Anonymous Mad Houser volunteers build a new hut.

In 1987, Georgia Tech architecture students Mike Connor and Brian Finkel, visited an encampment of squatters by the railroad tracks on the northeast side of Atlanta. They found homeless people huddled in flimsy shacks made of scrap metal and plastic.

They organized a group of their fellow architecture students to come up with something better than those flimsy shacks. The group decided that rather go through months or years of seeking city permits, they would simply assemble some strong materials and construct a solid one-room hut that would keep out the wind and provide a measure of comfort. They designed and constructed this first hut in about eight hours and waited until night to install it anonymously where a homeless person could find it and move in. For the next huts, they first found someone who could use each one, and with that homeless person’s help, built the well hidden hut.

The students called themselves the “Mad Housers.” Within two years, 50 huts had sprung up in Atlanta, hidden on sites throughout the city. The huts not only provided shelter from the elements, but a sense of ownership and a safe place to store the few belongings each resident had. As Mad Houser Cabell Heyward explained it, “If a guy’s got a place to store a clean change of clothes and a razor, he’s got a chance to go get a job.”

The group built these huts on public property, without permission. One night, six police officers discovered the Mad Housers working on a hut near the Carter Library. Connor says the officers ordered them to “drop their wrenches.” The next day, however, an officer called one of the members and left a message saying the hut could stay.

As the group’s work got wide attention, the mayor of Atlanta said on national television that civil disobedience Mad Housers’ style was just fine with him.

Mike Connor says, “We’re not outlaws. The magnitude of this homeless problem is such that zoning and building codes are irrelevant. The good outweighs any law we might be breaking.”

People in other cities agree and have asked Mad Housers for advice on how to replicate the huts and the procedures for siting them.