Inspired by Gavin's (@creationlayer) post for Brook Demar I set out to collect some data for the Steemit community.
I discovered that @steemswede has already contributed an excellent post from the swedish perspective here on Steemit at https://steemit.com/politics/@steemswede/the-state-of-homelessness
He addresses statistics about initiatives on helping the poor section of the population as well as the problem with charity effectiveness. His focus is on Sweden but his general thoughts are universal.
He elaborates also on NGOs and ends with the conclusion that "there is nothing that the state can do that private enterprise and a community of individuals can't do better."
While state effectiveness in solving general problems could for example be measured in the case of Hurricane Katrina and how the system dealt with the situation. I rather want to think about ways how a community like the Steemians could tackle a problem and solve it maybe almost as elegant as Satoshi himself ;-)
If one can rely on Congressman Allen West who explains that the key occupier of the white house is the CEO of the United States of America corporation and one is familiar with the clinical diagnosis of a corporation compared to the profile of a psychopath one can safely assume that the homelessness problem will never be solved by a state or other form of a classical corporate structure.
So hence there might be some avenues a community could explore in order to make progress with helping those in need in the case of homelessness.
While the National Coalition for the Homeless is committed to: "prevent and end homelessness while ensuring the immediate needs of those experiencing homelessness are met and their civil rights protected" and on MegaEssays there are over 1000 papers on the topic of Homelessness I am suggesting to explore the exciting area of the tiny homes lifestyle or movement or building on a budget.
Gavin's initiative has already shown that an online community is in principle able to trigger the funds for a potential tiny house project in the less than $10,000 cost range.
In his article Dear San Francisco Journalists: If You Want to Help Homeless People, Just Ask Us James Abro is addressing an important point which Gavin has already covered namely: "The fact is that people generally fail to understand homelessness because they don’t ask homeless people what happened to them—how it is that they ended up in the situation they are in and what their needs are."
And in another article called We Don’t Need to Wait on Congress to Fight Homelessness James reveals that over half a million people in January 2014 experienced homelessness according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
In Illinois Tiny homes are seen as solution to a big problem. Over there more than a dozen veterans attended Operation Tiny Home, a three-day workshop to learn carpentry and construction skills while building a tiny home in a weekend.
I you want a typical current story on how the state handles this topic, just spend a few minutes and read how Most Cities Evict Their Homeless Before Big Events. In this case for the Democratic National Convention!
So my intention was to potentially trigger a discussion about ways how Steemians could self-organize to leverage the existing concepts and solutions to participate in helping homeless people for a second chance without the need for any intermediaries.
Maybe we could start by helping/collaborating with Marcin & Cat from the Open Building Institute:
"The Open Building Institute is an open source effort to make affordable housing widely available while fostering collaborative and ecological practices. The project is focused on low cost and rapidly-built structures that are modular, ecological, and energy efficient. At the heart of OBI is a library of building modules, including walls, windows, doors, roof, utility and functional modules and more that can be combined to create a variety of structures, including studios, homes, multi-family houses, greenhouses, barns, workshops, schools, and offices."
