A person experiencing homelessness lacks shelter in its most basic form, but solving homelessness takes much more than buildings, and our contemporary moment reveals few problems that design, on its own, can resolve. According to the 2018 State of Homelessness in America report by the US Council of Economic Advisers, over half a million people in the US are homeless, with that number steadily increasing over the past three years—people living every day without this most basic form of protection that we as designers of our built environments provide.(1) In our own city of Austin, Texas, a 2021 report by the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) found that there are 3,160 Austinites experiencing homelessness, with more than 2,200 living without any shelter. (2)
