. Cha cha real smooth…how low can you go…Charity is a band aid of tyranny and all those in the hierarchy play their part. Some towns out west that have a bunch of rich people don’t have any infrastructure for the poor so the peasants can serve them their cheeseburgers at their local McDonald’s. This means the rich need us. It is not altruism but out of necessity, but you can spin anything the way you would like, especially when it’s hard to tell rich people what to do.
Yes this… “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Butttttttt… “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6, ESV)
Rich people love peacocking managing perception and you will lap it up like a loyal dog unaware of your position in the hierarchy. I am not even Christian but raised Christian I suppose.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
Just want to remind everyone that we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a cost of living crisis. Everyone deserves a place to live and we have plenty. The will is the only thing. Fight YIMBY traitors. We can do it!
Not sure what you’re talking about, but here in the UK we need over 4m houses to be built to house the current population. That’s quite a lot for a country of 68m.
Ahaha! Wtf is this shit? Bloody think tanks…
Well, can you provide some context to your +4m new houses figure?
Then we can discuss where the difference comes from.
Do you understand what the word “household” means? A household is an entity which pays council tax. The amount of households cannot be higher than the amount of houses, it’s just impossible.
Some examples of households:
- A single person living in a flat.
- A family of four living in a house.
- A group of unrelated five people living in an HMO.
First of all, households do not include homeless. There are at least 354k homeless people in England according to Shelter. That’s 354k houses needed. Homeless don’t live in a house, they don’t pay council tax, they are not counted towards household number. Your bullshit think tank has decided that homeless are not humans and do not deserve a place to live.
Second - a family of four has two kids, kids need their own place. That’s two more houses needed for this example household. ONS census indicates that at least 4.9m adults live with their parents. That’s 4.9m more additional houses needed. Your bullshit think tank has decided that kids should live at parents’ house until they die and dropped them from their statistics interpretation.
And last, but not least, HMOs are a temporary accommodation. People living in them - they all need their own place. There are around 480k living in HMOs in England, that’s an additional 480k houses needed. But your bullshit think tank decided that these people don’t matter.
The difference comes from statistics manipulation to fit the agenda to keep the houses growing to please landlord donors.
Do you guys have room for that?
There’s loads of space. We just need to mow down terraced houses and get rid of aristocracy, which owns 40% of land in England.
Ah, yea fine makes sense.
Anyone has room for that if it’s not built in the style of American suburbs.
Well tbf Americans have room.
Two things can be wrong. We can (and should) dispose of landlords and build more housing.
Traitor YIMBYs want to build more market rate housing. Unnecessary. If after controlling costs there is an actual demand for housing, we should build government housing. Absolutely.
“YIMBY traitor” – isn’t that just a NIMBY?
YIMBY traitors typically call decent folks NIMBYs, so I’m never keen on using that term.
Yimby traitors?
What’s wrong with yimbys?
They won’t solve the underlying problem. Sure, that requires wealth redistribution, but where is the downside?
is it just me or anyone else thinking that row houses would have been way more efficent than these? giving everyone living there more than 1 room
Depends. Given this happened in North America there might very well be existing production lines for these tiny houses, and construction laws are also way simpler to fulfill with those basically anywhere (e.g. in Germany you’d just have had to make the whole place a camping site). They all look pretty standardized, including those solar panels.
Although I’d agree that a properly build big building would probably last longer. Not too sure about that though, I’m just happy to hear there are still people with money actually taking care of those who’re at rock bottom.
I think this is the correct answer, outside of large cities it is not legal to build apartments or row houses in many places in the States. It would probably be significantly easier to skirt the zoning laws to buy a plot of land and put 100 tiny houses on it, than to attempt to get some sort exception granted to the zoning in order to build an apartment or row house.
not legal
I don’t know this, but I am willing to bet it’s not legal because of the segregation era suburban dystopia laws.
They are also a lot more expensive. The most expensive with these houses he built is probably the ground, but he might’ve gotten it for free from the town.
Might be, but those look cute as well to be honest.
So this guy shouldn’t be news, this should be the standard, it’s scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.
We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.
That’s why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
The problem is that we allow individuals to amass so much wealth, it inevitably leads to the rest of us being at their mercy like that. If we’re lucky, they’ll be sorta benevolent, like this person. Would be much easier if we took out the randomness and just had the funds to do necessary stuff like this collectively.
You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
“We’ve given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We’ve given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing.”
10M over 20 years to help a community of 3000 or $166 per person per year. USA is planning to increase the military budget by 150B this year or over $400 per US citIzen…
Yeah I was shocked by the math on that one too. It is ridiculously cheap to lower crime and poverty, while increasing graduation rates and college enrollment. It’s almost like keeping people poor and stupid and criminal is intentional.
You’re saying that as if investment into military was unnecessary these days
It is if you don’t use it when you’re part of a contract that got broken from another Partie of the contract.
So breaking contracts now justifies military intervention?
Alternatively you could eliminate oil company tax breaks and direct subsidies and that alone would fund it.
Who would have thought that the way to reduce crime was to reduce people’s need to commit crimes by giving them homes and a future.
Bruce Wayne but sane
Good for him, but this is pretty much an Orphan-Crushing Machine moment.
Haha uhhh gawd.
First time reading this?
And why were they homeless?
Why were they homeless???
I’m of two minds.
-
shitty bungalows are what is killing infrastructure costs and perpetuating urban sprawl. We have a generous home in a hyper-dense housing area and - thanks to triple paned windows and concrete - no claustrophobia.
-
tiny homes for people returning from homelessness may be a good idea. The unfair concerns are mitigated by very repairable units separated from neighbours.
We need to keep these as transitional housing, though, and a feeder into a “starter” unit in proper dense mixed-use: every block (hectare) taken for tiny homes is 3 million cubic meters of space taken from a land budget we’re already overdrawn on.
I think thats always the hope that they are first steps of stability to move up. None of the projects like this I’ve seen have been intended to be life time residence.
There are tiny-home dwellers but they’re often highly educated professionals who decide to live Buddhist for a while. Some of them wind up enjoying it.
The better analogy for homeless folks would be living in cars, aka the invisible homeless - is this better than that? Fuck yes. Even if it WAS permanent it’s better than that.
Totally agree, any stability in a seemingly hopeless situation is a great thing.
-
Nice!
Now, it would be good not to rely on good will of some individuals and actually enforce this for all the rich.
But still mad respect for the man.
Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.
Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
How good it is depends on the details, of course.
I have nothing against “home first” strategy, however when some random millionaire decide without impact study or methodology how to fix the problem it might look like home shelters outside of zones where homeless get their social, work or food access, without lights, water or any usefull public infrastructure.
That’s a good point. Homeless encampments will be within range of all the services they need. No guarantee these houses are anywhere near those services.
But like someone else said, it all depends on the details.
Really what this is showing me is that the public coffers don’t have nearly enough money in this region if some random is out here addressing critical infrastructure problems.
I like this because it is both a good story about an individual helping their community and it is proof individual action alone is not enough to rely on to solve social problems.
Now imagine if billionaires did it with their infinite wealth…sad. humanity and capitalism is just cancer.
If we can convince them their dick size is measured by how much charity / benefit they do with their wealth we will solve many of the world’s problems overnight
I still don’t get why “rich lists” aren’t done using tax returns. It’s a clear yardstick to compare egos by.
It also has the side effect of encouraging civic contribution via taxes. By the time you’re that rich, money is just a score. Make it worthwhile not to dodge taxes, and tax dodging will drop off.
