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.

  • Voroxpete
    11·
    4 days ago

    Again, it comes back to the problem I mentioned in my original comment; these “homes” don’t come with addresses.

    It’s a camper van. That’s a hell of a lot nicer than sleeping in the street or in a tent, no question of that, but without an actual address it is almost impossible to find work (not to mention how hard it is to access government services, or have legal ID, or a bank account). Employers know the addresses of shelters in their area, putting one of those down on an application sends it straight to the shredder. And you can’t exactly write “in the park.”

    These “homes” do not help people out of homelessness, they only help them to survive it better. Surviving is better than not surviving, but it’s a poor use of the money compared to the alternatives.

    • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 days ago

      I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

      If this man spend another $30 a month for a postal box address or mail forward service for each “camper van” , would that resolve your concern? Should he sell the houses to some hipsters to fulfill their vantasies and just offer mail forwarding instead?

      • Voroxpete
        13·
        4 days ago

        You think no one ever thought of putting a PO box on their job application? That’s just as much of a death sentence as a homeless shelter address. And you can’t apply for ID or a bank account with a PO box. It solves literally nothing.

        There might actually be something to setting up residential addresses that homeless people could claim they live at, but to do that you’d be engaging in large scale fraud. Probably not a very long lived plan.

        What people need is the means to start fixing their own lives, and money is by far the best means because it buys all the other things people need. This insistence on giving people things and services instead of just giving them the money to make their own choices with always comes back to the problem of how we infantilize the homeless and refuse to ever treat them as adults capable of making their own decisions.

        For example, there is literally nothing stopping this man from going to a homeless person and saying “I have ten thousand dollars. I can spend it on making you a small portable shelter. Or I can give it to you to do what you want with. What would you prefer?” If they choose the shelter, fair deal, that’s their choice.

        I’m trying not to be too hard on this guy. Like I said, his heart is in a good place, and I respect the energy and hard work he’s put into this. It’s admirable, and he seems like a genuinely good person who truly cares about making a difference in the world, no matter how small. But he’s subconsciously operating within a paradigm that refuses to actually engage with homeless people as human beings, and that pollutes his entire attitude to the problem, rendering all his work far less effective than it could be. That’s not a choice he’s consciously making, but it’s there all the same.

        • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
          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.

          • Voroxpete
            11·
            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.