Skyline.

One night counts of people sleeping outdoors drastically underestimate the true scope of homelessness in the US today. The most accurate way to estimate homelesseness is to ask everyone in a given population about their housing situation. This already occurs in public schools, due to the McKinney-Vento Act. Every child in a public school is asked if they lack a "fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence." Note that most people that meet this definition are not sleeping on park benches. Many may not even consider themselves homeless, until reminded that homelessness includes:

• sharing housing due to loss of housing, economic hardship or a similar reason

• living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations

• living in emergency or transitional shelters

• living in a hospital with no plan for housing once discharged

• a primary nighttime residence which is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation

• living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations

There are factors that put public schoolchildren at higher risk for homelessness and factors that put them at lower risk for homelessness. For our purposes, we are assuming that these factors balance each other, and that the percentage of homelessness in public schools roughly reflects the homelessness rate in the larger adult population.

8 percent of Seattle Public Schools students are homeless. Using that percentage as a guide, we can estimate that roughly 58,000 people lack a "fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence" in Seattle alone. There's a similar level of crisis to be found in cities, large and small, across the US. This isn't going to be solved by a few hundred tiny homes, or even a few thousand subsidized apartments. This isn't going to be solved by drug treatment or mental health care, though those are important and vital services. Numbers like this indicate a massive systemic failure that's getting worse at an exponential rate. An unbalanced housing market is rendering people homeless faster than any traditional social service model can process applications, much less build affordable units.

We need a new solution, something that can be deployed quickly and scaled up rapidly. We need a solution that allows all the low-needs homeless people to help themselves. Ideally, it also meets other needs: provides overflow capacity for natural disasters, builds community, and makes our cities safer and more pleasant places to live. CityDorms isn't right for everyone, but for the vast majority of the currently-homeless population, CityDorms System is a practical, empowering, affordable solution to the urban housing crisis.

The basic concept is simple: anyone could put in ten hours of volunteer work per week and rent a minimal unit. This creates a small, self-contained economic system as a safety net for those struggling with the mainstream housing market.

Within this system, anyone can earn volunteer credits and use those volunteer credits to pay for sanitary and secure housing. There are no income requirements, no credit checks, no judgement, no violations of privacy, and no barriers. The housing units are small: 8x12 feet with a sleeping platform, toilet, sink, a handheld shower, and most importantly, a lock. The rules are simple: pay rent and don't annoy the neighbors. Problems are addressed quickly and effectively. The CityDorms System can be deployed quickly, and self-adjusts to serve the ever-changing needs of residents, immediate neighbors, and the larger community. Routine tasks are automated and self-serve via a website, allowing staff to focus their energy on creative problem solving. Once fully implemented, any moderately competent adult will be able to house themselves within a week through their own efforts.

Yes, this is radical. Radical problems call for radical solutions.

I've been testing and refining the CityDorms system in my own home for the last ten years. It's effective and accessible for people with a wide variety of skills and abilities. Now it's time to take that model and scale it up to meet the need. I'm gathering people to create a non-profit corporation that will implement the CityDorms system in one lucky city. When it's running smoothly we will expand it, franchise-style, to other municipalities.
 

Browse the site, check out the vision. If you like what you see, send me an e-mail and let me know what you can offer. We need people who have experience in homelessness, union leaders, business leaders, social workers, lawyers, engineers, designers, programmers, neighborhood leaders, marketers, artists, and folks with experience in starting a nonprofit. I can't do this alone.