Rethinking Shelter
Project Description
For two years, this project explored new housing options for homeless youth in Oregon. Working with Outside In, a national leader in the field, and Teddy Cruz at the University of California’s Center for Urban Ecology, students and faculty at PSU constructed a comprehensive housing program that builds on Outside In’s successful strategies and assets, as well as the new possibilities created by the Health Care Reform Act. The proposals that emerged include a range of responses from micro-scale strategies that build on Portland’s food cart movement and their land-use strategies, to rethinking the needs of Portland’s diverse neighborhoods and communities as part of a more comprehensive approach to housing social services that incorporate homeless youth as community members.