Let’s start with a short story:

You go to the homeless-shelter after a day of panhandling on the side of an on-ramp. You just want a hot-shower and a safe place to sleep for the night….

Unfortunately, you’ve been homeless for months now, ever since you lost your line-cook job (to a robot), and your unemployment-benefits have run out.

Jobs are scarce, even in this big city. Your sister, who helped you out at first, can’t really help you out anymore now that her old room-mate has moved back in. You’re not proud of it, but you started a drinking habit to cope.

There’s no denying it. Things are pretty terrible right now.

Unfortunately, when you get there, the homeless-shelter is full. You aren’t the only one who lost his job to a bot, apparently. So, you go to a coffee-shop to stay warm, (until it closes, anyway), and you use the WiFi to surf the Internet on your smartphone (that you still use even though you can’t pay for service anymore, yay…sigh…).

You’re looking through a local-news website when you see this headline,

“Nonprofit Giving Out Shelters on Wheels to Area Homeless Tomorrow”.

You can’t believe it’s really true, but you bookmark the page; and, you plan to go see what this event is all about.

It’s the morning now. It’s not the first time you had to rought it like this, but you did it! You didn’t get much sleep on the park-bench, but you braved through another night on the streets. Congrats!

Now, you head to the place mentioned in the article. You get there when there is already a large crowd of homeless men and women (and reporters) waiting for the big-announcement.

You go up front, to the kiosks, and start filling-out a few forms. Minutes later, smiling volunteers wheel it up to you.

It’s your own little tiny shelter-on-wheels ( a kind of rickshaw-slash-tiny-RV) equipped with the basics (like a rudimentary composting-toilet, toiletries, an umbrella, dry foods, etc.) to help you weather-out life on the streets.

It’s no mansion, but after facing the harsh-reality of the street, you can see its value. You can’t believe it. They’re just giving this to you? And, you ask yourself… But, how?….