Research


 * Why Are People Homeless? **

The reasons people are homeless are as varied as the people themselves; mental illness, lack of life skills, substance abuse, stagnant or declining incomes. The problem of homelessness can be described fundamentally as the lack of housing the poor can afford. There are too many poor people and not enough low-income places for them to live. Thus to understand the problem of homelessness we need to understand why there are so many poor people and why there are so few places to live which they can afford. Once upon a time, they all used to be "normal folks" who have fallen through the safety net and easily blend in with reports about layoffs and job losses in general. Yet in spite of a public recognition of high unemployment, the growth of people on the streets

**Critical factors of homelessness**
 * Foreclosures
 * Lack of affordable housing
 * Poverty
 * Lack of and eroding work opportunities
 * Limited scale of housing assistance programs
 * Decline in public and social assistance
 * Lack of affordable health care
 * Domestic violence
 * Mental illness
 * Drug addiction disorders

Ultimately, homelessness mostly results from various circumstances that force people to choose among many of their basic needs such as food and shelter. It is a long and complicated path that needs to be taken to end homelessness. Efforts to ensure some form of employment, support to those unable to work, affordable housing and access to health care are all very important activities to aid the homeless situation. Hopefully our proposed design will answer some needs in a some of these areas.

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/why.html


 * Toronto's Homelessness**

As of 2003, a quarter of Toronto's population still live in poverty. Out of the 552,300 homeless people, 31,985 people stayed in some of Toronto's emergency centers. As you can see, an extremely large portion of Toronto's homeless are still forced to or choose to live on the city streets. This situation is worsening to the extent that nightly bed occupancy in Toronto's homeless shelters is too high for the city's target of 90% of beds occupied. Despite the actions take to combat homelessness, the overall impact pales in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.

The City of Toronto has aims of building new affordable housing, promote exclusive communities and ensuring an adequate number of shelter beds are available. While the city determines its course of action to combat homelessness, our design proposal is a hopeful answer to those still homeless and forced to live in the city streets

http://www.toronto.ca/homelessness/pdf/reportcard2003.pdf.

While downtown Toronto, one of our group members (Nadine) was sitting in the Second Cup at the corner of Queen and John and a homeless male came in and approached her asking for two dollars to buy a hot dog at the vender across the street. Approaching homeless individuals can be intimidating in order to do research so she decided to take this as an opportunity to do some research more specifically some interview research. She made a deal with the male, that she'd give him money in exchange to answer a few questions which he accepted the offer. From the semi-structured interview she gathered some information, she discovered after asking what does he want the most he responded with three things; shelter, food, and alcohol. The sad reality of homeless people is that most of them do drink often and spend what money they have on alcohol however which is done to cope with their living conditions in some cases. She then pitched the idea that her group was in the process of designing for a class assignment; a compact-able, mobile bed with a waterproof and warm blanket/jacket, and the concept of homeless working to built it in order to own one. He enjoyed the idea, and admitted that he'd probably partake in it, but does not know how many others will partake as well. When she was done she gave him five dollars which he did not accept at first because it was more than he wanted but greatly appreciated it and went about his day. From this we established that we are on the right track with our design, and this is something homeless people will greatly benefit from and be willing to work for.
 * Qualitative Research**