Photo by Boston Photographer Erik Jacobs
The 24-square-foot house pictured is named the Gypsy Junkard. It's the largest of Derek Diedricksen's tiny house designs. Diedricksen has always been fascinated with tiny architecture, and once challenging himself to build a homeless shelter for less than $100. He accomplished that by using scavenged and recycled materials -and imagination. The four tiny structures he built in his backyard cost an average of $200 each in materials. Outside of his building hobby, Diedricksen is a building inspector who lives with his family of four in a 950-foot house. A fixer-upper, of course. Read more, and see his other constructions, at the New York Times. Link
(Image credit: Erik Jacobs/The New York Times)
I love the ideas (see inhabitat.com) but this is about as practical as a cardboard refrigerator box...
They're SHACKS.
http://www.treehugger.com/japanese-homeless.jpg
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/55603/55603,1190159288,2/stock-photo-homeless-people-apos-s-shelters-along-the-sumida-river-in-tokyo-japan-5487439.jpg
I don't think this concept would be successful in the West though.
Many USA citizens never had access to employer-provided pensions and as the years sped by even more jobs scrapped pensions and said "tough luck."
Of course, the presence of multi-millions of illegal aliens competing economically in so many ways harmed us while assisting the tightwadness of employers.