Homeless Problem

[lilasianoreo]

I was just playing my game and then all of a sudden, like 20 people became homeless. I didn't destroy any houses or anything like that> I just went from having enough houses to just not. I built some more becasue it was going into winter and I didnt want my people to freeze to death but they didnt move into the houses. I have multiple houses that have nobody in them, but I still have like 20 people homeless. The number of homeless is always fluctuating as well as who is in what house. Has this happened to anyone else? Is there a fix to this? I am very confused as to why it is happening and how I could fix it. Thank you!

[ebrumby]

Not sure why it is doing this, but try building a Boarding House.

[maiden4meldin]

This has happened to me several times. usually it is because you have too many houses. don't do anything, it will resolve itself in a few months. By building too many houses, you will split up families, and they all try to fill the houses first. making them homeless temporarily. just check on your houses. if you have singles in them, then those families should come back together on their own. once you are down to one or two. choose no builders. even if you have buildings for them to do. you will have to "destroy" singletons in houses. and just wait till your population goes back to normal. building a boarding house won't help.

[Vrayna]

Sounds like a pathing or distance issue. People suddenly no longer being able to reach their house so turning homeless.

It could happen because you have accidentally blocked access to a house or group of houses. Or because a tree seedling is growing right in front of a bridge.

You might have a buggy square on the edge of the map that isn't correctly marked as unroutable, giving your people a "valid" path to the other side of a nearby river or stream. Once there though they won't see that square and will consider themselves as stranded on the other side, without a way to get back home, turning them homeless.
If that happens, a temporary fix is to put a bridge across any nearby stream or river. That bugged square is likely to cause issues later on though, especially if you get a fire in your town. People might see that bugged square as the nearest spot to get water from and send everyone on a long trek to the edge of the map while your town burns down. You're probably better off writing down the map seed as a "seed to avoid" and restarting on another map.

If you use CC or MegaMod or other mod with water-building and are building on a lake, make sure you have the building priority right: always starting from the shore and into the lake/river. Laborers/Builders can walk under water to access the construction site, but once the dock or building is up, they're stuck on it until a valid path to the shore is added.

If you use the old 1 year is 1 year mod, it touches what is seen as valid distances to find jobs/houses and has ben causing some issues for a while. You could have people walking too far and getting totally confused. Usually it'll ead your people to doing nothing at all, but it could potentially lead them to thinking their house no longer exists because they're too fat from it. If you have that mod, look for a more recent version in the workshop (it was redone, might have a slightly different name), or grab RealTimeAging from BanishedInfo.com instead.

[rkelly17]

Originally posted by Vrayna:

You might have a buggy square on the edge of the map that isn't correctly marked as unroutable, giving your people a "valid" path to the other side of a nearby river or stream. Once there though they won't see that square and will consider themselves as stranded on the other side, without a way to get back home, turning them homeless.
If that happens, a temporary fix is to put a bridge across any nearby stream or river. That bugged square is likely to cause issues later on though, especially if you get a fire in your town. People might see that bugged square as the nearest spot to get water from and send everyone on a long trek to the edge of the map while your town burns down. You're probably better off writing down the map seed as a "seed to avoid" and restarting on another map.

I have had maps where it was the act of trying to build a bridge across a creek which revealed this problem. If builders see it as possible to work on a bridge from both sides, they will do anything to get to the other side, even go to the edge of the map to go around a creek that ends (or appears to end) one square inside the border. They usually die. Builders and laborers collecting resources will go to locations from which they cannot get home. Then they show as homeless, freeze or starve, and die. I've also created homeless people by blocking paths, etc. Playing Banished involves a lot of learning from mistakes--often after making the same dumb mistake multiple times.