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.
  
  Drive through a small town, and all of your questions will be answered.
  This is not a housing problem, it's not a mental health problem, it's a fucking unadulterated greed problem.
  Please arm yourselves. The opposition will.
  
  I've heard elsewhere that we already have enough vacant homes being reverse squatted by property management companies to house every homeless person.
- They didn't become billionaires by being charitable.
  Quite the contrary. You CAN'T accumulate that much money except by exploiting others, creating issues like homelessness.
- 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.
  
  Man, Im starting to think I'm tarded. Something about this isn't letting my brain work, please do more sentences
- 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.
- 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!
- 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".
- 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.

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".
- It's deadass exhausting seeing people whinge whenever anything that improves the world happens. Always enough time for criticism, never enough to do something anywhere near as positive IRL.
  
  yep, image has been accurate for a long time now.
- It's hard not to be jaded. I bounce between both sides constantly.
  Either way, this guy did an incredible thing.
- Incredible read, thank you for sharing this
- I think most likley that is actually the case. Y'all are masters at the sophist uno card. Cha cha real smooth...how low can you go...Charity is a band aid of tyranny and all those in the hierarchy play their part. Some towns out west that have a bunch of rich people don't have any infrastructure for the poor so the peasants can serve them their cheeseburgers at their local McDonald's. This means the rich need us. It is not altruism but out of necessity, but you can spin anything the way you would like, especially when it's hard to tell rich people what to do.
  Yes this.... "What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." Butttttttt...... "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6, ESV)
  Rich people love peacocking managing perception and you will lap it up like a loyal dog unaware of your position in the hierarchy. I am not even Christian but raised Christian I suppose.
  
  Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
  
  Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.

Good for him, but this is pretty much an Orphan-Crushing Machine moment.
- Haha uhhh gawd.
  
  First time reading this?

Yo
Idea
What if ALL the houses we build are for reducing homelessness?
At least think about it

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!
- Not sure what you're talking about, but here in the UK we need over 4m houses to be built to house the current population. That's quite a lot for a country of 68m.
  
  That is a lie used to prop up house prices.
  census data released last week reveals that in 2021 there were 1.4 million more dwellings than households in England. That’s 6.1% more places to live than households to fill them
  
  Do you guys have room for that?
- 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?

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.
  
  Further it enables them to apply for all manners of documents as they have an address to their name. Try getting any sort of document from a bank or governmental branch without an address. Trying to get a passport without address? Nope. No address no ID, no Bank account and mostly no employment anywhere without either of the two.
- 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.
  
  Being on the streets is also incredibly dangerous. Putting drug users around other drug users as well doesn't keep them off drugs.
- 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???

I'm of two minds.
shitty bungalows are what is killing infrastructure costs and perpetuating urban sprawl. We have a generous home in a hyper-dense housing area and - thanks to triple paned windows and concrete - no claustrophobia.
tiny homes for people returning from homelessness may be a good idea. The unfair concerns are mitigated by very repairable units separated from neighbours.
We need to keep these as transitional housing, though, and a feeder into a "starter" unit in proper dense mixed-use: every block (hectare) taken for tiny homes is 3 million cubic meters of space taken from a land budget we're already overdrawn on.
- I think thats always the hope that they are first steps of stability to move up. None of the projects like this I've seen have been intended to be life time residence.
  
  There are tiny-home dwellers but they're often highly educated professionals who decide to live Buddhist for a while. Some of them wind up enjoying it.
  The better analogy for homeless folks would be living in cars, aka the invisible homeless - is this better than that? Fuck yes. Even if it WAS permanent it's better than that.

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.
  
  You're saying that as if investment into military was unnecessary these days
- 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.

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.

Americans will build literal shoeboxes instead of 1 apartment building
- When dealing with homeless and mentally ill this setup of isolation from other units is better. Dealing with unsanitary living, smells, fires, sounds, are all are easier to mitigate in this setup. Also America is not hurting for wide open spaces to build this type of thing.
  
  Nor is Canada, where this is.
  
  I dunno, wouldn't it be cheaper to make and wouldn't be easier to look after as well? (Having all the plumbing, heating, wiring, AC in one place)
  Independent homes require a lot of work and maintenance, compared to shared Apartment buildings.
  Sanitary wise, I could see it being a problem in both the cases. It really depends on the people.
  Besides, just because you have land doesn't mean you should use it. Trust me, living in a place where there's virtual no trees to look at, I'd prefer to just live in a shared Apartment and enjoy the view (that's going by the picture and if there's one).
  Americans are too scared of apartment buildings because it reminds them of the projects, imo. That apartments are a poor person thing.

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.

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.

Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.
- Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
  
  How good it is depends on the details, of course.
  
  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.

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.
- They are also a lot more expensive. The most expensive with these houses he built is probably the ground, but he might've gotten it for free from the town.
- Might be, but those look cute as well to be honest.

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?!
  
  99 would take in every homeless person in a wide berth around here. WIDE. And I'm next door to the second poorest county in Florida.
  
  i mean depends how big the town is

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?

$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.
  
  A million could buy you like... Two houses. Maybe 3 or 4 at a push if they're small.
- what kind of math? you did 1 million/99?
  that’s meaningless… yes, he would have had to spend several million to do this… they’re probably tiny homes..
  and hell the whole meme is probably fake
  
  it's real. the 'millionaire' sold a startup for $340m. the homes are in new brunswick and cost $50k ea to build and furnish. the land was $500k. the houses are ~ 240-300 sq ft tiny homes. rent (at the time that source was written) starts at $200.
  
  what kind of math?

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?
- This website is full of envy is the simple answer. Hate for people who have more, tons of entitlement and the "I totally wouldn't want to be a billionaire!" bullcrap flying around.
  
  the bullshit is that the system left 99 people without homes in the first place

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

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

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.

Has he tried paying his employees a good wage and benefits?
- He sold his company for eight figures and used that wealth to build these communities for the people most in need, not (just) his (now former) employees.
  But even if he was still CEO, the fact remains that it's not just for his employees and pay is still just half the equation: he doesn't control the price of rent, and the real solution is rent control. Otherwise nothing stops landlords from just raising rent higher ans higher once they figure out that employers will just pay their tenants more.
  So yes, good pay matters, and we need comprehensive minimum wage laws and worker protection, but we also need rent control. And preferably to banish all landlords to the shadow realm.
  
  Rent control is a stopgap measure. Without enough supply, it doesn't matter how controlled the rent is if your odds of obtaining a unit are miniscule. Adding to the supply as a response to rising rental rates and property prices is the correct way to keep things stable. Which should be the govt's job, but...

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...
- 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
- 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
- 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!

Hell yeah we're bringing back shanty towns

They look like toilets with a cute small porch

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.

Where are they built in relation to necessary services, and what other services are available?
Is there on site support for drugs and mental health issues?
Is anybody's stuff going to be safe there? Or are they dumped out of sight and mind?
You have to 'invest' in preventing the causes of homelessness in the first place, which has proved impossible under capitalism. I doubt corrupt dictatorships of the proletariat such as the Soviet Union did any better.

Solar powered, too.

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.
  
  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.
  
  I mean that homeownership. i pay prop taxes but own my home. Forgive me. i was pooping and reading and forgot my words. 😂

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.

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.

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 🥰

Mm I don't think this is the solution to homelessness. It's not that we don't have enough housing it's that the working class gets pushed down so much and can't work despite wanting to. But I'm not qualified to solve homelessness so who am I to tell them how to spend their money.
- There are strategies to
  Have individual homes for people to reside in; this gives people privacy, some sense of permanence, and a safe space to simply exist. This reduces the psychological stresses of simply trying to exist. This also has the upside of having a permanent address to have things like a bank account, contact point for Medicaid, etc.
  "Safe" access to drugs. A lot of people would be on some kind of drug. Having a safe place lets them do what they need to and have established residence to get help when they need it, like an ambulance going to an address for ODs
  Have medical support. Professionals can help ween off of hard drugs and/or find appropriate drugs for what ever health issues they have.
  Finally they can take a shower and get themselves presentable to interview for work.
  I worked adjacent to some org buying the back lot of a school to convert into this kind of housing for homeless teens; above is what I can recall when reading into the program.
  
  Yeah this is all as a result of late stage capitalism. If we had some free childcare, free healthcare, accessible rehab, job assistance, more green spaces, I'm sure homelessness will go down significantly. But we're doing the opposite of all of this.
- It is in the sense that providing houses fixes homelessness. It isn't in the sense that relying on individual charity won't fix the problem as a nation.
  
  We don't really need tiny homes. We need more mid size apartments and more 5 over 1 large apartments. Homelessness wouldn't happen to a lot of people if we had cheap 600$ apartments.

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.
- I knew there would be someone shitting on a noble deed in the comments.

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.
- No, we want taxes to help the homeless and other members of society in need dumbass.
- He's a millionaire, not a billionaire. Calm down. A millionaire most likely worked hard and earned their wealth. It's billionaires who cheat.
  
  Millionaire covers everyone from having a million or two due to home equity all the way to 999 million because they just haven't hit a billion yet. Someone who can drop a million dollars or more and still be a millionaire has multiple millions.
  Equating the two is "not all millionaires".

If the photo is accurate, those 'homes' are tiny. Barely bigger than a garage compared to the cars next to them.
ETA: yup, as starters for homeless people these are great. I retract my incredulity.
- Okay, and? Infinitely better than being on the street. Someone does something nice and people like you still complain.
  
  Sure, I guess as a starter to get off the streets they're definitely better than nothing.
- A safe place to sleep, store some shit, shower. Could be better, but sounds great to me.
- My garage is bigger than my house and I'm very very happy with my house.
  My garage is really not that big. Just that our house is 12 ft by 24 ft...

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

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.

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 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.

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.
- Considering everything some of them own can fit in a shopping cart, they are mansions.
- Look up articles about ADUs (accessory dwelling units). This is a legitimate housing category based on the tiny house fad

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 is no such thing as evil ...... But their is antisocial and managing perception
- 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?

The government should have done that. At least Trump will build homes for the homeless veterans at least. This guy is doing his charitable work. Good for him. Even if it isn't his responsibility just because he's wealthy.
- Trump ain’t doing shit
  
  He only just signed an executive order stating as such lol
  https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-10/trump-orders-va-to-house-6-000-veterans-in-a-west-la-national-center-for-warrior-independence
  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-build-national-center-homeless-veterans-funds-previously-spent-illegal-aliens.amp
  https://veterans.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6702