Welcome Home was a well thought out and a potential solution to solving homelessness. As somebody who has had the comfort of having a roof over my head and a bed to sleep on my entire life, I cannot imagine what homeless people go through. Along with food and water, shelter is another vital factor in living.
I do believe that all of their ideas for Welcome Home are great because they aim to fix people's problems of homelessness longterm as opposed to short term. As the saying goes you can give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and you could feed him for a lifetime. Sure putting a roof over there head for a short term is very important and is vital to the project, but they also aim to give people the tools necessary to provide for themselves. Homeless shelters do great work, but they are not a permanent solution to fixing homelessness. If these people had a means for providing for themselves they could get themselves a permanent residence, but since most jobs require a permanent address homeless people are left out. That is why giving these people a temporary permanent address is such an important aspect for welcome home. These neighborhoods that Welcome Home wants to create is really a great thing largely due to the fact that of how cheap these homes are. They are not lavish in any way shape or form, but they are big enough and better than a normal homeless shelter. Another great thing is the linkage that Welcome Home provides between businesses and these people with their use of putting iPads in these homes. In today's society the majority of job applications are online, along with a lot of seeing who is hiring is also online. With these people being homeless they do not have access to a computer for the most part so this will make finding jobs easier than usual. I also think that giving a chance for these people/families a chance to reapply for these temporary homes is a good idea because if they are unsuccessful in finding a job in the allotted time, these people should still not be on the streets.
There are somethings that I believe they should change however. For instance, they wanted to cut the normal amount of time people stay in temporary shelters by 66% to only 30 days. I believe that this is simply too short a time for effective job searching. Combined with the fact that a permanent address is important, a month is really not that permanent. The other thing that they should think long and hard about is who exactly will be accepted into their Welcome Home program. Just because somebody has a felony it does not mean that they are dangerous people. Many homeless people commit a crime just so they can get a roof over their head along with three meals a day. Now sure some people should not be allowed in due to their criminal record and what they have done, but that mainly applies to people who have committed violent crimes. The group was very accepting of any critiques anyone had along with taking note of what they could change.
Overall I think it was a great idea and use of technology to fix a problem that has been around for centuries. The group's presentation was great and they laid out their plan very well. It is personally my favorite project presented for the fact of the problem that they are trying to fix and how they wanted to fix it.
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