Recycled Living: Let's Support Our Unhoused Neighbors

Hi everyone! This is an updated version of the GoFundMe from over 4 years ago. In that time, the values and mission of our organization have changed. It felt like time for an update that accurately represents this project.

We’re taking a step back to see what two extremely different issues; plastic pollution and houselessness, have in common. We’re asking if the consequence of an environmental issue could be utilized for issues more local.

Recycled Living aims to care for our city by turning wasted industrial plastic into recycled building materials to construct Safe Rest Villages for neighbors experiencing houselessness. We hope to offer support for people by creating a housing model that is more affordable, more livable, and environmentally sustainable. This volunteer project has been years in the making, and right now we are constructing our first home.

Oregon has the highest rate of chronic homelessness in the country. For Portlanders, the reason was clear. From 2020 to 2022 we saw rent increase by 42%, our city was rated the 4th fastest gentrifying city in the nation, and low-income housing began to disappear. The rising population of our neighbors living unsheltered had a clear root; housing. Simultaneously, plastic manufacturing has created a crisis. As a country, we add a football stadium worth of plastic to the landfill every 15 hours. The role plastic has in the climate crisis is largely determined by how we manage it. The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) calculates that this year, waste plastic will release 200 million tons of carbon (more than three times Oregon’s annual carbon emissions) from its end of life. This shows us that how plastic is managed after its production matters. If we ship, landfill, mismanage, and incinerate plastics across the world, not only does this pose environmental challenges but these processes also generate and release carbon into the atmosphere on an astronomical scale. We desperately need a new way to manage and utilize plastic. One unfortunate process happening right now is plastic incineration. Incinerating plastics is growing in our country and there’s even a large plastic incinerator in our state. The U.S. produced 5.9 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2015 from incinerating plastic alone which also releases some of the heaviest GHG known to exist. This type of waste management became popular in our country because of its false portrayal as a *solution* to our plastic waste. Even though burning a metric ton of plastic in an incinerator results in almost one ton of CO2 emissions. Incineration is merely the result of our efforts to address plastic while lacking adequate solutions to do so.

As Graham Forbes, a Plastics Leader at Greenpeace said: “Not only are plastics killing marine animals, endangering our health, and creating a global pollution crisis, they are contributing to catastrophic climate change.” In just 35 years, the amount of plastic waste generated worldwide is projected to triple. To recycle plastic into building materials is a message to the world that a better alternative exists. Expanding the limits of our recycling system, gives currently unrecyclable plastic a meaningful end to its life. By turning plastic into the catalyst for affordable construction of housing-communities, we can move plastic away from incinerators, landfills, natural environments, and international transport, and into building materials that can play a novel role in making housing solutions affordable in our city. We hope to be an example that there is still room for innovation within recycling.

Let’s talk about housing.

When we study housing and houselessness across America we begin to see patterns. Cities with significant poverty rates, such as Detroit and Philadelphia, exhibit comparatively lower rates of homelessness nationwide, whereas wealthy cities like San Francisco and Seattle grapple with some of the highest homelessness rates. Conversely, states that record the highest rates of drug overdose deaths like West Virginia, harbor relatively smaller homeless populations compared to other regions across the country. This aligns exactly with the statistics of our state. Oregon is not one of the top states in terms of substance abuse. Oregon is also not in the top ten when it comes to individuals unable to receive Mental Health Care Services. And yet Oregon is at the very top when it comes to chronic homelessness and families living unsheltered. These statistics show us that across America, houselessness always comes back to the issue of housing itself. Housing expenses are outpacing income growth. Within five years the average rent has increased 40%. Research indicates that a mere 10% uptick in rental costs correlates with a 13% surge in homelessness.

So plastics are rising. The temperature is rising. Rent is rising.

These are each big issues. So, we had to determine where, as a small volunteer-led organization, we could be most helpful.

Housing-first designs that support people living unhoused often utilize an affordable option for personal housing that a small nonprofit can afford to construct and operate. A Safe Rest Village is a community of tiny homes that provide shelter for people living without it. These places are amazing. Residents have an address, they have somewhere safe to live, a case worker is assigned to help them receive the support they need, they have storage for their belongings, somewhere to wash themselves and their clothes, have warm food, and be a part of a community. The model is built to meet the needs of people who are unsheltered and supply resources to help them reenter society.

Over the last year, we have worked with Cultivate Initiatives who operates and built a 50-person SRV named Menlo Park. This community moved 17 people into permanent housing in the month of May. As residents left these communities many left with an ID card they previously didn’t have, financial support for rent, access to workforce development programs, and career training.

When living unsheltered, mental health, addiction, and physical conditions are all expected to worsen. So, a housing-first solution, combats this, by providing someone with a home while they receive help.

The Safe Rest Village model has been a wholesome, community-supported route towards change. So we started to meet with the managers of these villages, organizations, the City Of Portland, and locals who have lived in transitional housing communities. It didn't take long for us to hear the same thing repeated. The method is working, but the homes and building materials that make up each village are starting to create issues.

A single 84 sq ft unit made of uninsulated walls cost the Menlo Park Village over $17,000. Each one of these units experienced humidity and moisture problems of such severity that smoke detectors filled to the brim with water. One unit was even demolished after mold growth made it unlivable. Portland’s Senior Policy Advisor; Skyler Brocker-Knapp told us that “No one has a housing model yet that works well enough to be used all over”.

The Safe Rest Village model became successful because free and affordable housing could be constructed by local nonprofits. Its goal was to be an efficient and cost-effective way to provide homes as opposed to large residential developments. The current bottleneck is in the structures themselves. If existing housing nonprofits and developments had access to an alternative material made from free recycled plastic, cost and labor would be drastically reduced while simultaneously creating a new avenue for recycling plastic waste. Safe Rest Villages would have a cheaper, sustainable, and more efficient way to build homes. If we can create a better housing design, we can radically support the nonprofits that run these Safe Rest Villages and the residents who live here.

So we find ourselves at the intersection of two community needs. One, to recycle plastic. And two, to build better homes more affordably and longer-lasting.

Recycled Living’s primary objective is to take plastic waste from corporations and use it to fabricate alternative building materials. Unlike a third-party company, we can design for the nonprofits and the residents in mind to make the home that they want.

This could transform Portland's severe affordable housing shortage and insufficient recycling system through one united solution, to benefit our neighbors and our environment.

We need solutions that build communities. The most exciting part of Recycled Living is the possibility of bringing Portland together to work on what matters.

As we’ve seen, there is no shortage of plastic. By recycling this plastic, we can lower the cost of construction. And by caring for the nonprofits and people in these transitional housing communities, we can create the designs that will help them succeed. We hope that we can supply our materials and designs to every Safe Rest Village in Portland so that they can continue their work and rely on the structures that make the housing communities possible.

For more info, check out our website or reach out to us: https://www.recycledliving.org/join-us