Give It Away | Microphilanthropy Blog

Give It Away #12
Housing & Homefullness

This week while walking down Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, between the swanky coffee shops on Shenkin and the monstrous office towers of the financial sector, I came upon a public art installation sponsored by one of Israel's biggest banks. It was a series of sculptures intended to represent housing alternatives. Some of the displays were symbolic, abstract, metaphorical musings on the meaning of house and home. Others were attempts to shock passersby by assembling the shelter from unconventional materials. But least one of these was a realistic structure that could actually have practical application.

We generally think of objects as massive tool libraries that we live inside of, workshops with shelves that contain all of the things that we need to conduct our lives -- clothes, kitchen utensils, books, etc. This particular installation inverted the void of the traditional shelter, turning container architecture into an endoskeleton: a cube in which all of the tools for living are stored away in drawers that slide in and out as required. The person or persons associated with the house don't live "in" it, but "around" it; like the camping stove that you pull out of the trunk of your car at a tailgate party. Except without the car. Imagine a life-size Rubik's Cube containing all of your personal property.

Having studied architecture myself, I was intrigued by a project that challenges conventional notions of personal space. And as someone who has lived for most of my life in the big city, I am especially concerned by the steadily increasing numbers of people that don't have a bed that they can call their own, brothers and sisters that have no choice but to sleep on the street. In fact, I didn't have to go far to be reminded of this ironic reality. Right beside the transforming trailer, a couple of disheveled middle-aged men were sitting on a wooden bench, slouched over and looking dejected. By the orangey tone of their exposed epidermis, you could tell that they have nowhere to go to escape the blazing hot summer sun.

Certainly, a comprehensive solution to the homelessness crisis facing Israel and other countries around the world demands that we take a long, hard look at the causes of the problem, not only its symptoms. Not every street person is lazy and mentally unstable! In fact, studies show that most are victims of an industrial bureaucracy that abandons its own once they get stuck in the quicksand of capital. Like a massive game of musical chairs, the current economic system all but guarantees that a large proportion of the population is only a paycheck or two away from the streets. And once you fall all the way to the bottom of the money pyramid, it's almost impossible to clamber and claw your way back up for air.

Yes, we need a concerted approach to the problem of how do we house everyone that wants to be housed. But in addition to a national task force on homelessness, we desperately need a public policy of harm reduction. Certainly, we need to prevent people from finding themselves on the streets to begin with. And perhaps part of the problem is indeed architectural. But at the same time, we need resources to provide comfort and aid to the human beings that have had the misfortune of falling through the cracks. Two groups that are at the forefront of this fight are YEDID's Homelessness Prevention Project and the Shanti House's Around-the-Clock-Family. When I give to organizations like these, I feel like I can walk down Rothschild Boulevard without having to turn my head away.