‘Mini Mansions’ Offer Portable Living Comforts For The Homeless
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
A roof, a bed, and hot meals you can whip up in your microwave are some of the things most take for granted, but luxuries for others. To that end, Canadian inventor Jason Harms has dreamed up a mobile setup that could turn these comforts into everyday essentials for people experiencing houselessness, wherever they go.
Compelled by the sight of too many people on the streets pushing around their belongings in single shopping carts, Harms dreamed up the Mini Mansion. Designed as a “home until home,” the solution starts out as a 40 x 40 x 40-inch plywood cube on heavy-duty rubber tires that can be rolled around by holding down its push handle.
Once they’ve found a suitable space, users can unfold the unit to utilize a table and chairs for two, a butane cooktop, bathroom facilities with a hot water shower, and a sleeping area accommodating two. The expanded Mini Mansion encompasses 50 square feet of floor space and has a ceiling height of 78 inches.
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
The Mini Mansion also features LED and solar motion lighting, a cooling fan, variable speed ventilation, a phone charging port, space for a computer, and “lots of storage” within the desk as well as on the roof.
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
The “home until home” gets its power from a 40-watt solar panel, 12-volt battery, and a 300-watt inverter.
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
In the summer, the device keeps owners cool and sheltered with its shade, electric cooling fan, ceiling ventilation fan, and a cold shower option. When winter arrives, its darker canopy brings warmth by trapping the sun’s rays.
Harms, who has experience working on housing for people with mental health conditions, home renovations, criminology, and law enforcement, believes the one-stop shelter can be assembled using found or recycled materials for CA$1,500 (US$1,113), while a more sophisticated construction can be set up for CA$3,000 (US$2,226), New Atlas reports.
The Mini Mansion is currently a working prototype, but the inventor is considering founding a nonprofit group to make the innovation accessible to the homeless community, be it through distribution or DIY workshops.
Video screenshot via Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, featured with permission
You can find out more about Harms’ work by heading over to his YouTube channel. To enquire about the Mini Mansion, you can reach out to him at [email protected].
[via New Atlas and Jason Jonker-Harms Concepts, video and screenshots featured with permission]
