Homelessness: New Shelter - Camp Improvement Path

Intro

  • IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure you read the previous articles:

  • The biggest issue of the old shelters is their position on the line between the formal and informal spheres. The old typology gets constrained by the formal sphere and detached from the informal and the clients there.

  • Old shelters work like magnets; they are trying to attract people, and their reach is about 2/3 deep into the informal. Also, the old shelters require the homeless to sacrifice property, independence, and social ties. Therefore, people are expected to sink deeper into the informal before getting better.

  • The new shelter typology must reconnect with the clients and be at the bottom of the informal sphere instead. It must leave no one behind. It will work like a beacon and a springboard, propelling people back to the formal sphere. The shelter must require no sacrifice. It must come to the homeless and help them on their terms.

  • One of the ways to achieve that is Camp Improvement Path. Before we show what it entails, we must outline what we currently do to camps.

 

Current “Solution”: Escalating Architectural Hostility

Below is the real tragicomedy of Cedar Street Camp - a typical way the camps are dealt with across the US.

Stage 1. Camp shows up. The homeless aren't in the way. We are bothered by their presence but unencumbered.

Step 2. We demolish the camp and put up a fence - a pointless structure that guards nothing against everyone.

 

Stage 3. Homeless came back and use this fence as a rack, thus giving it a purpose for the first time. Now, the camp is on the sidewalk. We are both bothered and encumbered. “The homeless blocked the sidewalk! Children are walking on the road!” The homeless weren’t on the sidewalk before we put up a fence, but we forgot about that.

Stage 4. We bulldoze the camp again and install a concrete obstacle course. The site now resembles the Berlin Wall (my Russian origin makes me an expert on oppressive structures; I call it as I see it). The children walking through are now wondering: “Am I supposed to be here? I won’t get arrested, will I?” Notice how it gets dumber with every cycle. Notice that we put enough material on site to build a shelter. Notice that the price of each concrete block (excluding the delivery and installation) is one month's rent for a whole family. And it didn’t even work! The homeless are back again! I’m holding my breath, waiting for our next move…

 
 

Stage 87 (interpolated). “The war has raged for a century. Despite our best efforts, the homeless from our community won’t leave the bridge alone. We now decided to go with a fire-breathing basilisk. He eats a child occasionally, but so far, he has kept the homeless out. Victory at last!” Ugh…

 

CAMP IMPROVEMENT PATH

The Camp Improvement Path does the exact opposite of the current “solution.” Instead of endlessly escalating hostility, we’ll endlessly improve the hospitality.

The Site Selection

We don’t select the site - the homeless do. The homeless are naturally good at discovering suitable campsites: abandoned, neglected, unclaimed, with low conflict, close to opportunities, with existing weather protection, etc. Below is a fictional site the homeless would usually choose.

 

The Camp Formation

  • The camp appears, and we are itching to bulldoze it. Resist the urge. The camp is just a symptom of a larger issue in your community. You need to know what this issue is first.

 

Does a homeless camp have to be ugly? No. In fact, it's our hostility that makes them ugly. The homeless might surprise us with neat camps if we stop bulldozing them. If we also show up to help - the camps will be amazing! Here are some examples of campsite typologies that we don’t bulldoze:

  • Camping - sitting around a campfire at night, playing guitar, and telling scary stories. Those are great times if you are into the outdoors and don’t mind the discomforts that come with it.

  • Flea Market - fun to go to and easy to overlook that it’s a quintessential tent city.

  • Tailgate Party - you might see those on the parking lots close to the big sporting events. TVs with a live stream of the game, barbecues, beer, cheering, and swearing (mostly swearing if you, like myself, are a Vikings fan).

Luxury tent.

Flea Market.

Tailgate party.

A homeless person in LA who was left alone by the residents transformed the neglected site with self-made landscaping.

Stage 1: Sanitation

Even formal camps will run crazy when sanitary conditions are poor: such conditions at the Woodstock-99 festival led to sickness, rioting, looting, vandalism, arson, violence, and death carried out by people with jobs, housing, and money. It is criminal that some cities would purposefully withhold sanitary interventions in homeless camps, let them deteriorate, and then use this deterioration as a justification for the violent removal of the camp. Such a tactic puts in danger the lives of the homeless and the larger community.

Therefore, the first intervention must be focused on preventing unsafe, unsanitary conditions on the site.

  • Waste management. We need to start by providing regularly serviced portable toilets and trash cans (or indicating which ones within walking distance the residents could use). Extra public restrooms and ways to dispose of the waste are also beneficial for passers-by - we all have been in a pinch.

  • Water. Provide a way to get water for drinking, showers, and laundry. The common ways of getting each are:

  • Drinking water. Homeless buy a pack of plastic bottles and put them in a portable cooler. Once they run out of water - they refill the plastic bottles. Alternatively, they discard the bottles and buy a fresh and cool pack. At a minimum, we need to indicate a source of fresh, cool water so the camp doesn’t multiply plastic bottles. Ideally, we could provide a centralized water tank on-site, eliminating the need for a cooler.

  • Showers. Homeless maintain and share a gym membership. They go in to work out (or pretend to), act casually, shower, and leave.

  • Laundry. Any public laundromat will do. Usually, this is the most remote service of the three. Therefore, the laundry chore is the most delayed.

In Stage 1 we need also to begin to track the evolution of the site and its use. The information we gather will come in handy later.

Bridges Project

Most importantly, we must provide the camp with legal status as an official temporary shelter. We can call it The Bridges Project. The Bridges Project is about destigmatizing spaces under bridges and making them habitable. The Bridges Project will create a physical and metaphorical link between the homeless and the community, a place in between, and a reconciliation forum. Everyone is welcome under the bridge, and there is no shame in being there for anyone anymore.

The housed residents might be reluctant to give up the power to bulldoze the camp at will. However, unless they are willing to transform their neighborhood into a concrete obstacle course, they are better off focusing on the underlying issues, such as why they have a spike in homelessness in the neighborhood.

To reveal and address the causes, they need to begin Stage 2.

Stage 2: Services

Simply leaving camp alone will not do any good either. We must deliver shelter services on site: advocacy, invisibility, and relief, as covered in the previous article. In the Bridges Project, the homeless no longer come to shelters - shelters come to the homeless and help them on their terms.

How do we bring services on-site? One of the ways is explored in my old competition submission - the Willmar Fleet. While there is a building where people can come to get help, all the building services are located in semi-trailers and can be deployed to any location where these services are needed.

The presence of services also ensures monitoring of the camp, which stops it from descending into anarchy. Monitoring does not equal surveillance. If you start applying an iron fist, the client will leave.

A mobile kitchen (ironically cheaper than a fixed commercial kitchen).

A mobile multi-purpose space.

Stage 3: Improvements

Improvements

Our improvements must encourage and enhance the fluidity and flexibility of the site (with the help of the data we began gathering at Stage 1). We must use light touch only.

What are the examples of such improvements? For instance, we could provide more effective drainage on the site to keep it dry. We could install lighting to make the site more welcoming, provide electricity so there is no need to use open flames for heating, and install foldable shelves to organize storage. Charitable organizations could provide micro-housing and solar panels.

Unifying purpose

The most important part of Stage 3 is to make the site welcoming to the homeless and the housed. The site must have a purpose beyond just being a homeless shelter. Open-air shelters were tried in Portland with some success, and their critical omission was making the camp exclusive to the homeless and leaving no reason for the housed residents to be there. For this typology to be successful, it needs to establish a link to the housed community: flea market, food trucks, basketball court, job fair, etc.

Portland Outdoor Emergency Shelter. There is no reason for the housed residents to be there. Photo Credit: CRAIG MITCHELLDYER / Associated Press

Final comparison and conclusions

Clearly manipulative rendering styles aside, a habitable place is better than an uninhabitable. So far, the homeless were making public places habitable, and we were fighting them, making liminal uninhabitable places. Hostile architecture is anti-architecture. It is the opposite of our job.

Will the camp improvement path be easy and rosy? Absolutely not. Fixing the underlying causes of homelessness and managing people’s risk factors is a difficult, grueling process. Bulldozers are always easier to drive.

However, I want to warn you not to take the easy path. By using a bulldozer, we attempt to sweep the underlying causes of homelessness under the rug, where they fester and get worse. It will likely be too late when we finally confront the causes again (and it is inevitable). It is better to confront the issues sooner rather than later.

The camp improvement path is harder but improves outcomes for us and the homeless.

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Are there other ways to approach shelter typology? Absolutely! Onto Part 4…