Out of the Box Thinking to Solve Homelessness in the United States

Paul Polak’s Story about Solving the Issues of Poverty and Homelessness in America

Micro businesses, Employment, and Income for Homeless Individuals
Paul talks about creating micro businesses based on lockers for homeless and selling drugs (I’m not sure how that works in the case of the homeless population)

I think a business based on trades: painting, plumbing, electricity, carpentry, construction, land scaping could all help provide employment for homeless individuals while providing money for counseling, housing, education, and food.

Likewise a more technology based service could work too based around photography, photo editing, content creation, and outsourcing via elance. I don’t think this could scale as well as a business based on trades, but could be part of an overall homeless education and training offering.

Check out Paul Polak’s 12 Steps to practical problem solving:

1. Go where the action is. “Spend significant time with your customers. This is how you learn what they need,” he says. Not hours, days. Polak lived with his farmers for 6 months.
2. Interview at least 100 customers a year. You do it. Not an employee. Listen to what they have to say. “Too many entrepreneurs build the product they want to build — not the one that’s needed.”
3. Context matters. If your solution isn’t right for the context, for example, if it costs too much for the customers you’re trying to serve, you won’t succeed.
4. Think big. Act big.
5. Think like a child.
6. See and do the obvious. Others won’t, which is opportunity for you.
7. Leverage precedents. If somebody has already invented it, don’t do it again.
8. Scale. Your business must have potential to scale. Remember, your market must include at least 1 million customers.
9. Design to specific cost and price targets. Not the other way around. (Celeste: it means — Do not price to your design, design to the price you need to hit to make your product appropriate to your customer.).
10. Follow practical three-year plans. Two years is too short. Ten is too long.
11. Visit your customers again. And again. “Any successful business in this country is based on talking to your customers all the time. A good CEO spends half his time ‘in the field.’”
12. Stay positive. Don’t be distracted by what other people think.

This is a much longer video about Paul Polack’s practical problem solving method.

Helping the Homeless Resources
Survival Guide for the Homeless-an example of helping homeless individuals by highlighting local social services.