A Home That Fits looks at solutions for youth homelessness through design methods. Over 1000 people under the age of 25 in Helsinki are currently without a regular dwelling.
This project was carried out alongside the City of Helsinki’s Youth Department. While there are no precise figures on the number of homeless young people in Helsinki, it is assumed that there are more than a thousand. The A Home That Fits project aimed to draw attention to the problem.
The project had three aims; the primary purpose was to increase awareness on the issue of homeless youths in the city of Helsinki; the second was to build a network, which strives to solve the problem as a community, thirdly a range of solutions was taken through experimentation. Such experiments included joint residences for young people and the elderly and various forms of temporary housing.
Young people were truly involved in all of these approaches – either through their work or voluntary activities.
This was one of the most impactful projects I’ve ever been involved in. Significant and interesting at the same time, the dynamics of our approach brought together people from different sectors, cultures and social backgrounds, every body was focused on cooperating and a very unknown phenomena (homelessness) become to be great motivator.
This project supported by the Youth Department of the City of Helsinki, continued till the year 2017. At least one of the experiments carried on, was implemented as a permanent solution and most of the data and methodologies used during the project are now used by similar NGO’s and public organizations.
Date: 2016