For the third year in a row, Kenzo Morris slept outside for three days in December to raise money for the soup kitchen where he volunteers. After suffering hypothermia during an early snow in December 2023, Morris created a new method of shelter this year, with hopes to stay warmer and pilot a new way to keep unhoused people warm during winter temperatures.

This year, Morris slept in what he calls the God Pod, a small, temporary shelter constructed from insulated garage doors. For the past two years, Morris slept in a tent made of sticks and a tarp during the fundraiser for the Helping Hands soup kitchen at the Real Life Church in downtown Laconia.

“I didn't realize ‘til later that I was actually really, severely hypothermic, and I was freezing,” Morris said of the 2023 sleepout. “Immediately, as I got out there, [snow] was penetrating my clothing, and I remember really freezing within the first hour and a half. My fingers were numb. I was shaking, and I'm like, ‘Oh, my God, dear God.’”

After those two years of suffering through exposure to the elements, Morris looked for a safer alternative.

He saw a story online about sleep pods in the city of Ulm, Germany, made of wood and steel. They acted as emergency homeless shelters to protect against the elements, including rain, frost and humidity. Morris also found a similar concept from a video on Facebook, depicting a similar, pod-like structure, made of recycled garage doors.

This is when the idea of the God Pod was created. Morris called friend Bill Higginbotham, who volunteers at the soup kitchen and owns his own construction company. The two of them worked together to bring the idea to reality.

“I was hopeful that we would be able to build it, but I was super excited when we got it,” Morris said.

The God Pod is made of donated garage doors from Laurent Overhead Door Systems of Laconia. The pod is 6 feet, 7 inches long, 4.5 feet wide, and about the same measurement in height, and painted white. The garage doors are made of insulated material, to help keep the heat in and the cold out. The pair also added wheels, attached a rope to pull it, and included a lock on the door from the inside.

They built it at Higginbotham’s home, who donated all construction materials. He said he wants to use his skills and expertise to give back to those who need help.

“God’s been really good to me. He’s blessed me in a lot of ways. He wants me to give back,” Higginbotham said. “He gave me the gift to build things, and I’m using my gift to give back.”

This first pod was a prototype. While Morris tested it for three days, the target audience is people experiencing homelessness, particularly those who come to the soup kitchen on Sundays. Morris and Higginbotham brought the pod to the church to gather feedback.

Some feedback included making it camouflage, adding a small table for eating and including a small heater. Darcy Thibaudeau is currently unsheltered and comes to the soup kitchen for meals. She, along with a couple others, went into the pod, and liked it. She liked the idea of having a secure, lockable shelter to protect her stuff.

Elizabeth Ellsworth said she was excited about the pod. While there are options for shelter in Laconia, there aren't enough for everyone in need, and people experiencing mental illness may not fare well in a shelter. Ellsworth said it’s not uncommon for people to die during the winter, and this is a potential solution.

“You get hopeless sometimes,” she said.

One motivation for Morris to build the pod was the loss of a friend in March 2024, following a tent fire. Morris was devastated to hear the news, and said he often came to the soup kitchen. He was a veteran who used a wheelchair, and Morris helped him when he came. He remembered a conversation with him, about the difficulty of having a disability and being unhoused.

“Sometimes, he'd be waiting there so he could be warm before we were serving,” he said.

“But one time, I was wheeling him down and got his meals, and he said, ‘It's one thing to be homeless, Kenzo, but it's another thing to be homeless and in a wheelchair.'”

According to the NH Coalition to End Homelessness 2024 year-end report, the number of people experiencing homelessness in the Granite State increased by 52.1% in its point-in-time count in 2023, more than any state in the country. The national count grew only 12%.

“I always feel it's better to live with compassion, because at any moment, any of us could be that person for whatever reason,” Morris said.

“We owe it to mankind and humanity to be kind, because that's what we would want as human beings. Someone to show us that kindness, and that thoughtfulness, too.”

Morris began his sleepout on Dec. 29, 2024, and finished on Dec. 31, 2024. Morris set the pod in a wooded area outside Serenity Stables in Belmont. The owner Jessica Carter said she met Morris when he stopped by to see the horses. The two connected about their efforts to help the community, like Carter's clothing drives. When she learned Morris was doing another sleepout, she invited him to do it on her property. Morris agreed.

“I realized what he was doing, and what he stands for is exactly the things I've been trying to do here for the past eight years,” Carter said.

The sleepout was a success. The three days were warmer than usual, with temperatures reaching the 50s. But the nights often dropped into the 30s. To keep warm, Morris used two heat sources. One was a candle in a jar filled with cooking grease. The heat rose into two terracotta plant pots with a small hole to absorb the heat and continue transferring some through a metal tube that releases into the pod. Morris said the contraption was slow but steady, and can last 72 days with enough grease.

The second heat source involved dry rocks put in a fire outside the pod for about an hour, then transferred into a cast iron pan inside the pod. Morris kept a written heat log, with two digital thermometers recording a low of 40 degrees and a high of 71 degrees.

He also used blankets to keep warm, prayed and listened to music on a handheld radio to pass the time.

But Morris said the pod was safer than a tent, particularly when it came to potential wildlife encounters.

“It's so much better than being out there, because you can feel the cold air. You can feel that chilliness that's coming in, that cold breeze. Where I didn't feel that in here,” he said. “It was just night, which was really nice. It was almost like there was a weight lifted.”

With the test a success, Morris intends to make more, and appeal to city government to use them. Richard Littlefield, a member of the Laconia Human Relations Committee and a former state representative, caught wind of the idea on social media, and liked it. He intends to bring Morris in front of the Human Relations Committee to make the case for the pods.

“We have a problem here with homelessness. And we have a lot of opponents, frankly, a lot more opponents of finding any way to house the homeless than we do proponents of a good idea,” Littlefield said. “And I think that these God Pods may be a really good direction to go, even though they're more of a primitive place for these people to be. It's a place for these people to be, nonetheless.”

There are some concerns regarding potential liability for the city, including potential drug use or medical emergencies in the pods. But Morris said these ignore the greater issue.

“That's not all who we serve. It is a part of some of the people that we serve. There are people that are mentally ill,” Morris said.

“We're talking about more than one group here that could benefit from it. Could it happen? It could happen anywhere. It's happening now.”

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