Pop-up shelters that can be assembled in 20 minutes without tools could help address California's mounting homelessness crisis
- A Washington-based company called Pallet makes pop-up homeless shelters that can be assembled in 20 minutes without any tools.
- Pallet recently assembled two of these shelters outside Sacramento City Hall to demonstrate the concept.
- From 2017 to 2019, the number of homeless residents in Sacramento County rose by nearly 20%.
- The city's mayor is pushing to have 150 of the pop-up shelters built before winter.
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Sacramento City Hall witnessed a demonstration on November 13, but it wasn't a protest.
For about 20 minutes, workers assembled two pop-up homeless shelters on the sidewalk outside the building without using any tools. Their goal was to demonstrate a potential solution to Sacramento's mounting homelessness crisis.
From 2017 to 2019, the number of homeless residents in Sacramento County rose by nearly 20%. The city has around 4,000 homeless residents - a small number compared to nearby San Francisco, though the two cities have about the same share of homeless residents relative to their population size (around 0.8%).
The pop-up structures could offer temporary shelter in both these cities, as well as throughout California, which has four of the 10 cities with the largest homeless populations in the US.
In Sacramento, constructing permanent homeless shelters has been a slow process, hampered by a lack of funding and lengthy construction timelines. A single 100-person shelter can take several months to build and cost around $4 million to $5 million, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The shelters that were built outside city hall, however, start at around $4,000. Instead of using tools, workers can fit the white aluminum walls into gray platforms, which can be placed on any surface, paved or unpaved. Each mini pop-up unit is 64 square feet in area and can fit four bunk beds inside. That would make the cost of 25 units (a total of 100 beds) around $200,000. The units are best suited for families or those willing to share a room.
The Washington-based corporation that makes the structures, Pallet, originally designed them to house people during disasters. But after a conversation with city officials in Tacoma, Washington, they realized that the shelters could also work for homeless residents. Each shelter has four fold-out bunk beds, fold-out shelving, and small windows. They can withstand 110 mile-per-hour winds and 1,600 pounds of snow.
Pallet has made a few arrangements with municipal governments to demonstrate the concept in front of local city halls. In April, it assembled a shelter in around 20 minutes outside Seattle's city hall.
Sacramento mayor Darrell Steinberg recently toured the structures outside his office building.
"I love this idea," Steinberg told the Bee. "I want to see 150 of these before winter." That could give around 600 people, or 15% of Sacramento's homeless population, access to a bunk bed.
But the mayor added that large shelters are still vital to address the city's homelessness crisis. Sacramento recently approved a $21.3 million budget to build and operate two 100-person shelters for the homeless. The city council has also considered designating "safe zones" where people would be permitted to sleep in their cars or camp out in tents. The council will vote on these ideas in December, along with the mayor's proposal to build the pop-up shelters.
Pallet CEO Amy King told the Bee that local residents may be more likely to approve a temporary shelter than a permanent one.
"It's not going to be there forever and that's obvious by looking at it," she said. "But they look nicer than tents."