Hey Ma, I’m on the Internet!

  If you’ve been reading much of my blog you probably know by now that I’m tackling the issue of homelessness- more specifically the lack of safe, affordable housing. Everywhere in the world people have built houses and ravaged animal habitats. The only area I can think of where we aren’t desturbing the local fauna is underground.

Q: Why underground? 

  A: Building houses underground (at least partly) isn’t new, but it’s still considered outlandish. an underground house is quieter, more resistant to natural disasters excluding flooding, don’t take up much space, if any, above ground, and most importantly can be built for a small sum of money. They don’t require much heating or air conditioning because the temperature underground is generally the same all year. However, the electricity bill would naturally be larger because of the nature of an underground house- there is little natural light.

   Ooh, and they could survive a nuclear fallout if constructed properly.

Q: Wouldn’t this endanger buildings above ground? 

A:  I believe certain shapes of houses could be constructed underneath cities without affecting the structural integrity of buildings. For example, dome shaped constructions can handle pressure from above much better because the pressure is spread throughout the dome. This has been shown using dictionaries and eggs before, and I imagine it would work for skyrises and districts of dome shaped houses as well.

Q: How could they get to and from their houses? If the house is underground, wouldn’t they need some sort of way to the surface and back?

A: This idea came to me from an email from Michael Stoops at nationalhomeless.org. I asked him a question regarding  mass transit and homelessness. He told me that I could “already find peoples in the tunnels of the subway system [NYC]”.

  These underground districts could be built right into the subway system! seeing as how the homeless already turn to the tunnels for shelter, why not take a step above that and build them shelters down there? Think of it this way: you step into the subway station and rather getting on a train, you continue down the tunnel. A short walking distance away you find a turn leading to a series of ramps descending into what seems to be a little neighbourhood of strange, dome-shaped (or some other sturdy shape) structures.

   Alternatively, descending spiral stairs could be constructed in buildings leading down into the neighbourhoods, or on some streets the stairs could be constructed. Carparks (Is that what they’re called?) Could have a series of ramps in them leading to the neighbourhoods so that people could park their cars near their house… It’s a good idea, I think. Perhaps car elevators are in order? 

  A lot of the info I got from this site and some of it from my own imagination. He built a full sized house for just $8000.

 P.S. If I’m missing anything that you would like answered, please leave a comment and I’ll answer it.

  Now here’s a neat little article on how to lower homelessness rates in Canada using ways being done in other countries. The author brings up a lot of good points and mentions several solutions for being done right now or done recently.

  An idea that’s becoming increasingly popular is rather than getting them help and then getting them a home, they give them housing then get them help. This way they have to learn how to help themselves a little and they have the benefits of the help from the government as well (Or at least, that’s how I think they want it to work. I may be reading it wrong). It was shown to have a higher success rate than the aforementioned [help then home] plan, but is it better in the long term? Do the clients often fing themselves back on the streets?

   A type of homeless shelter called a Wet Shelter, which allows alchohol, has emerged in 1997. The homeless are given one glass of wine every hour until staff decides they’ve had enough. A study in Ottawa shows that this cut in half the rates where the clients had encounters from police officers and fewer trips to the emergency room. Could drinking half a glass of wine an hour further decrease these rates?

  ”Congress has increased federal funding for homeless programs. Today it’s about $1.6 billion, and there’s going to a several hundred million dollar increase next year. But while giving more money to emergency services, the Bush administration is cutting important entitlement programs — housing, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare. So while they talk about ending homelessness, they’re actually creating more of it by cutting out important income support programs.”-Micheal Stoops, the Housing Authority of New Orleans. What she is saying is that more money (at least, in the U.S.) is put into saving-for lack of a better word- the homeless but cutting back on programs that help the homeless get back up on their feet. We need to look at things a little differently.

  The problem exists in Canada as well. We’re using crisis measures like shelters to try to contain the growth of homelessness. The cost of these shelters is more than the cost of building affordable housing and implementing ways to supplement paying rents. We also have no national strategy right now so we can’t be certain the money spent is spent well. It’s inneffective and can be approved if we bunker down and form a plan.

  This ties in with my Underground idea: affordable housing could probably be constructed underground, branching right off of a subway. It could be more expensive but it could mean we would have to demolish less buildings to build them, which could in turn be used to shelter homeless or used for other purposes. Besides, some of the homeless in New York already use the tunnels of the subway system as shelter, it isn’t much of a stretch…

(Again, more random and unorganized notes.) 

25% of the homeless are veterans. Records show that people who are homeless that get homes before treatment for mental illnesses or addictions often straighten themselves out and become stable (Taken from an audio file).Europe’s homelessness problem is roughly the same as Americas’. Lots of American cities are criminalizing activities done by the homeless like sleeping on the streets and walking across a parking lot if you don’t have a car parked there.

  According to Chinas Ministry of Civil Affairs the percentage of homeless children rose 50%, to 150 000. Proffesionals in the field suggest it might be much larger, up to 600 000 - and supposedly growing quickly. Estimates of homelessness in India are 18.5 million homeless people, about 4.8 of them live in urban areas.  Over 50% of Mubai’s population [12 million] is living in slums. Over 80 000 homes have been demolished, forcing 300 000 or so people onto the street. Plenty of them haven’t resettled yet. ‘Pavement Dwellers’ live on the streets, and unlike people living in slums and tenants, have no rights.

  None.

  in August 2003 a flooding of the Huai He valley in China left 3.8 million people homeless. A flood in Vietnam, Cambodia Thailand, and Laos left 2 million people homeless in September, 2000. In July-August, 2004, terrible floods left 30 million people homeless. The infamous tsunami of Dec.26 2004 left millions without a home- more than 3 million in Indonesia and half of Sri Lanka’s entire population.

   The best approximation of homelessness in the U.S. was done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty stating that “3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007).”

  Poor people usually find themselves having to choose between housing, food, healthcare, education, and childcare. Since housing is so expensive it’s usually dropped.

 I haven’t even looked at Europe, Africa, or Australia yet.

  Everyone in my class has to spearhead a world issue and come up with an innovative, hair-brained scheme to change the world for the better. I myself choose to tackle… HOMELESSNESS. It’s everywhere in the world, and we can plainly see it in virtually every town and community. According to the widely-used but not entirely accurated Wikipedia, 100 million people worldwide are homeless. It goes by many names, like hobo, bum, dakloze (Dutch), and sen-teto (Portuguese).

  Since most people who are homeless are also living in poverty they often can’t afford food, clothes, and medicine. We take these things for granted but these people may have to very well eat out of garbage cans to survive. Sometimes homelessness is self-inflicted. a good deal of the homeless in the US are homeless because of their own rediculous behavioural patterns (substance abusers. >_>). Some are mentally disabled. Some are are running from something like abuse or the law. Iregardless they still have no homes.

   Now onto my thoughts… I already have an idea. At first I thought that if every house had another house constructed above it everyone could have a home, but I didn’t know this as fact and it would take A LOT of building materials to do, that could be better spent somewhere else. Then I thought that we could start colonies on the moon or some other celestial body but it’ll be years before that happens and I doubt the people who need homes most could afford a house on the moon…

  Then a thought crossed my mind: If  we can’t send them out, why not send them in?

  Basically I’m saying that if we could somehow create towns and colonies under the Earth, just about everyone could have a home. But could we do it in this day and age? Everything would have to change. We’d have to look at farming, housing, lighting and transportation completely differently.

  First thing’s first though; before I jump right into that I’m going to go scrounge up more info on homelessness and make sure I understand the subject.