Designing Home for and with Young Adults Experiencing Homelessness in the Netherlands

The number of young adults experiencing homelessness in the Netherlands has increased significantly in the last decade. To address this issue, Dutch municipalities are urged to introduce housing first and innovate transitional housing solutions. This requires professionals in the built environment to develop new skills and a deeper understanding of youth's housing needs and aspirations for home. Drawing on the experience of a participatory design studio in which young designers worked closely with homeless youth and housing professionals to propose housing solutions and ignite discussions about meanings of home, in this paper, we discuss design strategies and engagement processes that develop empathy and the skills to design with and for youth In reflecting on housing design, students identified dignity as a salient quality of home inspiring their solutions, and utilized spatial integration and typological diversity to propose adequate housing, even when solutions were tied to constraints such as temporarily available building locations.