The Mad Housers is a group of volunteers dedicated to building free shelters for the homeless. We believe that everyone has a right to a roof over their heads and a warm place to sleep at night. If a person has a secure and stable place to live, they are much more capable of finding the resources to help themselves.

The Mad Housers started in 1987 as a group of Georgia Tech architecture students. Seeing the impromptu cardboard and tarp shelters erected by Atlanta's homeless, they felt they could design structures that were safer and more secure. Aided by a network of supporters with pickup trucks and hammers, they were able to build and distribute small emergency shelters to Atlanta's homeless. Today, we continue their original mission as an all-volunteer charitable organization.

The City of Atlanta's homeless population currently faces two severe challenges. First, the number of beds provided in homeless shelters is dwindling as the city's homeless population continues to grow. And second, even if a homeless individual can find a bed at a shelter, the shelters often do not allow them to bring their personnel belongings with them. Therefore, if a homeless individual spends the night in a shelter they risk losing all of their personal belongings that are left outside on the street. Many of these belongings are items that are necessary for their livelihood, such as tools, clothes and paperwork.

Besides providing our clients with a warm and dry place to sleep, the Mad Housers' shelters offer our clients a secure lockable place for their personnel belongings. The Mad Housers achieve this by building sturdy huts measuring 6 feet wide, 8 feet deep and 10 feet tall. Each hut has a locking door for security, a loft for sleeping and storage, and a wood-burning stove, also built by volunteers, for both heating and cooking. The total cost of a hut is about $400 with all new materials -- much less with reclaimed and donated materials. By using panelized construction methods, we are able to easily construct, store, and transport the hut components to a remote site. A small team of volunteers can erect, paint, and roof a hut from panels in less than half a day. Our clients are not expected to contribute to the Mad Housers in any way, be it physically or financially. However, we often see our clients help build their own shelters as well as those of their neighbors.

In addition to our original hut design, referred to as the "full-height hut", we have recently introduced a new design known as the "Low Rider". The Low Rider is a shelter designed for spaces with poor cover. With a height of only 4', they are easily hidden in patches of overgrown weeds or kudzu, underneath trees, or even under abandoned bridges and overpasses.

The dimensions of a Low Rider are approximately 4' wide by 4' tall by 8' deep. They provide enough room for sitting and sleeping, but not for standing up. We also build a 4'x8' porch to increase the living area. Because Low Riders are so small, a storage unit is always constructed and delivered with the living unit. This 4'x4'x4' locking unit is placed near the Low Rider and provides our clients with additional space so they don't have to squeeze all of their belongings into their living space.

The demand for Low Riders has risen dramatically as Atlanta undergoes increased urban gentrification. Areas that once supported homeless camps are now being bought and developed for new construction. These industrial areas and poorer neighborhoods often provided abandoned and overgrown land that could support homeless campsites. We recognize that the development of these areas marks the growth of Atlanta's thriving, economically vibrant downtown. However, at the same time it pushes Atlanta's homeless population further into the fringes. This has necessitated not only the new Low Rider design, but a push to build huts in areas outside of metro Atlanta. A growing number of our huts, including Low Riders, are now located outside the city limits.

Our huts are not intended to be permanent housing. Instead, they are shelters that offer privacy, security, stability and protection from the elements. The completed shelters are given to our homeless clients free of charge, and replace our clients' previous makeshift shelters of tents, sleeping bags, tarps, and plywood lean-tos. We try to place huts at stable sites where our clients have camped out for some time with no trouble. In some cases the land owner is aware of their presence and lets them stay. Other times the ownership of the land is in dispute and homeless individuals remain there until the ownership is straightened out, which could be years or decades. Many of our clients have campsites on city property, interstitial property, and land next to interstates or abandoned railroads. The issue of land ownership is very delicate, so we always strive to build in areas where a hut is not likely to be torn down. The best campsites are ones that do have the owner's permission. In these cases, the land is looked after and the residents have a place to stay; it is a workable, stable situation for all involved.

Over the years, hundreds of clients have lived in our shelters at some point in time. Currently, our huts provide shelter for more than fifty homeless men and women across Atlanta. The majority of our clients are employed or semi-employed. Some are illiterate, or have mental disabilities or chemical dependencies which keep them from being employed. Some of our clients eventually move into apartments, low-income housing, or a friend or family member's home. In those cases, the client will pass their hut to a waiting friend or relative who is also homeless. On the other hand, other clients have continued to live in our shelters, some for over ten years.

We believe that regardless of why a person is homeless, whether by bad luck or bad decisions, there is no problem they can have that homelessness will help. The Mad Housers is not a cure, but rather a beginning.

Phone: 404-806-6233 (this number can be published)

Email: madhousers@madhousers.org (this email can be published)

Bio: The Mad Housers is a non-profit group dedicated to building shelters for the homeless. The group was originally started by Georgia Tech architecture students and has been in operation for over 20 years.