IMPORTANT NOTE: make sure you read the previous articles:

• Homelessness: Overcoming the Bias,

• Homelessness: - Shelters + Camps,

• Homelessness: + Shelters - Camps,

• Homelessness: New Shelter - Camp Improvement Path.

Informal Shelter Path takes inspiration from the flexibility and inventiveness of informal architecture. Informal architecture is true vernacular architecture, and it responds to the socio-economic conditions in the most effective (sometimes the only) way possible, harnessing neglected typologies, sites, and resources.

The best of informal architecture will always work better and treat occupants more kindly than the bottom of the formal sphere where traditional shelters reside.

All the typologies below are based on informal (often illegal) typologies and uses. I either formalize what is already there and make it safe or take inspiration from it.

After all, as I mentioned before, informal is what feedback looks like when we don’t listen.

It is long overdue to listen.

Let’s dive in!

Storage Typology

The storage units are illegally used as shelters. This is unsurprising as it is driven by a natural desire to stay close to the items you preserved in the eviction process. One of the main reasons homeless camps are so pervasive is because they are knitted from the items and memories of better times.

To aid individuals sheltering in storage units, we can do one of the following:

• Make storage units habitable by providing ventilation, shared bathrooms, showers, etc.

• Integrate the habitable areas between the uninhabitable storage units.

I already mentioned that I was unstably housed from age four to nine. I lived in multiple overcrowded houses in slums. It was Thanksgiving every day: high-density, clashing politics, arguments, in-laws... It was chaos, but it was the chaos of a normal house, which made my following transition to formal housing seamless. Moreover, I found the formal housing boring: the entire bedroom to myself, peace, quiet? Snoozefest.

I'm convinced that I wouldn't be an architect in the US if I had done five years of inherently weird traditional shelters instead. House in Thanksgiving Mode typology and its ingrained sense of normalcy went a long way in preserving my mental health and keeping me connected to the formal sphere.

On the West Coast, it is common to get evicted but still have an active lease on your car. Therefore, the car becomes a natural successor to your apartment. Such homeless people often maintain a job and drive their homes to and from work (occasionally living in their employer’s parking lot). The problem is that sleeping in your car is illegal, and you will be chased from one parking spot to another in perpetuity. 

There is an existing typology - rest area. You can sleep in your car there in most states. All we need to do is bring this typology close to or into the cities.

This typology is an informal response to micro-housing.

No matter how you massage micro-housing, it will forever be a shriveled raising of a house with an inexplicable $15,000+ price tag. I’m guilty of dabbling in this typology too (excluded from this website, I’m not proud of it). Looking back at my attempts, I say in resignation: “All this house wants is to be bigger.”

Now, let’s look at a scrapped car. It is familiar, comfortable, weather-sealed, with plenty of storage, and free. It doesn’t try to be a house and therefore not offensive to the occupants. It beats micro-housing and shelter bunks across the board in both programming and cost.

It gets even more exciting when we consider scrapped planes or buses. The hull of a commercial airplane will cost you $50,000. It will cost you a million to move it to the site, but it will still be cheaper than the same SF built.

This shows you that shelter could be both better and cheaper if we let go of the formal constraints and embrace the informal.

YIMBY typology

NIMBYs will fight shelters and affordable housing in their back yard because both decrease their property values. Shelters and affordable housing in their current state are purposefully bad, so the NIMBY’s concerns are valid. Attempting to turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard) without addressing their chief concern is futile. Therefore, we must attempt a YIMBY typology.

I propose a hybrid of a traditionally high-value typology and a shelter. For example, I explored a theater that doubles as a shelter in one of my competition submissions. By day, the building helps people and gathers their stories. By night, it brings these stories to light with performances on stage. With the added theater use, the shelter is transformed from a perceived nuisance into a community asset. People become invested as shelter volunteers or theater patrons and stay connected to community issues.

I need to warn you that you can’t simply sprinkle shelter typology on something else and expect it to function (as was unsuccessfully tried in the Seattle Library). The shelter must have synergy with the second typology. In my theater example, the shelter provides the theater with content and keeps it relevant, and the theater provides the shelter with funding. Therefore, theater and shelter become inseparable.

Dying Typologies

Renovations are rare in shelters (in MN), which is a missed opportunity. Shelters should lean into dying typologies more.

Malls. Malls are getting killed by e-commerce. The malls are interior streets that are kinder than exterior streets. Malls also have infinite parking spaces for the aforementioned typologies.

Offices. The hybrid work model is here to stay: Gen-Z (and I) will make sure of it. Some offices will become vacant. It's hard to make housing out of offices because they have deep plates, but a shelter could work. You can imagine private offices becoming private rooms, and open offices becoming public shared places.

Shelter Overflow

If we insist on keeping the existing shelter typology on life support, we must consider this. It doesn't matter how densely we pack people in the shelter, we won’t be able to fit all the homeless. Overflow is inevitable and we must address it proactively. For example, Midnight Mission Shelter in LA, which recently celebrated a centennial, allows the homeless to camp in their courtyard, managing overflow humanely.

Conclusion

None of the proposed typologies solve homelessness. They are preventing homelessness from being more miserable than it has to be. The true solutions to homelessness are and forever will be (depending on your political stance):

• Addressing the systematic issues of homelessness

• Managing individual risk factors.

Homelessness is not a problem; it is a symptom of a problem. It's like a fever: there are a million reasons for fever. It could be a common cold, or it could be Ebola, but after a while, we better stop eating Tylenol and examine the underlying problem.

Finally, the informal is not our enemy. I know my childhood home is ugly (photo nearby). I know we are itching to knock it down and I think we should. But, before we do, we need to pause and learn from it. It could have program elements we are not aware of: such as preserving the mental state of a child by being familiar.

Informal typologies and uses are not there to spite us - they are challenging us to do better.

P.S.: Social Housing. I couldn't leave the core issue of homelessness unanswered. My take on what social housing should look like is explored in the Skyless Skyscraper Project situated in one of the most dystopian housing markets in the world - Hong Kong.