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I knew someone once through where I volunteered who was homeless and needed a place to stay for a "couple days". I connected that person with a friend who had a spare basement, and she ended up staying all winter. She used that winter to get a job and probably therapy and to start transitioning. Last
time I saw her she was doing pretty well.
This "re-housing classifieds" would not magically solve homelessness but it sure would put a dent in it. I think there's a lot of people in the world who would love to do something like that for someone, maybe share a bunk bed or something, but it's hard to do that with strangers.
With a classifieds designed by dating app professionals, social workers, homeless people, and other such experts, you could give people with places to stay the opportunity to connect with people who need places to stay. Some people would charge some sort of rent or labor under some circumstances and some people wouldn't.
Use cases include:
- runaway people who are under 18 (there would have to be some sort of legal red tape worked out)
- immigrants learning a new culture
- refugees
- homeless people
- anyone who wants a roommate, (would help de-stigmatize it)
The service would also connect users to local community resources (support groups such as churches, government services, mutual aid groups, and so forth could be a user type)
Voz
https://portlandvoz.org/
" Voz is a worker-led organization that empowers diverse day laborers and immigrants to improve their working conditions and protect civil rights through leadership development, organizing, education and economic opportunity." - connecting day laborers with day labor work, but safely. An improvement over standing on the side of the road and getting picked up by whoever, but if it didn't exist, that's what a lot of these workers would be doing. [aniola, Sep 04 2022]
The Geel question
https://aeon.co/ess...l-are-welcomed-home
For centuries, a little Belgian town has treated the mentally ill. Why are its medieval methods so successful? [aniola, Sep 04 2022]
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So it connects a church willing to donate $50/month, a tenant who is willing to perform some house work, and a charity which will buy some kind of insurance with someone who needs housework done but can't afford to offer totally free rent. [+] |
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How is this the opposite of what AirBnB does? |
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The site would show descriptions of the guests and would be browsed by the prospective landlords. |
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That sounds like a system that's ripe for abuse and exploitation. Especially the part about juvenile runaways. [-] |
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Now that [21] mentioned it, it certainly does. Wish I could award a sordid second bun. Edit: I said that BEFORE [21] mentioned the part about juveniles. |
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Landlords, guests, and social support groups can all browse and connect. There's an assortment of privacy settings. |
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Foster homes (for example) have to go through training and home checks. Section 8 housing has strict requirements. No reason these hosts wouldn't have to go through the same process. |
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The difference between this and Air BnB is that airbnb caters to guests with money. The target audience of the re-housing classifieds is less likely to have money. |
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People can choose whether they want to connect with people who have been vetted by an agency or not. |
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Presumably kids /have/ to connect with people who have been vetted due to existing child protection laws. |
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Right, which makes them more exploitable. "I'm sure we can work SOMETHING out..." Presumably Uber vets all its drivers and passengers, yet attacks on both happen all the time. |
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Legally, juvenile runaways have to be returned home. Harboring runaways is a crime. |
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There are existing runaway shelters so this is presumably and thankfully not the law everywhere. |
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/which makes them more exploitable./ |
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There are already systems in place for connecting runaway kids to runaway shelters, homeless people to homeless shelters, immigrants and refugees to individual hosts. |
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I'm not clear on why working with existing resources to connect more people would be an issue. Personally, I think even Voice's use case sounds like it could be exploitation depending on the terms but it also sounds better to me than living in a tent on the side of the highway until you get moved along, having your belongings stolen by the authorities, and catching pneumonia from being out in the rain just to round it all out. Which is an example alternative some people are looking at. Isn't that a choice that should be left to the user? If they don't like it, they can leave. Maybe some of the involved support groups can do private in-person check-ins. |
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This could be a preferred alternative for a lot of people to shelters. I've worked at shelters and it is intense. 8 people to a standard minimum-sized bedroom. 30 people living in a house together. Strict regulations about when and where you're allowed to be (be back by 6pm, you must leave the house by 8pm, you are only allowed to keep your private belongings in this single drawer. The re-housing classifieds could meet some of that need in a more humane environment, and connect people. |
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People become homeless when they run out of relationships. Everyone needs relationships. There are, for example, a lot of depressed lonely housed people in this world who could probably use a roommate just to co-exist with. This gives people opportunities to establish relationships. |
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It absolutely could lead to exploitation and there should be warning notices and best practice alerts and systems in place. People exploit people they meet through any platform. Should there be no internet? |
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The risk/ benefit balance of a scheme like this changes over time. In prosperous times, the people who fall through the cracks are often quite difficult to help (deep mental health problems, etc,), but we're now living through a time when the cracks are widening, and all sorts of people are falling through them. That speaks in favour of schemes like this, because the odds are good of finding someone who is close to functioning, and only needs a little help to start functioning again. Also a lot of people might be more willing to help, from the awareness "that could be me tomorrow". |
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It basically sounds like airbnb but one of those "pay what you can afford" models I've seen restaurants featured in the news doing. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I can't help think of all the vulnerable young women in particular who could so easily fall victim to such a system once they're in these people's homes. Foster homes are supposedly vetted quite thoroughly, but abuse runs rampant in the foster system and those people are well paid to take care of those kids. Now you're suggesting people don't even GET paid, or if they do much less... I'm not that trusting. |
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On a trust scale from "will you, a woman in your 30s alone in your own alley-facing yard, hang out and chat with a self-declared person-who-has-killed-someone for a couple hours who randomly stopped to talk, while he tells you stories and local history and you do yard work?" to "people can't be trusted and I should have a camera on my front porch to make sure nobody steals my packages/there's a lost jogger looking around trying to figure out how to get home so I'd better call the cops" I definitely fall in the first category. I've occasionally been taken advantage of occasionally. But all the opportunities of trust and warm welcome and such from continuing to keep an open and trusting heart have been worth it. |
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I agree that the system wouldn't be perfect. There would be exploitation. There is exploitation in this world. And that would be wrong, as it is wrong now. (Uber itself is exploitative. All the "gig economy" gigs that advertise as jobs and then treat workers as contractors are.) |
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But I don't think there are any limits in the re-housing classifieds themselves that aren't already be found in the same quantities in society as a whole. And with the thought and care that I have proposed go into the design and implementation process, I think it could be better than average. |
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[+] For my part, I'd be happy to list myself as available for rooms/dating. |
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I actually just meant to use the dating technology professionals to help design a re-housing classifieds. |
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There's already an adequate complex online dating ecosystem that anyone online can use, from what I hear. :D |
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