Skyline.

For most of human history, people have been able to gather resources and house themselves. In pre-industrial times, that meant building a home with local materials and digging a latrine. Forty years ago, that meant getting a minimum wage job and renting a cheap apartment. Even part time work at minimum wage was enough to find a small room in a rooming house. The only people trapped in homelessness were folks with serious problems who needed intensive case management to achieve stable housing.

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The situation has changed. In Seattle, micro-apartments (200-400 square feet) rent for approximately $1000 a month. To qualify as a new renter, applicants must be making at least $36K per year, have a credit score over 650, and roughly $5K in the bank. That is the lowest end of the housing market, and such units only permit one occupant. Any room for rent under $800 is likely either a scam or questionably legal. Anything advertised under $600 is definitely a scam. Just for reference, full time work at $15 an hour gives a gross income of $31,200 per year. The cause of homelessness today is an unbalanced housing market that has no practical options for folks in the bottom 25% for income. Folks in that income bracket who are clean, sober, mentally healthy, and employed full time are still homeless or living in unstable and unsafe housing. This is unacceptable. Faced with no practical alternative, people resort to the pre-industrial approach to housing: creating homes for themselves alongside freeways and on the edges of public parks. This quickly creates health and safety problems in an urban environment.

Well-intentioned folks have attempted to resolve the problem by expanding social services. It isn't working. We are metaphorically "sweeping the tide". Social services are designed to assist people in crisis, folks falling off the margins of a functional system. When the margin becomes the median, that model fails. Unless there are some major shifts in the housing market, we’re looking at a future in which half the population is unable to reliably access market-rate housing.

It's not just a question of inadequate funding. Usual social work strategies for this many people are psychologically destructive. Human beings need to be able to improve their own lives through personal effort and be part of a community while doing so. Needs-based services are best deployed as a safety net for times of crisis or change, to achieve a clear goal. When the goal is merely daily survival, applying for such services is demeaning, demoralizing, infantilizing, and devastating to hope. When personal effort clearly doesn’t make a difference, people give up and become the severely impaired “patients” that the system expects.

Solving this problem requires a radically different approach, but we can do it. If we shift our perspective slightly, problems mesh together and start to become resources. In a local economy without speculation, this shift happens naturally through the free market. However, in a global economy, money moves freely and rapidly across international borders, leaving human beings stranded in situations where housing expenses are grossly out of balance with local employment options.

The CityDorms System is a local micro-economy that sits just below the lowest market-rate housing and employment options. It is protected from speculation, bound to the local area, and self-balancing by design. It is managed by a public nonprofit organization as a public amenity. Like other public amenities such as parks and libraries, it is open to all and not a form of charity. Like other public amenities, behavior harmful to others will not be tolerated. Anyone may walk into a public library, but they'll be asked to leave if they start tearing books or verbally abusing other patrons. The CityDorms system works much the same way: open to all, with accountability. Most functions of the system are automated, allowing participants to manage their own lives independently.

Aside from encouraging independence and responsibility, this feature minimizes the staffing expenses for case management and fraud prevention. A millionaire who chooses to live in a CityDorm is not committing fraud, any more than a millionaire visiting a public library is committing fraud. In practice, the CityDorm units are so minimal that most residents seek larger and more comfortable housing as soon as practical. However, the timing of that transition is entirely up to the resident. Many people select CityDorms as an affordable housing option while they finish school, build a business, work towards a promotion, or save enough money to make a down payment on a home. CityDorms also provide a realistic housing option for someone struggling with disability, addiction, or trauma. It is a place to heal, to recover, and to build a better future on your own terms.

Let’s make it happen.