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Disposable Homes

Winter is coming to Minnesota's homeless refugees.
sigridellis

Here in Saint Paul and Minneapolis, we're safe from the hurricanes that ravage the coasts.  Drought isa problem, but not as much of a problem as it is in other parts of the world.  We don't rely exclusively on long-distance irrigation.  Lots of people lose crops, but not everyone.

 Which is why people are moving here.  Too many people.

 Minnesota has always has high taxes.  Those taxes support social services.  But with the influx of refugees in the last few years, those social services have been completely overwhelmed.  Minnesota has reduced health programs, reduced  housing assistance -- unable to cope with the need.

 While this has lowered my property taxes, it has also left pools of refugees living in make-shift housing all over the metro area.

 We have harsh winters here, folks.  The homeless used to move south in the winter.  But now the Gulf  Coast is largely uninhabitable, and the mid-plains are heading towards desert.  The homeless are staying here.

Most of these new climate refugees are families.  They have children.  The state has a bunker mentality -- shut people out to make them go.  But with fuel costs the wy they are, many of these people couldn't leave, even if they had somewhere to go.  A tank of gas gets you, where exactly?  North Dakota?

We need to house these people.  We need cheap, insulated, safe housing that will last a winter.  And we need it now, before the ground freezes.

How are we going to accomplish this? 

Oct 07


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  • gmoke
    Oct 07
    \\\"Before the ground freezes\\\" Dig below frost level and you have a constant temperature of 55º F. Insulate on top of that and you have a survival bunker. Provide folks with space blanket mummy bags for sleeping and you have minimal, survival conditions. Not what you\\\'d expect in the USA but these are Katrina conditions squared or cubed.
  • PonyXpress
    Oct 07
    Perhaps it\\\'s time we rethought the concept of \\\"Ownership\\\" and rather than defining these new peoples as \\\"Home-less\\\", maybe you are currently part of the people who are \\\"Home-more\\\". Tax incentives then should be discussed for all Home-Mores\\\" to benefit whenever they offer a place to the formerly homeless.
  • orselli
    Oct 07
    Given the time of year, are there ways to use waste agricultural material (cornstalks, hay, plant material)as insulation within frameworks to create walls for communal (or individual) buildings?
  • milnesium
    Oct 07
    The comments of gmoke, ponyXpress, and orselli are all great ideas. I especially like the idea of people with houses sharing their space. Despite what years of living in a relatively decadent culture lead us to believe, we are capable of living in one room, reducing the amount of stuff we own so we don\\\'t have to store things in other rooms, and sharing a kitchen and bathroom with other people. College students and people in many other cultures do it all the time!
  • Ruud Dirven
    Oct 14
    This is insane. The USA have truly had their USSR moment and have collapsed to the level of a brasil.
  • Mister Edgeworth
    Oct 15
    Thankfully Mid-west Winter won't be as bad as it was before the turn of the century, thanks to global warming. Not that gives us any excuse to slack.
  • Heretic
    Oct 17
    I agree with gsmoke on the use of sod construction. The speed with which they can be built, coupled with the lower amounts of energy required to maintain livability make them attractive semi-permanent solutions. Sod construction was the architecture of choice among some midwestern Native American tribes, as well as many European settlers. I am not as fond of the shared housing idea. If the solution to the issue is to simply find homeless people a place to crash for a limited period of time, opening doors to them has precedent. However, beyond weathering the first wave of a disaster, a true long-term solution will require actions that will remain sustainable over a long period of time. Considering the difficulty inherent in sustaining a population in frost-prone areas, the solution we may be looking at is the displacement of large segments of the population to warmer regions of the continental United States.
  • JolieBlanc
    Oct 18
    There are a number of fast options for building that are relatively low cost, once you compare it to the cost of traditionally housing the poor. Concrete cloth structures, for instance, can be inflated and set using only water and air (and it needn't be potable water - gray water would work fine). Once hardened the structures are durable under load, so sod or secondhand materials can be used for insulation.
  • philopax
    Oct 20
    You will have sanitation, food and water issues too. Citizens will have to take refugees into their own homes. Anyone who does should be exempt from property taxes.
  • rdharvey
    Nov 12
    I believe a mixture of both gmoke and milnesiums ideas could be a good solution. Shared spaces, although confining IS doable. There could be multiple bunkers (as space allows) near a simple public restroom/washroom, kitchenette building (think less woodsy campgrounds) that the homeless refugees could share. It may not be the best conditions, but they should be able to make it through the winter.
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