With the age of big box stores waning, all those massive abandoned retail facilities could be transformed almost instantly into housing for the homeless using a variety of plug-and-play prefab elements. The research and development studio at KTGY Architecture + Planning in Los Angeles considers what we seem to need space for the most in cities – housing people who tend to fall through the cracks as the cost of living continues to increase – and builds entire complexes of supportive spaces and services within the empty shells of stores like Sears and JCPenney.

“Re-Habit” doesn’t get rid of retail altogether. It just makes the shopping portions of each building smaller, and places bedroom pods, restrooms, kitchens, dining halls, offices, job training rooms and other spaces behind them. Each Re-Habit store would be a community-supported thrift boutique benefiting the transitional housing program.

The main goal of the project is to be self-supporting, the creators explain, by providing training, employment and housing for residents, who rotate chores like working in the kitchen or keeping the dining hall clean. The large, flat roofs of big box stores are ideal for rooftop gardening, recreation and solar panels, and many have outdoor plaza areas that could accommodate small pop-up shops and food carts.

To demonstrate how it could work, KTGY used a typical 86,000-square-foot store (which would often be an “anchor store” in a shopping plaza) and created illustrations showing how it could be used. The firm designed modular led pot units that contain anywhere from 2 to 20 beds, easily slotting into the large, empty spaces. Additionally, the space could support 8 individual apartment units on an upper floor.

“From 2016 to 2017, the homeless population in the U.S. increased for the first time in seven years, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the U.S., 553,742 people were homeless in 2017. Housing programs are a meaningful contribution to addressing the homelessness crisis.”

“Living without a home not only endangers individuals’ health and safety, but is also a significant barrier to obtaining and keeping a means of employment. Shelter is a necessity for all, and providing housing is one way to ease suffering and support individuals seeking to break a cycle of poverty.”

With homelessness in many cities reaching its highest levels since the Great Depression, some designers and architects are getting more creative with solutions, like this honeycomb-shaped 3D-printed ‘micro neighborhood’ designed to cling to existing buildings. In New York City in particular, homelessness has grown steadily over the past two decades, and architecture firm Framlab believes two clear actions can be taken today to alleviate the problem: providing more low-income housing, and bolstering housing assistance programs to reduce the eviction rate.

‘Homed’ is their vision for step one. They hope to take advantage of prefabrication technology to produce inexpensive, easy-to-build micro-units to get the homeless population housed immediately. To do that, they’d have to circumvent the obstacle of competing against the city’s real estate moguls for available land. They point out that while unbuilt lots are hard to come by, there’s plenty of vertical real state on the blank sidewalls of buildings.

“Homed is a proposal that seeks to capitalize on this ‘vertical land,’” they say. “In conjunction with a flexible framework that already exists in the city – scaffolding – hexagon-shaped housing modules are designed to connect to the scaffolding structure, pack densely, and create a seconds active layer on top of the empty wall. In aggregate, this forms clusters of suspended micro-neighborhoods of shelters for the city’s least fortunate.”

“The Unit is designed to provide year-round home for its residents. While the exterior construction of steel and oxidized aluminum deals with the wear and tear of the city, the interior is made up of organic shapes of 3D-printed plastic that – clad with wood laminate – create a warm and friendly environment. As the interior modules are 3D printed, an endless amount of spatial and functional needs can be met, and the space can be reconfigured and expanded upon when needed.”

Of course, it’s pertinent to point out that the global housing crisis won’t be solved until our current (undeniably dire) income stratification crisis is alleviated and everyone can afford to enjoy a reasonable standard of living, thus eliminating the need to build special parasitic structures for homeless people. There’s also the fact that many unhoused people are not physically capable of climbing the stairs of scaffolding in order to access comfortable housing. But it’s nice to see architects and designers thinking about these problems, and starting discussions that could pave the way toward actual change.

The problem of homelessness is a complex one rooted in gross stratification of wealth, and while addressing it in full means addressing poverty itself, temporary portable housing can save lives in the meantime. Many cities are implementing transitional housing programs that make use of inexpensive, easy to move structures in interstitial urban spaces. The Martin Architecture and Design Workshop (MADWORKSHOP) teamed up with students from the University of Southern California School of Architecture (USC) to come up with some creative examples of these structures.

‘The Homeless Studio’ is an organization aiming to address LA’s homelessness crisis through design. Students built a series of full-scale, inhabitable nomadic shelters ranging from contraptions that fit onto shopping carts to more comfortable structures that wouldn’t be out of place in a tiny house village. Most of the materials were scavenged from around Los Angeles, and the designs had to be collapsible and suitable for a variety of locations.

The results are sometimes more artistic than they are practical – like a hut clad in retail mannequin displays – but in many cases, the interiors are cozy and well-lit by windows and skylights, and one design even has a roof deck.

The aim of actually addressing homelessness didn’t just consist of building a few weird-looking structures and calling it a day. The students worked with city officials, local agencies, artist and activists to come up with a holistic solution in a city where nearly 47,000 people live on the streets. They’re making repeated visits to local agencies like the Skid Row Housing Trust and the Downtown Women’s Center, speaking to people experiencing homelessness to get firsthand information about their needs.

They’ll also be taking the hands-on skills and knowledge they gained through this project and applying it to a larger solution, designing a 30-bed modular shelter for women for Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission in San Fernando Valley. Their efforts over the course will be documented and compiled into a publication set for publishing by the USC School of Architecture in 2017.

Could tiny prefabricated stackable mobile housing units help solve homelessness in cities like San Francisco, where nearly 7,000 people sleep in the streets every night? Affordable housing has all but disappeared in the Bay Area, pushing thousands of people out and giving many people nowhere to go. While most developers in San Francisco are busy working on building the kinds of expensive condos that exacerbate the problem, one is offering a potential solution in the form of minimalist pods.

Patrick Kennedy and his team at real estate development and rental company Panoramic Interests present the MicroPAD, a self-contained, 160-square-foot mobile home that can stand alone or be stacked into a complex of up to 300 units. Nine-foot ceilings and generous windows flood the interiors with natural light, and each home contains a bed with storage drawers, a modest kitchenette, armoire closet, desk with chair and shelves, and a bathroom with a toilet and shower.

The units can be manufactured in about a week, exceed California seismic code, are made of non-combustible materials and feature engineered soundproofing and 24/7 filtered ventilation. Ultimately, aside from the size, the MicroPAD offers better quality housing than the more conventional apartments for which many of the city’s residents already pay lots of cash. The size and stickability is a response to the eye-watering $1,200-per-square-foot cost of development within the cramped city – it’s quick and easy to build, and doesn’t take up a lot of space.

Using prefab materials shaves 40% off the cost of conventional construction, and the developers note that the units can be built on, or in the airspaces above, unused and underutilized city-owned lots to further cut costs. At a cost of $1,000 per unit per month, the MicroPAD would come in at well under the average $17,353 currently spent per year on each homeless person in other forms of supportive housing. Panoramic Interests has a bunch of proposals on their site showing how and where the units could be stacked into 33-unit or 300-unit buildings.

Clearly, a lot of thought has been put into this proposal, and the company has already produced a number of prototypes to demonstrate exactly how the units work – one is placed outside Kennedy’s office on Ninth and Mission, a neighborhood with a significant population of homeless people. Of course, in a city where anyone who isn’t a tech worker struggles to get by, this concept could and should be scaled up to offer affordable housing for all.

Could a low-cost, lightweight geodesic dome made from umbrellas, garbage bags and a space blanket provide a real life-saving solution for people forced to sleep on the streets? ‘Earth Lander’ reclaims common materials in totally unexpected ways for a visual result that looks just as its name suggests, and it’s thermally efficient, providing a warm space that’s also resistant to water and wind.

Umbrella frames were altered to make them more structurally secure, and combined with waterproof umbrella fabric to create the outer structure. Air-filled garbage bags, cellulose wool and a space blanket provide insulation.

The umbrellas were assembled to create a geodesic dome that Bucky Fuller would be proud of. The transparent trash bags act as inflatable windows so the inhabitant can peer outside, and the octagonal door is secured with ties.

It’s an intriguing idea that could help save the lives of countless homeless people who die from exposure each year during the harsh winter months, and keep them dry in other seasons. Check out 14 more innovative ideas for homeless housing, from similar short-term survival shelters to long-term transitional living spaces.