Designing For The Homeless

"The book surveys a history of unique projects from the last decade, like the St. Vincent de Paul Village in San Diego, to more innovative prototypes like Common Ground's First Step Housing Project‚ being experimented with in dense cities like New York, and even self-assembled community projects like 'Dome Village' in L.A., as examples of what is and what may be possible, and points out with illustrations why each has managed to work on some level. However, while these projects have achieved notable degrees of success, Davis ultimately explores why we keep ending up with a fragmented agenda stymied by subsidy shortages and stigmatized by those lacking the political will to effect change in our policy. Davis argues that a much greater degree of creativity and collaboration between different economic entities, between the design community and policy advocates, is required in both our funding strategies as well as our housing design itself in order to progress past these singular dismembered forms of homeless relief."