3 ms·

There is a good reason why it's not more common. As always, the problem is getting permission to build on that land, then permission to build a tiny house, and

There is a good reason why it's not more common. As always, the problem is getting permission to build on that land, then permission to build a tiny house, and finally permission to live there. I don't know about Santa Clara county, but in most places you can't build without a Building Permit, and you can't live there without a Certificate of Occupancy. So the main problem is not building a cheap house, it is getting land to live on. In this context the tiny house movement solves nothing. I love the idea of Tiny Houses, but to me they are tackling the wrong problem. And I worry about people who build a tiny house in good faith, then find they can't legally live in it.

draugadrotten 10y ago
There is also the problem that - even when you give the homeless a home - they will not always take good care of it Take for example the bulgarian attempts to give houses to their homeless ethnic groups. Search for the documentary "hotel paradise bulgaria" on youtube or other video sites. https://vimeo.com/13906172 https://vimeo.com/13906172 It is remarkable how hard it is to provide something as basic as shelter.
- dalke 10y ago
  I know nothing about "Hotel Paradise" other than the movie still showing a highrise apartment building in squalid condition. But I do know that the American experience says such things are not as simple as saying "give the homeless a home - they will not always take good care of it". The usual example is Chicago's Cabrini–Green. http://whitecenternow.com/2008/11/28/greenbridge-the-failure-of-the-cabrini-green-model-of-public-housing-and-the-rise-of-the-new-urbanism/ http://whitecenternow.com/2008/11/28/greenbridge-the-failure... gives a summary of one description of the failure. I'll pull out two quotes: > "Sprawling high-rise projects housing exclusively poor families with many children amounted to a tragic, terrible mistake." > "... it was one thing to build apartment towers for the upper-middle-class, as Mies did, and quite another to adopt them as solutions for housing the poor. The well-off have doormen, janitors, repairmen, and baby-sitters; the poor have none of these things. Without restricted access, the lobbies and corridors were vandalized; without proper maintenance, elevators broke down, staircases became garbage dumps, roofs leaked, and broken windows remained unreplaced; without baby-sitters, single mothers were stranded in their apartments, and children roamed unsupervised sixteen floors below." Now quoting from https://westnorth.com/2003/01/02/short-history-of-cabrini-green/ https://westnorth.com/2003/01/02/short-history-of-cabrini-gr... > The rapid decline of industry and general flight from the city – Chicago lost a million residents between 1970 and 1990 – led to widespread abandonment throughout the city, but particularly in its poorer quarters. The blocks immediately surrounding housing projects like Cabrini-Green went vacant as residents and businesses left. City government, reacting to political and fiscal pressures, cut services to many housing projects. Train stations serving projects were shuttered, police patrols ceased, and schools were written off. The CHA effectively stopped maintaining units: lawns were paved to reduce maintenance costs, light bulbs blinked off, vacant units were left unlocked, water and fire damage went unrepaired. Deferred maintenance rendered thousands of units uninhabitable. The result was a near total isolation of the housing projects from the life of the city. The lawlessness of the projects in many ways was a logical outcome of their isolation from legal forms of social organization. The type of housing and the large social situation therefore also play a role, making it hard to single out the residents as the primary reason for a housing failure. The tiny homes project is a different organizational scheme than a highrise. Also, is it really fair to say that gypsies are homeless? As a nomadic/itinerant culture, I thought the gypsies placed little value in a fixed place to live. We don't tend to call full-time RV'ers, or global/digital nomads homeless, even though they have no fixed residence. While the people we're talking about in L.A. want a fixed place to call home.
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    This is key. I've been researching solutions to homelessness and part of that has involved looking at attempted solutions. In the 60's and 70's the idea that you could just "build them homes and that would fix it" failed pretty miserably for all of the reasons you describe and more, which was that "home" was only one part of the problem. One of the things my research has turned up is that you have to build a community rather than simply shelter. The keys being governance and an economy. As there are a number of goods and services these communities need, I am looking at how a project could empower residents of the community to provide those goods and services. As examples, providing basic groceries or child care in a way that it can be both staffed locally and delivered locally. Also the local delivery of mental health, general health, and addiction management services. Basic shelter though is key and it has to be low enough cost/maintenance that you manage it through the inevitable destructive people. The tiny houses in the article had the simplicity that you could pull out a damaged unit, salvage what you could from it (solar panels for example) and then replace it with a new unit relatively cost effectively. Not so with a multi-story apartment building.

draugadrotten 10y ago

There is also the problem that - even when you give the homeless a home - they will not always take good care of it Take for example the bulgarian attempts to give houses to their homeless ethnic groups. Search for the documentary "hotel paradise bulgaria" on youtube or other video sites. https://vimeo.com/13906172 https://vimeo.com/13906172 It is remarkable how hard it is to provide something as basic as shelter.

dalke 10y ago
I know nothing about "Hotel Paradise" other than the movie still showing a highrise apartment building in squalid condition. But I do know that the American experience says such things are not as simple as saying "give the homeless a home - they will not always take good care of it". The usual example is Chicago's Cabrini–Green. http://whitecenternow.com/2008/11/28/greenbridge-the-failure-of-the-cabrini-green-model-of-public-housing-and-the-rise-of-the-new-urbanism/ http://whitecenternow.com/2008/11/28/greenbridge-the-failure... gives a summary of one description of the failure. I'll pull out two quotes: > "Sprawling high-rise projects housing exclusively poor families with many children amounted to a tragic, terrible mistake." > "... it was one thing to build apartment towers for the upper-middle-class, as Mies did, and quite another to adopt them as solutions for housing the poor. The well-off have doormen, janitors, repairmen, and baby-sitters; the poor have none of these things. Without restricted access, the lobbies and corridors were vandalized; without proper maintenance, elevators broke down, staircases became garbage dumps, roofs leaked, and broken windows remained unreplaced; without baby-sitters, single mothers were stranded in their apartments, and children roamed unsupervised sixteen floors below." Now quoting from https://westnorth.com/2003/01/02/short-history-of-cabrini-green/ https://westnorth.com/2003/01/02/short-history-of-cabrini-gr... > The rapid decline of industry and general flight from the city – Chicago lost a million residents between 1970 and 1990 – led to widespread abandonment throughout the city, but particularly in its poorer quarters. The blocks immediately surrounding housing projects like Cabrini-Green went vacant as residents and businesses left. City government, reacting to political and fiscal pressures, cut services to many housing projects. Train stations serving projects were shuttered, police patrols ceased, and schools were written off. The CHA effectively stopped maintaining units: lawns were paved to reduce maintenance costs, light bulbs blinked off, vacant units were left unlocked, water and fire damage went unrepaired. Deferred maintenance rendered thousands of units uninhabitable. The result was a near total isolation of the housing projects from the life of the city. The lawlessness of the projects in many ways was a logical outcome of their isolation from legal forms of social organization. The type of housing and the large social situation therefore also play a role, making it hard to single out the residents as the primary reason for a housing failure. The tiny homes project is a different organizational scheme than a highrise. Also, is it really fair to say that gypsies are homeless? As a nomadic/itinerant culture, I thought the gypsies placed little value in a fixed place to live. We don't tend to call full-time RV'ers, or global/digital nomads homeless, even though they have no fixed residence. While the people we're talking about in L.A. want a fixed place to call home.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is key. I've been researching solutions to homelessness and part of that has involved looking at attempted solutions. In the 60's and 70's the idea that you could just "build them homes and that would fix it" failed pretty miserably for all of the reasons you describe and more, which was that "home" was only one part of the problem. One of the things my research has turned up is that you have to build a community rather than simply shelter. The keys being governance and an economy. As there are a number of goods and services these communities need, I am looking at how a project could empower residents of the community to provide those goods and services. As examples, providing basic groceries or child care in a way that it can be both staffed locally and delivered locally. Also the local delivery of mental health, general health, and addiction management services. Basic shelter though is key and it has to be low enough cost/maintenance that you manage it through the inevitable destructive people. The tiny houses in the article had the simplicity that you could pull out a damaged unit, salvage what you could from it (solar panels for example) and then replace it with a new unit relatively cost effectively. Not so with a multi-story apartment building.