I don’t have a bunch of extra money lying around to donate to the Red Cross right now, but it occurred to me that I do have two sofas, one of which is a pull-out bed. Being a single mom I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a strange man in the house, but I’d be willing to put up a displaced woman or two, (or a woman with a kid or something)…
So I called the Red Cross, but couldn’t get through. Called the Salvation Army, couldn’t get through. Looked around online, couldn’t really find any way to hook this up.
It occurs to me that there may be a lot of people in the same situation… they have the room to give someone a temporary place to stay, and ease the shelters a bit (not to mention, wouldn’t you rather stay in someone’s house than on a cot in a high school gym somewhere?) but have no way of connecting with those who need it.
After recently visiting a site that helps Atlanta people find carpool buddies for work commutes, I thought maybe setting up a website for Katrina “houseguests” might be a way to help. I just don’t really know the best way to go about dealing with the data. Set up a message board and let people offer their space publically? A database and then a lot of work for the person (me?) on the receiving end, sorting through it? I realize that most of the homeless people right now don’t exactly have internet access, but there are probably people who know of people who are homeless who could post on their behalf, and perhaps if I set the site up well enough, the shelters/RedCross/whoever could directly get involved with helping to place people.
What do you think? Could this work? Logistically, what would be the most logical way to do it?
I think it’s a good idea, although I can see why Red Cross or a similar organization may be hesitant to get involved. Should something end up missing, someone gets hurt or whatever, they might be liable. It’s stupid considering the devastation and the whole situation really. I hope you get it up and running, good luck.
The most important thing is to make sure that this actually does some good, and for that, you need to have some way of getting info from the homeless, and transporting them. That’s not my area of expertise, so here’s an idea on how to work this.
There’s an old math problem known as the stable marriage problem. In it, you’re given a set of men, a set of women, and enough information to judge the compatibility of any given man/woman pair. There’s a relatively simple algorithm to compute a stable set of pairings–that is, no pair of couples would be happier if they swapped partners. You could set up a database with the relevant info from each group and come up with a stable set of homeless/volunteer pairs. You’d then have to check and make sure that there were no unacceptable matchings (i.e., if you got a homeless man, that’d be bad).
So what you do is you have a website where volunteers can sign up with their information and what sort of folks they’d be willing to host. You also have an area where Red Cross/Salvation Army/etc. volunteers can put in info about the folks who need a place to stay. Every so often you run the stable marriage algorithm, come up with acceptable pairs, and forward that info to the charities.
Of course, this is just a half-baked idea that I came up with in about five minutes, so you might want input from others on whether this can work.
There are already at least a couple places where people needing housing can match up with those offering it. I know of one on LJ and one on Craigslist at the very least.
Cool Geobabe, I’ll post on those too. I just figured if there was a site dedicated just to that it might be easier to get some sort of attention to it.
At the very least I was thinking maybe a database to collect data about people willing to house refugees, and then send that as a list to FEMA, RedCross, Salvation Army, etc on a daily basis or something.
I don’t know about anyone’s politics, but moveon.org is sponsoring a site called http://www.hurricanehousing.org for people who are willing to open up their homes to refugees.
I think after setting it up, you could probably get some form of the media to at least mention it, so that people who can offer housing can go to the site. Then, by notifying the Red Cross/other relief organization, you can get the homeless people placed into it. Good luck!
Rascism is horrible, of course. But as my grandma used to say, “Beggers can’t be choosers.” A nice suddenly homeless Caucasion family should take up the offer.
I heard Al Sharpton call out to people to open their homes to the needy. He may have a site of his own that would be a clearing house for your generous offer.
Also, just as an FYI…a co-worker of mine sort of escaped before the storm hit (got as far as Lafayette) and when he found he could not return, ended up parking his RV on someone’s front lawn. I’m sure there are others that evac’d via RV. Anyone with space to park one would be doing some good as well. You would be less likely to endanger your own safety since they’ll have their own place to stay, and would just need a line to plug in. Just a thought.
Also there is the site http://www.nola.com/forums/homesavailable/ which has many offers on it bulletin board, but they aren’t as well organized as others, but being that it’s the home page of the Times - Picayune, it gets lots of locals.
You could send your list to the Red Cross to post in the bigger shelters, like Reunion Arena, or the Astrodome.
No offense.