Designing Shelters for Dignity

While Designing Shelters for Dignity believes everyone has the fundamental right to stable housing, the team acknowledges this will take a massive cultural shift and in the meantime many without housing are suffering in dehumanizing and degrading shelter conditions.

Physical designs of many emergency homeless shelters strip guests of dignity and privacy, and send the message to people without housing that they are not valued by society. The team believes changing the design of these spaces through input from shelter operators, staff, and guests can significantly improve the well-being of individuals sleeping in homeless shelters, at very little cost.

The Designing Shelters for Dignity team designed low-cost, nonstructural physical modifications to shelter spaces that can be easily fabricated and installed in emergency shelter spaces. The team focused attention on four main areas of shelters: the entrance where people queue, the waiting areas and common spaces, the restrooms, and the sleeping areas.

Possible modifications in these spaces include modifying the queue to decrease stigma and exposure to bad weather. They also include making common spaces more vibrant and welcoming, installing physical barriers between beds to increase the sense of privacy and safety, and modifying bathroom doors to protect the dignity of guests while ensuring safety during the addiction epidemic. Through advocacy efforts, the team has worked and will continue to work to promote these design modifications in the hope that they will serve as a model for new design standards implemented across multiple shelters.