mobile supportive housing: fall 2018
Advisor: Emilie Taylor-Welty
Project Location: New Orleans, LA
Mobile Supportive Housing is grounded in the radical idea that everyone deserves a home. There are currently six hundred people in New Orleans who sleep unsheltered each night, many of whom reside beneath the Pontchartrain Expressway. According to current Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) projects in the city of New Orleans, approximately twenty additional PSH projects are needed to address homelessness in the city. This project is directly adjacent to the Pontchartrain Expressway and the New Orleans Mission.
Those relying on PSH often have difficulty moving to a new residence after they no longer need the support. In response to this and other critiques of PSH, Mobile Supportive Housing suggests that people can choose to design and build their own homes—thus exercising choice in their housing selection while learning transferable trade skills—and then, if desired, they can dismantle these homes and move them elsewhere by means of a Community Land Trust initiative. In these ways, Mobile Supportive Housing critiques the policies and procedures that govern affordable housing.
