Strictly speaking, homelessness is not an architectural problem, it is a social problem. And Architecture is not about solving problems, anyway. Architecture can and has been used for that purpose—its buildings and affects can provide shelter and comfort, for example, but what makes those buildings and effects architecture has nothing to do with problems and solutions.
But when architecture is asked to engage with a problem of such importance as homelessness this expectation must be set aside. The homeless situation is so dire it would be practically immoral to focus the assessment of our efforts on their architectural quality rather than their effectiveness for the subject population. Yet this doesn’t mean the architectural intelligence cannot be brought to bear. In fact, the architectural intelligence is particularly well suited to sorting out and thinking through such wicked dilemmas, outside of any relationship to architecture proper. And even then it is not impossible to imagine that architecture results from the application of such thinking.
