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.
What this guy is doing is amazing, and I don’t want to sound like I’m knocking him or his project, but I do have to point out that one of the main factors that traps people in homelessness is how hard it is to interact with a lot of essential services if you don’t have an address. And, worse still, how hard it is to get a job. Even rental applications need a current address, and these days want a referral too.
Essentially, projects like this serve to create a better class of homelessness, but they don’t actually solve homelessness.
A study in Vancouver found that simply giving homeless people a one time payment of $7,500 significantly reduced homelessness among study participants. For all the heart and care this guy is putting into this project, he’d do far, far more good by simply taking the $10,000 it costs to make each home and giving that directly to the person instead.
I heard some places have a false address you can legit use as your “fixed” address and mail gets held at general delivery. This alone has given opportunity to people. And if I were cold on the street $7500 cash will get me robbed and still cold, I would rather a warm place to sleep. Hotel rooms would eat up $7500 in no time.
A false address is still fraud, like I said. I got no moral objection to that, but it comes with its own problems, and tends to be short lived. And you’re still missing my point. It’s not about what you would prefer. It’s about treating people like adults and letting them make their own choices. You’re still trying to decide everything for them.
It is not a false address, it has been purposely setup to give homepess people an address of service for forms. To get around beauracracy
If that’s the study I’m thinking of, then the methodology was flawed and highly dependent on selection bias. They basically chose people who were down on their luck and most likely to succeed within the study parameters.
They did not choose demographics most common in homeless individuals, like addicts or those with mental health issues.
In my mind, the study supports the benefits of a basic universal income, rather than a solution to homelessness.
I don’t think he’s aiming at curing the disease as much as he’s trying to make people feel comfortable and safe while they live with the disease.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
OK, but if you’re suffering from a fatal illness, and you knew that I had the power to cure it, but I opted instead to simply make it easier for you to live with, you’d feel pretty upset about that, right?
It had been demonstrated that $10,000 will literally get someone off of the streets. This guy, instead, is opting to keep that person on the streets, but slightly more comfortably. His intentions are good, but those good intentions ended up being entirely subverted by the need to decide what’s best for people, rather than giving them the means to decide that for themselves.
This is the problem with so much of the conversation around homelessness. We’re still stuck in this Reaganesque mindset that homelessness is a choice, and that therefore homeless people cannot be trusted to make any choices for themselves. Our charity for the homeless is always constrained by the need to only ever give them things on our terms, never on theirs. We cannot bring ourselves to actually treat them like people.
What are your thoughts on this:
That $10,000 home isn’t a one time payment. It could theoretically be used for 3 months by the first person who needed it before they find stable housing, a week for the next person and a year and a half for the 3rd. We could either decide that eventually the house would be occupied by its final owner. Someone who needs more than a warm toolshed to pull themselves up, but in theory these houses could help dozens of people. Even more if a limit (a long one, a year or more) was put on them.
Don’t think I’m suggesting this is the answer, systematically we should be taking care of people. But if one dude can can build 3 “houses” that could help dozens, isn’t that better than “helping*” 3 people with a 1 time payment?
*Helping here meaning depending on who is selected that $10k could be very harmful, quite the opposite of what should be our goals.
Realistically we need to do both. $7,500 in cash is not going to solve the affordable housing shortage. Give them a roof over their heads for shelter, warmth, hygiene, privacy, security, autonomy, electricity for charging a phone. The psychological benefits alone seem huge to me. It would allow some of them to climb one or two rungs out of their situation. As you’ve said even a rental may not be guaranteed with $7,500 in cash. A tiny home guarantees a lot immediately, and it is a sustained investment that will last the lifetime of the home. I 100% agree that a basic income is proven to be beneficial. It doesn’t mean we stop doing everything else that we can. I’m sure you know the issue isn’t a lack of means, it’s a lack of will. If this helps in the short term, that’s great. If you also want to fight for basic income in the long term I will also support you in that. It’s not a zero sum game.
Soon to be made illegal by the city, province, or both.
Since the article didn’t link to it, here’s the website: https://tinytinyhomes.ca/
I saw that little camper in St James park. Not sure I’m in love with the concept. It would be nice if the city or province could try and seriously solve this problem so the local park doesn’t need to be a favela. It isn’t like the people camping in the park treat it nicely aside from just the tents. They leave garbage and have all sorts of other problem behaviors that start to make the park unusable.
You’d be shocked how hard it is to find a trashcan when you don’t live in a place that provides regular trash pickup.
Plenty of trash cans in that park going unused, unless you consider one being 10 meters from you too tricky to find.
Just wondering how much trash you picked up while you were checking how many bins were empty. 🤔
