Whether you think of your living space as a house, a home, or a castle, it’s a roof over your head and that’s the most important thing. Over 100 million people worldwide have no shelter whatsoever, but homeless people in Vancouver have recently been offered a different type of roof.
The ultimate goal to fight homelessness is to help people get off the street and into permanent housing. There’s no overnight solution for this, however, so until that happens, RainCity Housing in Vancouver have provided innovative and instant emergency shelters.
The grassroots advocacy group worked with Spring Advertising in 2013 to design benches with a flip-top roof. They were constructed to help raise awareness of homelessness in the city. They also direct those sleeping rough to where more help and shelter is offered – the phone number and address for Raincity is displayed when the top is flipped up.
“We don’t know if they have been used by homeless folks, but probably,” said Bill Briscall from RainCity to The Telegraph. “In a park one block from my house I see people sleeping overnight almost every month throughout the year.”
These benches aren’t a house, or a home, and they’re certainly not a castle. But they’re a progressive step forward in making Vancouver citizens aware that the bench they’re sitting on during the day is someone’s bed and roof during the night.
