IN A CLATTERING lot behind Benson Polytechnic High School, the future of Portland homeless camps is coming together piece by piece.
Two or three days a week, 100 of the school’s freshmen have been taking up saws and ladders, hammers and levels, and slowly building what teacher Tim Hryciw calls “basically finished garden sheds”—64 square feet, with two windows and a door.
For the school, it’s an engaging way of teaching geometry, clearly enjoyable to the 14-year-olds busying themselves around the lot on a recent Monday. For the City of Portland, it’s a way to tinker with how homeless camps will soon look in this city.
The four structures being built behind Benson today won’t just house homeless people when they’re completed in coming weeks. The city says they’ll also serve as prototypes for an untold number of similar structures going forward—”sleeping pods” that can be cheaply and quickly built for organized camps as Portland wrestles with a housing emergency.