Company type | Private public benefit corporation |
---|---|
Industry | Housing |
Founded | 2016 |
Headquarters | Washington, US |
Products | Emergency shelters |
Website | https://palletshelter.com/ |
Pallet, established in 2016 and based in Everett, Washington, is a public benefit corporation focused on addressing unsheltered homelessness and improving employment opportunities. [1] The company designs and manufactures rapid deployment shelters aimed at transitional housing to facilitate the move from homelessness to permanent living situations. These shelters prioritize privacy and security with features such as lockable doors and on-site bathroom facilities. Designed for quick assembly, each unit can be set up within an hour. Pallet also extends its efforts to provide emergency housing solutions and assist communities in disaster situations.
As a fair chance employer, Pallet hires individuals who have experienced homelessness, substance use disorders, or involvement with the criminal justice system, offering them stable employment opportunities. [2]
Pallet shelters have been deployed in transitional and supportive housing programs, aiding homeless individuals, including those recovering from surgery or illness. [3] [4] These shelter communities have provided assistance to diverse groups, such as veterans, [5] formerly incarcerated individuals, [6] indigenous populations, [7] and those requiring pet-friendly accommodations. [8]
A village consisting of individual shelters along with support buildings can be constructed within weeks. [9] Separate buildings can be utilized to provide services such as food provision, case management, security, and rehabilitation, depending on the needs of the community. [10]
As of 2022, Pallet's modular homes have been established in approximately 100 communities across states such as California, Minnesota, Hawaii, New Jersey, Vermont, and Washington. [11] Reports from some agencies indicate that up to half of the residents have moved on to secure permanent housing. [1]
Pallet shelters are constructed from aluminum and composite panels, chosen for their ease of cleaning and assembly. [3] [4] These shelters are intended to quickly provide for the needs of unsheltered populations, offering a combination of housing and access to social services, including food, showers, and laundry facilities, aiming to facilitate the transition to permanent housing. Additionally, Pallet structures are utilized to support disaster survivors by rapidly providing housing and necessary resources. [12]
The design of Pallet shelters allows for installation on various surfaces and connections to multiple power sources as well as standard sewer service lines. The shelters are available in different sizes and configurations:
Pallet employs a workforce with lived experience, [13] utilizing aerospace construction techniques and materials. They feature custom-engineered panels to withstand significant environmental stresses, including high wind speeds and snow loads, and insulation in a lightweight form, available in different thicknesses for energy efficiency and ease of maintenance.
Each shelter is subject to inspection by local authorities to ensure compliance with industry standards and is equipped with safety features such as smoke/carbon monoxide detectors and ample electrical outlets. An on-site service provider is tasked with ensuring the safety of residents.
In 2022, Pallet introduced its Dignity Standards, [14] partnering with site operators, municipalities, and government agencies. These standards are for communities to have the necessary support services to assist individuals in moving beyond homelessness. Essential services covered by the standards include hygiene facilities, meals, transportation, and safety measures, establishing a thorough support network for residents.
The formulation of these standards draws upon Pallet's experience in creating nearly 100 shelter communities nationwide, contributions from employees who have personally faced homelessness, and feedback from site operators and residents. Although these standards have been part of Pallet's agreements with local authorities, their official declaration was made in 2022.
Lennox is a census-designated place (CDP) in the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The population was 22,753 at the 2010 census, down from 22,950 at the 2000 census.
In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2023 was more than 650,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an increasingly severe housing shortage and rising home prices in the United States.
Homeless shelters are a type of homeless service agency which provide temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community. They are similar to, but distinguishable from, various types of emergency shelters, which are typically operated for specific circumstances and populations—fleeing natural disasters or abusive social circumstances. Extreme weather conditions create problems similar to disaster management scenarios, and are handled with warming centers, which typically operate for short durations during adverse weather.
A tent city is a temporary housing facility made using tents or other temporary structures.
Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affordable housing refers to mortgages and a number of forms that exist along a continuum – from emergency homeless shelters, to transitional housing, to non-market rental, to formal and informal rental, indigenous housing, and ending with affordable home ownership.
Homelessness or houselessness – also known as a state of being unhoused or unsheltered – is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, such as living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation such as family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their domiciles because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.
Discrimination against homeless people is the act of treating homeless people or people perceived to be homeless unfavorably. As with most types of discrimination, it can manifest in numerous forms.
The right to housing is the economic, social and cultural right to adequate housing and shelter. It is recognized in some national constitutions and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The right to housing is regarded as a freestanding right in the International human rights law which was clearly in the 1991 General Comment on Adequate Housing by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The aspect of the right to housing under ICESCR include: availability of services, infrastructure, material and facilities; legal security of tenure; habitability; accessibility; affordability; location and cultural adequacy.
The tiny-house movement is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. According to the International Residential Code, a tiny house’s floorspace is no larger than 400 square feet (37 m2). Proponents suggest that tiny homes could offer low-cost, eco-friendly alternatives within the housing market and serve as a transitional housing option for homeless individuals.
In the Seattle King County area, there were estimated to be 11,751 homeless people living on the streets or in shelters. On January 24, 2020, the count of unsheltered homeless individuals was 5,578. The number of individuals without homes in emergency shelters was 4,085 and the number of homeless individuals in transitional housing was 2,088, for a total count of 11,751 unsheltered people.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in an extreme housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Family homelessness refers to a family unit who do not have access to long term accommodation due to various circumstances such as socioeconomic status, access to resources and relationship breakdowns. In some Western countries, such as the United States, family homelessness is a new form of poverty, and a fast growing group of the homelessness population. Some American researchers argue that family homelessness is the inevitable result of imbalanced “low-income housing ratio” where there are more low-income households than there are low-cost housing units. A study in 2018 projected a total of 56,342 family households were recognized as homeless. Roughly 16,390 of these people were living in a place not meant for human habitation. It is believed that homeless families make up about a third of the United States’ population, with generally women being the lead of the household.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated that more than 181,399 people were experiencing homelessness in California in January 2023. This represents more than 27% of the homeless population of the United States even though California has slightly less than 12% of the country's total population, and is one of the highest per capita rates in the nation, with 0.46% of residents being homeless. More than two-thirds of homeless people in California are unsheltered, which is the highest percentage of any state in the United States. 49% of the unsheltered homeless people in the United States live in California: about 123,423 people, which is eight times as many as the state with the second highest total. Even those who are sheltered are so insecurely, with 90% of homeless adults in California reporting that they spent at least one night unsheltered in the past six months.
In 2016, a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) revealed that the U.S. state of Oregon had an estimated homeless population of 13,238 with about 60.5% of these people still unsheltered. In 2017, these numbers were even higher. As of January 2017, Oregon has an estimated 13,953 individuals experiencing homelessness. Of this homeless population, 1,083 are family households, 1,251 are veterans, 1,462 are unaccompanied young adults, and 3,387 are individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. As of 2022, 17,959 people total experienced homelessness in Oregon, with 2,157 individuals being youth under 18, 6,671 being female, 10,931 being male, and 131 being transgender. Also among the 17,959 total homeless in 2022, 15,876 were Non-Hispanic/Non-Latino, 2,083 were Hispanic/Latino, 13,960 were white, 1,172 were Black, African American, or African, 101 were Asian or Asian American, 880 were Native American, and those of multiple race were 1,619. Oregon has seen an increase in its total homeless population consistently every year since 2010. In last three years specifically Oregon has seen a 98.5% increase 2021-2022, 22.5% increase 2020-2021, and a 13.1% increase 2019-2020.
The Dorothy Day shelter is a homeless shelter campus in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. The project is centered around the site of the Dorothy Day Center built in downtown Saint Paul in 1981. The shelter is named after American Catholic and social activist Dorothy Day. The Dorothy Day Center started as a drop-in center for meals to help the homeless population in downtown Saint Paul. The facility is operated by Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in coordination with Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) was established by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2011 to create public-private partnerships to rapidly re-house homeless Veteran families and prevent homelessness for very low-income Veterans at imminent risk due to a housing crisis. SSVF has been led since its inception by John Kuhn, the previous VA National Director of Homeless Evaluation.
In October 2023, an average of 90,578 people slept in New York City's homeless shelters each night. This included 23,103 single adults, 32,689 children, and 34,786 adults in families. The total number is at its highest ever, with 63,636 people sleeping in homeless shelters. The city reported that in 2019, 3,600 individuals experienced unsheltered homelessness, sleeping in public spaces such as streets and public transit rather than shelters. The homeless population has surged in New York City 18% in 2023 from 2022, despite efforts from Mayor Adams.
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The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, produced by The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, estimated that 10,654 Ohioans faced homelessness during the year, representing 9 in every 10,000 individuals. Over 80% of the homeless were sheltered. This population was made up of 3,214 people who belonged to families with children, 703 unaccompanied youth, 633 veterans, and 1,023 chronically homeless individuals.
Rescue Mission Syracuse is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1887, based in Syracuse, New York. The mission statement for Rescue Mission is to "put love into action through shelter, food, clothing, and hope." It provides food services, emergency shelter, housing, permanent care, clothing centers, mobile outreach services, employment and educational resources, and connections to other services. It is currently located at 155 Gifford St in Syracuse, NY.