Analysis: Housing The Homeless-Innovative Ideas Of Homelessness

Name: Ann Mary George
OT Code: D-53
Word Count: 2493
Housing the Homeless-Innovative Ideas
“We have come dangerously close to accepting this situation of rising homelessness as a problem that we can't solve.”
-Linda Lingle

“ “God’s own country, “Kerala, is a coastal state. It is dotted with small fishing villages. In the 1970s, high waves would wash away many villages with routine hits. So, every year the affected fishermen and women would receive a government compensation for clothing, blankets, nets and even replacement huts. In 1974, an architect living and working in Thiruvananthapuram approached the Chief Minister and suggested an alternate solution. He proposed that instead of giving away State resources as compensation each year,

Other factors include inadequate income supports, displacement, physical and mental illness, job loss, child abuse, domestic violence etc. According to NLCHP (National Law Center on Houselessness and Poverty), more than 90% homeless women are victims of domestic violence which results in their escaping from their homes. Most homeless children are on the streets because they have been forced by circumstances that make them to think that they are safer there than in any home they once knew.”
“Understanding people who are homeless also plays a very important role – as many poor people who are being provided homes through government schemes are renting their homes to others and they are going back to their previous dwellings (slums/huts). The solution to slums is not to evict people, or to eradicate the dwellings, but to create conditions so that people can improve their own dwellings, with the assistance of the community. One of the best ways to do that is by giving slum-dwellers security of tenure, so they know they are protected against arbitrary, unfair, or illegal eviction. If people know that, even if they only make a couple of hundred dollars a year, which many people do, they'll spend money improving their house that they wouldn't otherwise do if they were afraid of being evicted. If governments acted in partnership with people in this way, many good things could