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Take the challengeSocial Bite is a social enterprise focused on raising money for charities, feeding the homeless and also offering them job opportunities through their sandwich shop chain and proposed eco-friendly village. The central aim is to end the vicious cycle of homelessness.
The Social Bite Cafe, which gives 100% of the profits towards solving social problems and hires homeless people as their employees, gained worldwide recognition and including from Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney. This has encouraged Social Bite to build an eco-friendly village for the homeless.
[Image from http://thirdforcenews.org.uk]
The social enterprise have teamed with the EDI Group, City of Edinburgh Castle and other organisations and plan to start work in early 2017. The project proposes to build 10 tiny homes in Granton, north of Edniburgh, where 20 residents will stay for up to a year before moving onto a more permanent accommodation. Each home will cost around £30,000 each to construct. They will be highly insulated and energy-efficient two-bedroom, lounge room, kitchen and bathroom small houses.
The firm's co-founder Josh Littlejohn said: "The Social Bite Village plan hopes to create a full-circle solution to the issue of homelessness - from housing to support to employment.
"In doing so we hope to alter the course of some of Scotland's most vulnerable people for the better - swapping a destiny of poverty and exclusion for one of compassionate support and inclusion."
According to the Edinburgh News,
"It currently costs the city council around £47 per night to put someone up in homeless accommodation, adding up to £17,155 a year per person. While residents will each claim £7500 a year in housing benefit to '"pay" their rent, Josh said he hoped the village would be able to save the city council almost £200,000 a year." Which exemplifies how sustainable solutions can save drastic amounts money for cities.
George Orwell proposed this sort of solution in his 1933 chronicle about his life on the fringes of poverty, 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. He basically states that the best solution would be for the homeless to live in a place where one can grow their own food and be self sufficient, whilst working together to do so. Much the same as already established government housing, yet the focus on self-sufficiency and sustainability would save money for the government.
Change can be made when addressing social issues with an environmental lens, as these issues are so intrinsically linked. Adopting sustainable outlooks in the mechanisms to tackle homelessness is something that every country should get onboard with.
[Header & Body Image: https://tinyhousescotland.co.uk]
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