Giving Compass' Take:

• Humble Design is a nonprofit organization in Detroit that uses human-centered design to build houses for recently homeless individuals. 

• How does Humble Design's approach make housing a more sustainable option for the formerly homeless? 

• Read the Giving Compass Homelessness Guide for donors. 

Detroit’s Humble Design, which remakes the living spaces of the recently homeless, shows the huge benefits of embracing people’s basic humanity when designing solutions to their problems.

Lamanda Brown had been living with her four children in a homeless shelter. The family’s social worker had managed to secure them a permanent place to live but it wasn’t until she became a client of Humble Design, a nonprofit interior design agency that works exclusively with the recently homeless, that Brown says she really found a home. Humble’s team worked with Brown to learn about her tastes, then shooed her out of the house where they, along with a handful of volunteers, entirely redid every detail of the home. They did all of this for free.

While Humble’s services may sound like a luxury, they’re having an impact few expected.

Michigan’s Department of Housing and Urban Development says that 47% of those that exit homelessness will return to it within several years. Of the more than 800 families Humble has served to date only 1% have become homeless again, according to Humble’s data. Admittedly, the agency is hand-selecting clients they believe can succeed, but 99% is still a spectacular success rate. And Humble is doing so by meeting their clients’ needs for beauty and self-expression–not typically seen as front and center in serving the homeless. Indeed, Humble’s approach runs counter to a good deal of prevailing wisdom about serving the homeless.

Read the full article about designing for the homeless by Jonah Sachs at Fast Company