News, Formerly Homeless Man Invents Portable Shelters to Help Others (oil, cost)

[JD59]

A formerly homeless Utah man has used his insight to create and build “survival pods,” or mini-shelters, to be doled out to people who currently have nowhere to live.

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[Joliefille]

Most people prefer problems rather than solutions.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

That's noble of him to try. He's earning Karma points.

I can see several issues. If they are being bought by cities to set up as homeless camps, they will have the same issues as any other homeless shelter. Unsafe, no pets allowed, supervision that many of the homeless don't want.

If they are to be given to the homeless, how are the homeless to move them around? Where are they going to park them? The inventor's idea of parking them on some land outside the city isn't going to be very popular with the fellow who owns that land and doesn't want squatters.

They contain toilets? Where is that sewage getting emptied?

I read an article where some city (New York?) was giving out cardboard boxes designed to sleep in. They tried giving out sleeping bags, but the homeless just sold them to get money for booze and drugs.

So either these shelters are for people who are just fresh homeless and have a place to park them and a way to move them, or they are for charities to buy and set up huge fields of them, with security and plumbed bathrooms.

The charities here lease or buy motels, so a field full of sleeping pods would be more economical.

The inventor, by the way, was never homeless. Living in his place of business is not qualifying as homeless.

[Rickd203]

It this country we want our homeless people to be out of sight and out of mind. These pods are like giving homeless people big 'homeless person here' signs to carry around. The sight of a dozen of these parked anyplace there homeless people would normally sleep is going to have the the cops harassing them to leave the area.

[k81689]

This problem has no solution.

Do you want to cut your paycheck in half to support homeless people.
No, NOT me, let OTHER rich people do it.

Do you want them in your yard?
No, park them in OTHER people's yard.

Let gonvernments do it.
So the gonvernments are getting fatter and fatter like Detroit.

So people walk away.
No, let's build Berlin wall around Detroit.

No, you may not build Berlin wall in US.
So let's milk more tax money to my pockets before it crushes.

[Nor'Eastah]

Originally Posted by Rickd203

It this country we want our homeless people to be out of sight and out of mind.

This is true but the way things are going, they will become more and more visible, as there will be more and more of them. A 4' x 8' piece of land is more valuable than a 4' x 8' pod. With the first, you have control; with the 2nd, you don't. Our society has always had indigents, but with all the foreclosures, we now have people sleeping in their cars in the driveways of their former homes.

I know jobs are hard to come by, but that will only get fixed when the people decide to fix it. I think it is a mistake to give them 99 weeks of unemployment, then let them on SSI. Yes, we do need a safety net, but unless people get frustrated enough, there will be no civil unrest, which would correct the problem. We are allowing an underclass of chronic poverty to develop. No, the economy is not improving.

[trundle]

I think that portable shelters were called "bread trucks" or station wagons, back before WW2. Nowadays, they are called "vans". :-)

Ah, could you point out some historical cases where "civil unrest" fixed problems of poverty/unemployment? :-) I"ll be waiting, but I know that such don't exist. We spent and fought our way out of the Depression, at the cost of future generations (ie, now, us) inflation and killing off scores of millions of people and destroying much of the civilised world.

[purehuman]

noble idea, for the homeless that want one...course they could never buy one. The city would have too many rules and regs if [they] did, so I seriously doubt they'll ever see much use.