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posted by takyon on Monday September 26 2016, @08:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the small-change dept.

South LA resident Elvis Summers only got started building tiny homes in 2015, but his work has received a tremendous amount of attention since then. Last year, his colorful little dwellings—built for members of the city's growing homeless population—began popping up on sidewalks and freeway overpasses around the city.

A successful crowdfunding campaign, helped by a feature in People, brought in nearly $100,000 to finance the homes. In February, however, citing health and safety concerns, city officials began confiscating the houses. Eventually, after a run of bad press, the city gave the houses back to Summers.

Since the city tightened its unattended property ordinance, however, Summers has been forced to find private property on which to keep the homes. In spite of this complication, he's continued with his project, and has begun constructing mobile shower units as well. We checked in with him to see how his work is coming along.
...
They're roughly six feet wide by eight feet long and about seven feet tall inside. There's two windows on each side. Every house has a steel reinforced door, American flag and address, smoke detectors, alarms on the windows, solar panel on the roof—which powers two lightbulbs and has a port to charge a cellphone—brand new carpet, and I provide everyone with a compost toilet.

Tiny houses and homelessness are not usual Soylent topics, but DIY (Do It Yourself) projects are. Are DIY projects like this a better way to tackle our challenges as a society than waiting for the government to take care of them?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:20AM (#406785)

    > I have a better solution: Change government

    You first. This guy has single-handedly done 1000x more than you have to fix the problem. Your response is to suggest some pie in the sky fantasy about how the world ought to work without any talk about how to accomplish that, while he is getting results. Maybe his approach won't scale. But your approach of utopianism isn't scaling either.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:48AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @12:48AM (#406793)

    My dad has always tinkered with cheap housing (one of his best ideas is molding insulating foam), and the problem is always the same- zoning and NIMBYism.

    The same class that declares there should be a bajillion governmental regs to save people from themselves also drive up the cost for those on the fringes who are just looking for a warm place to stay.

    And you have people who oppose new housing development (or mandate x% of affordable housing [future ghettos]), which ends up driving up the rent.

    You'd honestly be better off just giving them the money and removing restrictions on building housing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @01:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @01:49AM (#406807)

      That's true to a significant degree. It worked in Tokyo [ft.com] which is basically the only mega metroplex in the world not to see sky-rocketing housing costs.

      But taking away local zoning control is practically impossible, especially in the USA. One of the big problems with it is that property owners have the vote today and they want their property values to go up so they can vote out any politician that wants to change zoning to make housing more affordable. Meanwhile all the potential new residents that would move in after new construction are only future votes, so they can't protect that politician from the angry property owners.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:11AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:11AM (#406812)

        But taking away local zoning control is practically impossible

        But it can be ameliorated.

        Land value tax, besides all of its other benefits, mediates how zoning is approached and tends to maximize land use.

        Otherwise rent-seeking (in the economic sense) becomes problematic, which okay, but those people should bear the burden of it.