Homeless Couple Gets A Home On Christmas Eve, Thanks To ‘Occupy’ Group

They made it look far too nice. In a year or two it is going to be harder to complain about the social inequality of them having a tiny house while Rich People live in McMansions. They should have made it look more hovel-ish.

That said, I'm almost interested enough in the concept to dig into it more. The place clearly has electricity. At less than 10x10, I'm wondering what it has as far as amenities--and how they fit it in there. Heat? That is kind of important in Wisconsin. A food area? Sink? Microwave? Range? Refrigerator? Toilet and at least a shower?

I'm curious about the decision to build that size as well. You're saving on the building materials like 2x4s and plywood, but you're still buying some of the big-ticket items that would go into a larger structure. It seems like doubling the size gets you more than double the utility for less than half the cost. They could have made a bigger, more practical structure if they'd scrimped a bit on some of the detailing, judging from the photo.

Last observation is, they literally paint themselves into a corner with this construction choice. It works marginally as a crash space for 2 people. If they so much as get a dog--let alone a kid--they run out of space. And then what do you do? Tear down 1/4 of the structure to add on? How do you rework the roofline then?

I could be mistaken, but at first glance this doesn't seem particularly well thought through.

It's meant for people who would otherwise live in a cardboard box.

Also, I'm thinking about how I could fit a bunch of these in my backyard....

Exactly. This isn't security against the future, it's protection and warmth in the present.

Your own personal fancy pants Hooverville.

You're dreaming if you think there's anyone in this day & age who *has* to live in a cardboard box. The homeless shelters, the soup kitchens, the local churches and their separate charity programs - there's absolutely no excuse for sleeping on the streets.

But the problem the "chronically homeless" run into with going to the shelters are that there are counselors & social workers there whose job it is to talk to people and try to figure out why they're in the position they're in - what is the systemic problem that has led to them being homeless? Chronic substance abuse? Mental illness and an unwillingness to stay on the proper medication? Antisocial personality & chronic criminality? What you'll find is that these people have been set up with independent living time & time again and have repeatedly sabotaged themselves and gotten kicked out.

You can build someone a mobile treehouse and plop them down inside, but they aren't going to be staying there very long when they're more interested in smoking crack or trashing the place because they're off their meds.

Exactly. Let's see how they're doing a year from now.

Do a google search on micro houses and be amazed. There are thousands of designs, many of which are quite luxurious despite their small size. There's an artist in Vermont who builds them, uses them as a studio for a while, then sells them. Some of the designs are such that you can add on to the house without it looking like some kind of Frankenhouse, while others are good for two people, maximum. Apparently, they're quite popular to use as a vacation home, since they're so cheap to build, and you effectively pay no property taxes for a dwelling place on the land.

One solution to homelessness is to make people try to figure out multiquote here, because it makes me want to kill a homeless person. I wanted to do both you and John's replies but gave up.

Anyway, this argument is suspect. First off--and I apologise if this is covered at the link. If it is, I'll go read it--how much did it cost to make this building? Does that factor in the land it is sitting on? Because I'm guessing for the same amount of money, renting an small apartment would have been a much better use of resources. And what happens when something breaks? How are the utilities paid? Taxes?

I heard somewhere that the "Extreme Makeover" homes can be a curse because all the sudden a family that was barely getting by gets this tricked out huge home and the property taxes that come with it and they can't afford it or maintain it effectively.

I suspect this is more effective as a political statement than an actual way to help people. And like so many do-good efforts, it doesn't seem like it was thought through very far.

Cardboard box + cold winter = dead.
Sturdy, small home + heat source = alive.

You can get a small, low watt ceramic heater for $20, and plug it into a hand crank generator. Not the greatest solution, but you'll be warm, dry, and protected from the elements.

Everything else can be worked out as long as you're not freezing to death at night, but that first step is one of the most crucial.

I'm not clear on whether land is included, but the cost according to the article was $3,000. It's no frills, there is a toilet, but no mention of shower or kitchen. The electricity is supplied by a solar panel, but evidently enough just for lighting. I'm not sure the house is heated, though the article mentions insulation. I won't kid myself in to buying the idea that mentally ill or drug users will get anything beyond a warm, dry bed from this. If that's the basis of any criticism, people are making the wrong argument.

I see two worthy elements to this:

1. Inexpensive transitional housing for people who are destitute but not permanently so.
2. a demonstration that housing doesn't need to be as elaborate and expensive as regulations have made it.

It's early. We won't know yet how this works, but we do know that current housing mechanisms are inadequate for housing all people. This is an experiment, one that hopefully pays off.

He could brag about his "minimal carbon footprint" and be the envy of Ecofreakville.

Cool. What a nice warm feel good newsday treat we have today. It's cute, at least at the moment, and it makes a whole bunch of "feel good" to go around.

Fact is, shipping containers are cheap, easily modified for living requirements, and disposable when they become so fucked up from abuse and they've been turned to scrap.

These, not so much.

They're nice though. They'd make a nice little lake shack or a fishing house if put on skids.

Let's see.

FIFTY volunteers managed to give a homeless couple a 96 square foot "home"?

that averages out to less than TWO square foot per volunteer.

I've seen church groups with less volunteers build 1,000 square foot homes Rick.

It's about the "Feel Good" Dayton.

The thing is if the Tea Party or a church group had provided a homeless family with a 96 square foot shack, Rick would've been running them down as miserly and selfish.

Still it is nice that the Occupy movement took some time off from rapes and vandalism....

Seems to me the number of people is irrelevant unless we know the number of person-hours.

About these shacks on trailers, what if they don't own a car? Or their car is a Civic, Corolla, etc.?

Speaking as someone who spent the better part of a decade unloading shipping containers, the ones that have come from the Far East often have rather disturbing levels of strange powders in them. Presumably, they're some kind of pesticide, but nobody really had any idea (they were different colors, too, some were white, some were blue, some were tan), not sure I'd trust a good pressure washing to get that stuff out of them. Then there were the insects, mostly dead, but not always, and they won't always show up after you opened the container on the dock. Might be a day or so later, and you'd see something crawling out that looked like a giant cockroach, only it had silvery eyes. One guy saw a long, centipede like creature with claws. Of course, if the container had been used to smuggle people into the States, well, I guess the smell would go away after a while.

The primary reason they build tiny houses on trailers, isn't portability (which is useful) but the fact that a structure on a trailer is not governed by the same rules as a typical fixed structure. For instance, in most jurisdictions, a trailer built structure requires no building permit whatsoever.

That I understand, I meant in the article where the owners can leave the trailer parked for 48 hours, then have to move it. Or even moving it around in general.

That's what I see in the jail.

These guys sabotage themselves. And they know it.

They like their drugs and their alcohol. And for the ones with psych problems it's difficult if not impossible for them to stay on their meds while on the street.

There are also those who like to be on the street. They don't like the ridiculous, in their opinion, rules of the shelters.

Aww, ain't you two adorable?

Now smoke cigars, and tell jokes about wife beating.

Go work with homeless people for more then a few weeks.

They aren't the "awww shucks if I only had a job" people you think they are. People who are chronically homeless have real problems that can not be solved by some social worker or counselor giving them 5 minutes of chit-chat and a pat on the back.

This is true. Homelessness is an incredibly complex problem, especially at the level where people are actually on the street, because people who fall on hard times but DON'T have other major issues are typically able to find other, though certainly not optimal, situations. (They usually end up in what's known as "couch homelessness," bouncing between friends and relatives and sometimes shelters, but not actually ending up sleeping on the street.)

When a person is chronically homeless in the sleeping-on-the-sidewalk sense, there is something else going on. Sometimes there is substance abuse, and there are nearly ALWAYS serious mental health issues.

This doesn't mean it's their fault or that they don't deserve compassion or that we shouldn't try to help them, but it does mean that helping them in any meaningful way is nearly always going to be a much more complex, involved process than "here's a house, now you can live in it."

Neighborhood of micro houses in Washington DC. Interestingly enough, they're all owned by professionals.

I think @Prufrock posted this a while back, it's a pretty rad tiny house story:

Actually, things are getting to be less and less of an impediment to this kind of housing, all around the country.

Sure, there are a number of high-profile exceptions to that, but by and large, far more municipalities are relaxing standards to accommodate (and exploit / profit from) the movement, than the inverse.

Also, in most jurisdictions, building inspectors have no say over most tiny houses, because most have wheels, and are therefore classified as vehicles, rather than architecture. (Again, one of the reasons most "Tiny Houses" are built on trailers in the first place.)

You know, now that I think about it, something as small as that house, if properly insulated, could probably be heated quite nicely by a freakin' hair dryer. Its not as crazy as it sounds, because big indoor arenas have to worry about the body heat being put off from having thousands of people crammed together and even in the winter, they don't always need to heat the places when a game is going on because the body heat from the fans is enough to warm it up.