This is a cool idea.

Millionaire? Nice. Billionaires should follow suit, but 1000x

(With ~800 billionaires in the US, that's 79,200,000 homes)

How many homes do we actually need?
- Funny story, we actually have enough housing for everyone. It just isn't always where people want to live, and corporate landlords would rather leave a space vacant to drive up rents than make all of their inventory available, so there is a shit ton of residential (and commercial) property that is basically abandoned.
- The official homeless number for 2024 in the US was 771,480. That's probably just reported and not actual.
- Analysts think we’re about 4.5 million homes short of what we would need to a well-functioning housing market. I’m not sure exactly how they’re defining that.
That's my takeaway. The positive effect of the charity of this mere millionaire really does a great job showing just how fucking evil billionaires are. So much potential for positive change in the world siphoned into yachts and propaganda
Except it would be unethical for a billionaire to throw that much power around. They should relinquish the value back to the communities from where they took it.

I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.

Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
- millionares($) wouldn't be able to afford multiple yachts, or even so large of a yacht. billionares, those who offshoring wealth makes sense for, are the problem.
  not the docter nor lawyer, but the whale.
  millionares pay about 48%-49%, at least where im from.
This statement might be true, but we're not taxing him. Should he just donate his money to the government?
- I don't even think you can do that.
Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government and the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.
- I’m also angry he did a good thing despite the government’s abject failure to tax the rich.
- anti-help-anyone segment of our society
  This is the biggest problem (IMHO) to getting government to assist anyone that is not already rich. The rich get help - i.e. which gets a special tax break:
  Walmart opening a new store (and driving all the little people out of business)?
  The little business owner who hires 2-5 employees?
  The haves scream they are being "robbed" if you suggest taking any of "their tax dollars" to help the have-nots. It's not "their tax dollars", it's "our tax dollars".
If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won't be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!
Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn't be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?
What makes you think Trump's administration will make better use of that money?
Especially because his unilateral decision is optional. Someone got lucky with his choice vs someone was guaranteed an outcome.
Corruption could make that money go to some people's 3rd, 4rd or their relatives houses UNFORTUNATELY . The question here is: what about those who pay a rent???
- Corruption already makes most millionaires' and billionaires' money go to that anyway. At least if it's taxed some of it will actually go to toward necessary housing, maybe even frequently enough that it's not newsworthy when it does, the way it is now.
- So we're so scared of corruption that (checks notes) we stop even trying for fairness and instead just let rich fucks make all the decisions and hope for the best?
I see one: he actually did something instead of a council that blows all of the money on meetings
This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn't have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn't get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.

Good for him, but this is pretty much an Orphan-Crushing Machine moment.

Haha uhhh gawd.
- First time reading this?

Just want to remind everyone that we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a cost of living crisis. Everyone deserves a place to live and we have plenty. The will is the only thing. Fight YIMBY traitors. We can do it!

Two things can be wrong. We can (and should) dispose of landlords and build more housing.
- Traitor YIMBYs want to build more market rate housing. Unnecessary. If after controlling costs there is an actual demand for housing, we should build government housing. Absolutely.
"YIMBY traitor" -- isn't that just a NIMBY?
- YIMBY traitors typically call decent folks NIMBYs, so I’m never keen on using that term.
Yimby traitors?
What's wrong with yimbys?
They won't solve the underlying problem. Sure, that requires wealth redistribution, but where is the downside?

Yo

Idea

What if ALL the houses we build are for reducing homelessness?

At least think about it

Source? Did it actually work? Very cool if so.

If you give a homeless person a home, then by definition, they are no longer homeless.
On a less pedantic note, yes, it should. Some countries (like mine) provide a secure place to live as step one, when helping the homeless. Having somewhere safe to sleep, keep your property, etc. makes all the other steps involved in solving your problems much easier, leading to a better success rate in getting people back on their feet.
Here's one article about it.
https://macleans.ca/society/tiny-homes-fredericton/
I don't remember where I saw this the first time, but it did mention that this had become a thing in a few American cities too (this story was from Fredericton, Canada)
My city does something like this as part of our homeless program and we're at "net-zero" homeless. It doesn't work on it's own, but the tiny homes give people a stable place to keep their stuff safe and the elements off their bodies, it gives them an address they can use for things like mail and applications, and it gives social workers a place to find them reliably. It's the start of a long process to help them back to their feet.
This is what I found: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/12-neighbours-founder-transitional-housing-1.7510785
But basically, this is something that works in Finland well enough https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/look-finlands-housing-first-initiative
I used to live in a town that did something very similar to this. It sorta worked but mostly did not. But as another commenter pointed out you need more than just homes. Obviously they help a ton but a lot of people need more help than just a roof over their head. Financially, medically, mentally, employment... It's a bigger, more complicated problem.
But it goes without saying that this is a step in the right direction and absolutely better than collectively shrugging our shoulders and walking away.
- Housing is the basis for addressing most of those other issues.

And why were they homeless?

Why were they homeless???

So this guy shouldn't be news, this should be the standard, it's scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.

We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.

That's why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
The problem is that we allow individuals to amass so much wealth, it inevitably leads to the rest of us being at their mercy like that. If we're lucky, they'll be sorta benevolent, like this person. Would be much easier if we took out the randomness and just had the funds to do necessary stuff like this collectively.

You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.

Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
"We've given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We've given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing."

10M over 20 years to help a community of 3000 or $166 per person per year. USA is planning to increase the military budget by 150B this year or over $400 per US citIzen...
- Yeah I was shocked by the math on that one too. It is ridiculously cheap to lower crime and poverty, while increasing graduation rates and college enrollment. It's almost like keeping people poor and stupid and criminal is intentional.
Who would have thought that the way to reduce crime was to reduce people's need to commit crimes by giving them homes and a future.
- Bruce Wayne but sane

Are there better, more efficient ways to accomplish this? Yes. Am I glad they at least did something though? Also yes.

Americans will build literal shoeboxes instead of 1 apartment building

Someone took 99 families off the streets? Wow fuck that asshole, how dare she have enough money to do that. How dare she not give up her home and make it 100 families off the streets, not good enough!

-Half this website, angry 99 families now have a place to live who didn't before this event

She?
- Bold of you to assume their gender identity!
  (I need glasses)
The anger isn't (necessarily) for the rich person who housed people. It's for the system who left people homeless in the first place, the system that will put those people back on the streets if they don't pay rent/property taxes/whatever other fee people have to pay to exist, the system where the solution is literally just "have rich people pay their share and almost everything will be fixed" but for some reason the people in charge can't (or don't want to) figure that out.
You conflating anger with the system with anger for people getting houses is disingenuous.
He denied their choice to live like they wanted and God intended! What an asshole. Who is he to decide for them?

Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.

Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
- I have nothing against "home first" strategy, however when some random millionaire decide without impact study or methodology how to fix the problem it might look like home shelters outside of zones where homeless get their social, work or food access, without lights, water or any usefull public infrastructure.

Nice!

Now, it would be good not to rely on good will of some individuals and actually enforce this for all the rich.

But still mad respect for the man.

Now imagine if billionaires did it with their infinite wealth......sad. humanity and capitalism is just cancer.

If we can convince them their dick size is measured by how much charity / benefit they do with their wealth we will solve many of the world's problems overnight
- I still don't get why "rich lists" aren't done using tax returns. It's a clear yardstick to compare egos by.
  It also has the side effect of encouraging civic contribution via taxes. By the time you're that rich, money is just a score. Make it worthwhile not to dodge taxes, and tax dodging will drop off.

I like this because it is both a good story about an individual helping their community and it is proof individual action alone is not enough to rely on to solve social problems.

is it just me or anyone else thinking that row houses would have been way more efficent than these? giving everyone living there more than 1 room

Depends. Given this happened in North America there might very well be existing production lines for these tiny houses, and construction laws are also way simpler to fulfill with those basically anywhere (e.g. in Germany you'd just have had to make the whole place a camping site). They all look pretty standardized, including those solar panels.
Although I'd agree that a properly build big building would probably last longer. Not too sure about that though, I'm just happy to hear there are still people with money actually taking care of those who're at rock bottom.
- I think this is the correct answer, outside of large cities it is not legal to build apartments or row houses in many places in the States. It would probably be significantly easier to skirt the zoning laws to buy a plot of land and put 100 tiny houses on it, than to attempt to get some sort exception granted to the zoning in order to build an apartment or row house.
Might be, but those look cute as well to be honest.

Spacing looks a bit odd. Would a communal park and then less space between each be better? Not really enough space around each one to be much use beyond a few plant pots anyway.

They're probably parking spaces. It doesn't look like a bad set up. Parking is behind your little studio apartment style trailer.
- So cars are given more space to live than humans?

99 is not nearly enough but it's a start at least

I would say that this particular millionaire did his part to help out. If every millionaire/billionaire spent the same percentage of their wealth on similar projects we would be in pretty good shape as far as homelessness goes.
- Don't say this here. The people here don't like charity from rich folk. While I agree it is worthwhile to point out that taxation and good governance is better than rich people charity. these folk are a bit too angry for their own good.
Not nearly enough? How many homeless people were in this guy's town?!
- i mean depends how big the town is

The wealthy do not deserve praise for spending the money they leeched from society to solve problems that could have been paid for by taxes they avoided paying. The wealthy are NOT going to solve society's problems long term, just drag them out so society relies on them instead of solving it themselves.

Inbe4 the starter-home priced housing is bought up, demolished, rebuilt, and sold as luxury housing on the market, as airbnbs, or rentals with no rent control.
Do you chuds ever get tired of repeating the same drivel over and over?
Yeah I'm am pretty glad my taxes totally went to buy more missiles and tanks. /s
- No, we want taxes to help the homeless and other members of society in need dumbass.

that sounds an awful lot like communism to me. We can't have that.

It doesn't sound like that to me at all, since this was a voluntary action by one individual. It sounds like charity.

$10k per house per million?

I hope he was a millionaire several times over…

Almost certainly. Having $1M is unremarkable these days. Technically a millionaire is someone with more than a million and less than a billion, but usually these days it refers to people with hundreds of millions.

i think there's an area in project zomboid that looks like that

Not everyone agrees with this thought but I'm also for allowing unused city parcels to be used for homeless tents and such. My city does everything it can to hide homelessness without addressing any of the underlying issues

Hell yeah we're bringing back shanty towns

I think the term "homeless" is really a euphemism that makes it easier for wealthy people to talk about poor people (if you have shelter, food, and are not living paycheck to paycheck you count as wealthy), and it results in misunderstandings about what the real problems are.

Giving a house to someone who lives on the streets is a nice gesture but it doesn't address the underlying problems - unemployment, unemployability, health problems, psychological problems, lack of social support structure, lack of supportive relationships (e.g. friends and family) - you can't just fix someone's life with a building.

It's like a grade-school-level understanding of the problem ("just give the homeless people homes! then they're not homeless anymore! problem solved!"). Without putting in a real effort to support these individuals' lives, to understand and address what put them in that situation in the first place, this is a temporary patch that will end in relapse.

It’s still a huge help. You don’t have to solve all of a persons problems to help them with one of their problems.
- Arguably the most immediate of their problems, that gets in the way of them addressing ALL of their other problems.
As commented elsewhere in the post.
No but it's a start and a damn good one, sometimes just having a space that's safe warm and not exposed to the elements can be a huge help for a lot of people.

Good start, weird that it's built like a CPU heat sink. Wouldn't it be cheaper to build duplexes or quadplexes? Fewer walls, less insulation per person...

Even lower income people want a places they can call their own. Even lower income people prefer not to deal with other people’s noise or stomping or flooded sink. Even lower income people don’t want to deal with a building manager for repairs. Even lower income people want to be able to make choices in their living accommodations.
Plus these are probably all factory built and I see a simple gravel foundation. Cheap and fast to set up, but it’s still a house. Probably much cheaper than full scale houses
These are tiny homes that are built in a shop and just dropped onto the little concrete pad once they're done. A small crew was able to build them out over time, so I can't say which option exactly is cheaper. One advantage was they were able to move people in as they were built too.
Edit to add a word
probably zoning laws. that's a HUGE part of why we don't just build more apartments in many places. it's why people get so passionate about the "white flight" as it's known and nimbyism. everyone wants to fix homelessness, but in any of the places that one could effectively build community housing it is illegal to make anything that provides housing to more than 1 or 2 families. the people that live there want homelessness to go away, but when it's proposed to build low income housing nearby they freak out and say "poor people and drug addicts? they do crime. low income housing is cool, but not in my backyard".
being poor in america has such a stigma that homeowners consistently vote to ban them from living nearby by banning apartments. to be perfectly honest, I'm just waiting for zoning laws to try and make these tiny homes illegal now that people are building them for the poor.
- And building codes. The foundation alone can be the reason. A regular full scale building requires a concrete or piered foundation or slab depend8ng on the area, which is fairly expensive and time consuming. These look like simple gravel foundations, which is fine for that size structure
What !? Sharing a wall with someone else because it's more efficient in terms construction and maintenance costs?! Get outta here you commi!

asdf

They look like toilets with a cute small porch

i hope it works and contains a forever lease and not just a month to month where the land will be improved by these houses then said millionaire sells the land for a profit and the people living there are screwed yet again.

I hope the opposite: that these are more transitional, with associated services to help people get back on their feet for an eventual move to more standard housing when they are ready
- all are good things imho!
A forever lease dude? If that’s in the deal then imma be honest with you and tell you me and my hommies are declaring homelessness and moving to wherever this meme is from. We can rebuild our lives from a point of never paying rent again.
- I mean that homeownership. i pay prop taxes but own my home. Forgive me. i was pooping and reading and forgot my words. 😂
- If you have a hatred of hierarchy and a love of nature send me a DM. I'm interviewing people for an intentional community.
  The first 5 people that pass the vibe check will get a one dollar, 99 year lease, on .5 acres to call your own. As long as you also partake in fixing/improving central infra.
  Oh and one heavy caveat... You gotta be cool with winter. We are in Canada.

If it's tiny houses that are barely liveable it's just barely better than nothing

Should've built some low rise apartments to maximise the space and allow for bigger liveability space

Even he might not have been able to. Many cities have such restrictive zoning laws. Single family homes might have been hi only option
idk, I would live there, it looks about the same as my apartment. Detached dwellings are nice if you get a yard to customize but I think you're right, it would be more efficient as apartments because you don't even get a yard with these.
Here is a video showing some of the inside. Looks very livable to me.

A lot of people talk about taxing folks like this and then using the money to supply the housing.

The thing is, given the money, few people could pull this off well. The site isn't just being plopped down; from the sound of the article in the comments it's being actively developed as a community with other safeguards and support, by someone who sunk a lot of time into finding out what would work to help people rather than just appear to help.

A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives. It also needs a community that will embrace it - for example it would likely work in the town I grew up in, but the town I work in (and am sadly forced to live in) now would likely drive such a project to failure.

It's a good idea that worked against the odds, and should be celebrated for that alone.

A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives.
Sounds like an opportunity for the local government, and a way to create local jobs.
- Local government's have had such opportunities for decades, the evidence suggests that this doesn't work overly well.

How many stories have I seen about billionaires building housing? Zero. Though, to be fair, I've only seen a meme about a millionaire doing so. No verification that it happened.

https://themindcircle.com/millionaire-builds-99-homes-to-reduce-homelessness/
Seems to be true :).
- There's someone in Kelowna doing something similar.
- That's awesome. Thanks for the update.

Nooo!!! Anyone with money is inherently evil! The only way to help the world is to ensure that none of us ever rise above the level of a wage-slave drone! Anyone who even approaches a position where they might be able to make an actual difference must be attacked mercilessly!

This is a showy display promoted to soften negitive opinion of capitalism. We would need "nice rich people" if we made a ethical wage
Show me a single leftist calling to remove the middle class.
- I know of a guy who wanted to remove the middle class, but he also wanted to remove the upper and lower class as well so as to create a classless stateless society.
There's a story about how Bill Gates plans to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years (on causes like eradicating polio, decreasing child mortality, etc) and all the Lemmy comments are "he'll still have a billion dollars" or "he shouldn't have that money to begin with". Can't we appreciate some good in the world?
There is no such thing as evil ...... But their is antisocial and managing perception

Good 😊 What a kind thing to do 😊 Those with lots of money, helping those who don't have👌🏻

Reminds me of what Micheal Sheen did. Wholesome 🥰

This is my most common fantasy if I somehow came into a billion dollars.

It's a fantasy, but I would create an apartment complex with mixed 1 2 and 3 bedrooms and set the rent below market value and then find a lawyer to draw up a legal document to turn it into a co-op so that after enough people moved in I could turn control over to them.

If I were a multibillionaire I would do this again and again until non market housing was normal In my city, and anyone wanting to build housing has to compete with a bunch of non market housing.

This is a terrible idea. We are not helpless children, it's our society, we have the right to provide the necessities of life: food, health care, a place to live and a decent job. Capitalism is the sickness: get healthy, go woke.

I think it's easier to make a million dollars and help a fair number of people out than it would be to over throw capitalism.
While helping people out with your millions of dollars you could also advocate for reform. Work with the systems available to make change. Screaming at the walls of Troy won't get you inside.

I'm chill with rich people as long as some of their money goes to helping people

When Trudeau's housing accelerator fund gave a wad of cash to Burnaby they increased developer fees by 50k. I dont know where this guy lives but people dont want to live out in the middle of no where with no job.

Here's a decent article

There's a lot of negativity from armchair experts in this thread but this seems like a genuine case of somebody putting a lot of thought and a lot of effort into actually helping the homeless. It's not just dropping a bunch of tiny houses and saying "job done".

I dont want to take away the feel good juice but the lack of housing isnt what causes homelessness...

is this a joke? any of those buildings are smaller then the cars they have!

I'm sorry, are the free houses you built for the homeless much larger than that?
They're homeless, not mansionless. A large number of tiny houses is absolutely a fantastic way to help.
- Exactly, one of the major hurdles of being unhoused is not having a house. You have to have an address to begin the process of getting assistance in most places.
Look up articles about ADUs (accessory dwelling units). This is a legitimate housing category based on the tiny house fad