shelter in a car(t) by andrew dahlgren from usa

In the near future there will be an abandonment of SUVs due to the high price of gasoline. Instead of scraping these vehicles and throwing them into auto yards, they could easily be turned into shelters. Why not take these abandoned vehicles, remove all but the passenger seat, add some padding for sleeping and a custom shelving unit for storage and give homeless people a roof to sleep under. They can placed through out a town or city or placed in a single location (a new kind of mobile suburbia). There is already a tradition of donating old and rundown cars to charities, this design just asks for changing what is done with them after they are donated.

There are some interesting social benefits which could come about from implementing this design. First, many people view owning a car as a status symbol, some even place higher importance on the size of the car, so by giving these large cars to homeless people it will instantly elevate them to a higher status according to this logic. Secondly there are some people who hate SUVs due to their bad designs, low fuel economy, and increased risk of car accidents, but if the vehicles were turned into shelters then many might see them as a benefit to society. The “retextualizing” of these two products of social living, creates an interesting solution by hiding one groups dislikes inside another groups dislikes. You end up with a win win situation: homeless people now have a dry place to sleep and place to store their belongings and two social eyesores, SUVs and homeless, people are now seen in a completely new way.