Sam Davis, long time professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley and author of several books on affordable housing, was awarded in 2002 a Guggenheim Fellowship to write his latest book, Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works. Meant for a broader audience, Davis lays out a solid foundation of research for the causes of the crisis in this country, and then builds on a role of activism that must encourage the design community to take a lead in creating dynamic and dignified structures for our increasingly diverse homeless population. As an architect himself of affordable housing for three decades, he begins namely by pointing out how our solutions up to this point have ironically fostered the problem more than they have managed to tackle it, much less address the roots of homelessness beyond a homogenized and marginalized sector of society. 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., 'Dignity Village' in Portland, 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.

There can be no debate, the first step to recovery and helping homeless people become independent is to provide models of decent housing, and no longer these band-aid constructs of temporary shelters poorly placed over the fabric of the community. Though Davis reminds us, every shelter type is still needed to accommodate the multi tiered folds of homeless people with varying degrees of needed assistance, at least until we can create stable and quality housing where elements of design directly addresses the specific needs of each individual group. This is something architects have a unique advantage for providing. From everything to supportive housing units converted out of old SRO's to a special storage closet that fits neatly into a cramped shelter space, architects have a crucial role to play in the effective and efficient recovery of our homeless.

Another area where their expertise has been underutilized is in the integration of this type of housing into neighborhoods so the occupants can feel accepted and encouraged by their surrounding environment. This is a critical planning component future housing needs to adopt and an obstacle to be overcome; establishing a functional and delightful space for homeless recoveries within the complexion of our existing neighborhoods city wide. As professionals who design structures to blend in with the contexts and local vernacular of a neighborhood, theoretically enhancing these areas, architects have failed to assert themselves in this approach through out the evolution of public housing projects. While Davis is praising of many successful and interesting architectures documented in this book, he's also not afraid to be critical of his colleagues, and admits that he especially views housing as the most socially relevant area of architectural practice. He stresses that as problem solvers for any given framework, architects have a greater degree of responsibility to serve the homeless because of their skills and the desperate social status homeless people face existing without respectful housing in society.

Davis designed the Larkin Street Youth Center back in '95 which unquestionably influenced his reasons for writing this book. He discusses the challenges and rewards of that project, and the special dialogues with homeless children effected by HIV that allowed him to respond to the nuances of their predicament. In this book Davis asks, "What is possible and desirable when designing a new facility for the homeless? Should it be elegant or unassuming? What types of spaces should be included? How should it look and what should it feel like? Should it be more like a house or more like a dormitory? What is the proper balance between function, quality of construction, and architectural delight?" Many practitioners today might simply overlook smaller important features like a communal kitchen, an outdoor smoking area, a bicycle facility, on site pet kennels, on site banks and courtrooms, laundry facilities, locked storage units, dinning rooms, gyms, a beauty parlor, garden space, and all of the social/vocational services supportive housing provides. How can surveillance be integrated appropriately while being sensitive to the fact many homeless people have been incarcerated or institutionalized where security was a menacing authoritarian device? And so it goes without saying that in order to properly design for any community, an intimate relationship must be established with the client who can have considerable input into the development process. Indeed this is how architects treat all other clients, so why should the poor deserve any less? Even though points like these may seem overstating of the obvious, Davis makes very clear that the reality of our treatment of the poor has failed to meet these basic standards, and it's time architects take a risk, practice what they preach, and prove their worth in an area they have mostly ignored.

This is also a very timely book, both in regards to our national focus on homelessness as cities all over are experimenting with new programs and competing for federal funds, as well as for our own local agenda where we have a mayor who has at the very least committed himself to the issue more so than mayors of San Francisco's past. It also represents a spirited direction in the international design community which is undergoing a major philosophical shift. Designers are paying considerable attention today to the importance of social responsibility and political activism that is informing their work, from disaster relief to other marginal communities like farm worker housing and infrastructure for third world refugee camps. This is also one area of architectural practice that has been largely omitted from the academic realm and the training of architects, save innovative programs like the Rural Studio in Auburn began by the revolutionary architect Sam Mockbee, who's recent death has spawned new programs around the nation. For Davis to make these assertions from his vantage as a professor is a very positive sign that design does and can matter, and that academic curriculums are transforming into a more proactive community-based process. But perhaps urban homelessness is where architects in cities today could and should have their most significant impact. No crisis in our country is more needy, except perhaps the shortage of job creation, and certainly no person is capable of holding a job if they don't have access to decent housing. If the profession of architecture today is feeling increasingly marginalized by a construction industry monopoly, here is one area where the clever resourcefulness of their training can put them back on the map. At least by providing dignified models of housing and helping to solve the perplexing difficulties of situating and constructing these projects in times of space shortage and exorbitant land values, architects can offer cities ingenious solutions to assist urban planning, developers, and service providers struggling to create a cohesive plan.

What if these solutions actually improved lives and the quality of our neighborhoods beyond just helping the homeless people themselves? What if in their goals to create innovative homeless housing architects stumbled upon solutions to in-fill development, new models of home ownership, experimental approaches to community based planning? If anything, architects could be providing a new basis of hope and dignity for our most destitute, instead of pointing them back to these antiquated substandard and dehumanizing shelter spaces again.

Some other projects featured in the book:

> ECS's Canon Barcus Community House (SF)
> PATHMall (LA)
> Prince George Hotel (NYC)
> Los Angeles Mission
> Rob Quigley SRO's (San Diego)
> Boyd Hotel (LA) (Koning Eizenberg Architecture)
> City Sleeper Donald MacDonald (SF)
> Shelter One Jim Reid (SF)

Text by Bryan Finoki (February 22, 2005)




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.