At -15C cold weather alerts are issued in Canada and homeless shelters and volunteers go into high gear.
No matter what workers do, some people are not able to come in from the cold. Shelters, no matter how well staffed just aren’t safe places for some who live on Canadian streets. At first glance this idea seemed pretentious, then I began to see it’s an idea which gives some control back to street people and will save some lives.
Mykolyn, the executive creative director of TAXI’s Toronto office, pitched the idea of a winter coat stuffed with used newspaper to keep homeless people warm.
The idea became a jacket design labeled 15 Below—the temperature at which cold weather alerts are issued.
The water-proof jacket has pockets in the hood, chest, back and arms which can be stuffed with crumpled newspapers, magazines and flyers to provide insulation. It folds easily to be worn as a backpack or used as a pillow.
“Unstuffed it serves as a windbreaker and raincoat,” Mykolyn says. “It is super functional, really well made and well designed.”
Some 80 jackets were distributed at a Salvation Army homeless shelter earlier this winter and TAXI plans to distribute a total of 3,000 across Canada this year when cold weather alerts are issued.
“They really thought through the issues which come to homelessness,” says Dion Oxford, director of the Gateway shelter where the jacket was launched. “Initially it sounded like a bit of a joke to us–but the more we thought of it, the more we realized that it was a very smart, practical and functional idea.”
Oxford and his team first met Mykolyn when he brought the prototype to Gateway for their feedback, and was greeted with an overwhelmingly positive response.
“Winter jackets are hard to come by,” Oxford says, “so brand new winter jackets especially designed for people on the streets bring me joy for sure.
“These coats are cool because they can be worn three seasons of the year. People on the street don’t have places to store things. So they will often wear a winter coat for the winter and then discard it, or wear it in the summer and become dangerously overheated.”
