Index Page       Background        Methodology     Data Collection         Data Manipulation        Spatial Analysis and Result        Problems

    Although, homeless people may not necessary "bad" people, but they are more vuluerable to crime, drug/alcohol addiction and illness; therefore, most general public are unwilling to build a homeless shelter in their neighborhood.  To avoid any unnecessary conflict, my project will classify the most concern issue as top priority such as school and parks area, commercial and residential areas and high population of young children and teenagers.  The second factor will then turn back to the homeless people on ease of public transit and high low income area.  It is true that it would be very difficult to find a best location, but I will try to find a more feasible and most needed area.

The four criteria I considered as the determined factor are:

• General land use pattern including residential, commercial, School and Parks areas
• Proximity to skytrain and major roads, i.e. public transit
• Socio-economic indicators such as income, unemployment and average rental amount
• Social indicators which included education level,  population of young children and teenagers

    The proximity to skytrain and major roads also act as a facts.   As mentioned before, one reason of those who being homelessness is poverty, so they usually access by walk or public transit to the shelters or any temporary works.  However, skytrain and major roads are also highly visible by general public, if the homeless shelter is too close to the public space, people would have a feeling of unsafe and unsecured.  To trade off the both concern, I add a buffer zone of 150 meters from skytrain and 150 meters from major roads to minimize the visibility of homeless shelter and a reasonable walking distance for homelessness.  Also see Spatial Analysis and Result (2)

   The third criteria is the factor on finding the possible highest population of homeless people.  Income and unemployment are two of the usable indicators.  I define a person who has less than $1000 per month as low income; also population with no income became the second factor on locating homeless people while the third factor is unemployment.  Unemployed does not mean homeless, but unemployed is one main reason of being homelessness and most homeless people are unemployed.  So in may analysis, I need to find the area with highest low income, without income and unemployed population.  In Addition, one extra factors that mentioned in the background section is high rental fee.  I will also use this factors to explain but it is a very weak argument because, high rental might be the reason for homelessness but not a factors on locating a homeless shelters. Also see Spatial Analysis and Result (2)  for detail analysis.

    The last social indicator is the population of young children and teenagers, and the education level.  The first two factors are more or less the same from the first criteria on school zone and park zone.  The more the young children and teenagers, the higher the resistance might get from the community.  The education level is to use for indicate the possible high population of homelessness.  Again, this is only a supporting indicator, it is not a "must" factor.  That means, low education level not necessary being a homelessness, but homelessness are usually in low education level. Analysis in Spatial Analysis and Result (3)