Our Plan:
How We’ll Do It
to End Homelessness
Palm trees. Beautiful beaches. Sunshine. Those are the things that would come to your mind when you think of the state of California. Sure, you will definitely find these symbolic features here and there. But there is one more thing that you will notice when you drive on any local streets or even freeways.
Tents.
Homes of people without homes.
More than 500,000 individuals are sleeping on the streets tonight. And most likely, they will remain there tomorrow night, and the following nights. Homeless crisis has been addressed by so many for so long, but we can’t say we have seen any improvement in 50 years.
Number of Homeless Individuals in the U.S. by states (as of Jan 2020)
Our government spends an average of $40,000 to $83,000 per year for every chronically homeless person, which adds up to $23.4 billion a year. Much of this money goes toward publicly funded crisis services, including police, jails, sanitation, hospitalization, and emergency departments. Despite all those expenses, more people are sleeping on streets, getting sick, dying young, and having to waste their productivity.
We’ve seen the state and federal governments’ approaches to address this issue, such as shelters or temporary apartments with short-term assistance, and rent or payment assistance to prevent currently housed families from becoming homeless. And we’ve seen these temporary fixes fail. Over and over again. We certainly do not have enough shelters or housing. Local communities are not always welcoming those facilities in their neighborhood. Moreover, shelters and temporary residence such as hotel rooms are not designed as a place to settle in, which in most cases leaves those in need unemployed and welfare-dependent.
Top Five States With the Most Number of Homeless Individuals
California leads New York and all the other states as it holds the most number of homeless people, which takes up almost one third of the entire homeless population.
And even with sufficient housing, many of them will still be struggling to regain or maintain economic stability due to their health issues, including mental illness and addictions, and socio-economic inequity and inequality.
Because, homelessness is a complex problem.
It can be defined as a housing problem, as well as a healthcare problem, social problem, and all possible combinations of these and other issues that our society has been long facing.
We must understand its complexity and aim not only to provide the means to overcome surfacing problems but also to permanently transform the lives of those in need and our own.
So, we need a plan. A sustainable plan to
- Get homeless individuals and families housed, employed, and treated.
- Help them come back to the society as a healthy, independent, productive member and a self-sufficient contributor to greater economic growth.
- Stop welfare drainage, and revamp the system to earn public funds.
- Increase the number of self-sufficient taxpayers without hurting existing taxpayers.
- Stop further opportunity loss caused by social inequity.
- Establish an enduring socio-economic system by ensuring socio economic stability and mobility in the long term perspective.
- Create sustainable systems that generate values, jobs, and public funds by and for utilizing wasted talents and labors, promoting opportunities, and optimizing land use
After ten years of sheltering low-income individuals at a hotel in San Diego to help the city’s housing program, our founder, Masayuki Ueda, came up with his definitive, decisive, inclusive and sustainable plan. Driven by his passion for helping those in need and his faith in humanity, he established SD Daruma, Inc. and its non-profit arm, NPO Daruma, to realize “the plan.”
So what’s The Plan?
It consists of a two-prong project.
1.
To build attractive, clean, transit-oriented and sustainable compact cities, connected to other cities by railroads, in suburbs across the country
These compact towns will be built clean and sustainable in line with the UN’s SDGs to provide for the homeless, the vulnerable, and those who are financially struggling, with affordable and stable housing and a healthy, nurturing environment; where everyone has a place to call home, a job to make a living, education to brighten the future, and life to enjoy.
It will be developed along a smart-growth design centering around a rail station, with all the necessary and basic facilities such as banks, schools, stores and hospitals accessible within walking distance.
Connecting these cities with others throughout the country by rail will improve people’s mobility and connectivity and accelerate economic growth. It will also contribute to curbing global warming by reducing the use of private cars and CO₂ emissions.
While SD Daruma, Inc. works on the infrastructure of these developments, our nonprofit division, NPO Daruma, will focus on work/life readiness education for homeless individuals along with comprehensive independence support. We will work closely with each of them to provide personalized programs in order to support their unique paths toward independence and throughout their lives.
2.
To redevelop the impoverished urban centers, currently slummed out with homeless encampments, into ‘super cities’: clean, highly functional, integrated high-tech commercial zones.
These urban areas are extremely limited resources with highest land values, but unfortunately, they have been underutilized. Redevelopment of these areas will restore and preserve their land value, create jobs and opportunities, attract new businesses and visitors, which will multiply public revenue and as a result, create more funds to support greater causes.
We will work to closely monitor and arrange these development and redevelopment so that homeless people are not simply pushed to other inhabitable places, as can happen and has happened in random gentrification.
Photo by Photo by Ryo Yoshitake on Unsplash
These re/developments themselves will bring more job opportunities to the market. It will help those in need to build the financial foundation for the future independence with a stable income source, as they are getting ready to come back to society through our various readiness programs.
So, we don’t just work for them. We work with them.
Together, we will be the engine and fuel for the growth into the future. Our future.
Economic Impact on Our Society
This model doesn’t just get homeless people housed, but transform their and our lives permanently, and promote economic growth for our society, which will ultimately benefit all of us.
Based on our in-house estimate calculation, cost for urban redevelopment is estimated to be $11 billion, and its economic impact through and after transformation is expected to be $35 billion. Likewise, cost for suburban smart-growth community development is expected to be $8 billion, and its economic impact to be $75 billion, including GDP of its residents and value of land and infrastructure.
Development
of Suburban Smart-Growth Community
Redevelopment
of Urban Centers
- To serve the entire low-income population, we will be needing approximately 500 towns with 75,000 residents in each town.
Total construction cost will be $4,006,000,000,000, while total economic impact will be $37,790,025,000,000. - Based on our in-house estimate calculations.
And we are not planning to stop there. We start from San Diego and Los Angeles, and expand this model to other cities, states, and countries. We believe that successful implementation of this model will help end global poverty and also curb global warming.
We are not saying that this is easy. This requires strong partnership and collaboration among people, governments, and private sectors, as well as time and effort from all of us.
Because, again, homelessness is a complex problem.
But we can do this. We can put an end to this long battle against homelessness and poverty, which has been caused by and causing socioeconomic inequity and inequality, and economic dysfunctionality. But only by working together.
So let’s work together and start building for the future without homelessness.
Author: Yukiko Sakaki
Date: Sep 30, 2022