By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
This is the third holiday season in which ‘homelessness’ and ‘crisis’ are spoken in the same breath.
Recently, a neighbor in my apartment building told me he was thinking about giving up his apartment for a used recreational vehicle to cut back on living expenses. Our rents were raised. Mine went up $115. My neighbor reasoned that, after paying some reasonable purchase price for the recreational vehicle, he’ll roll rent free, paying only the cost of gas, water and waste disposal.
I told him it sounds like a good idea, but to beware of the ordinances cracking down on campers and recreational vehicles. Driven by citizen complaints and legislative actions taken by Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino, local law enforcement agencies are ticketing and impounding such vehicles, and targeting their owners for warrant and compliance checks.
My neighbor’s suggestion brought to mind a friend, who does not live in a traditional dwelling. Instead, he owns several vehicles, including a camper and a large van. In recent months, he has been ticketed and had vehicles impounded while parked on streets without posted restrictions, making living on city streets just a little bit more uncomfortable.
That “tough love” approach, however, is the point. It’s certainly tough for homeless to have their property seized. They are forced to trek to a warehouse 26 miles away if they want items back. It’s just as tough to be casually harassed by Saving San Pedro anti-homeless activists.
Labeling a problem a “crisis” is a way to get government to mobilize resources in order to solve it. In November 2016 Los Angeles passed a $1 billion bond measure to build supportive housing, while the county passed a quarter cent sales tax to address homelessness. It’s not as if there weren’t resources already being directed to the crisis. It just wasn’t enough. But government is slow.
It took individuals wanting something done about homelessness to provoke whole communities and local governments to really wrestle with the crisis.
Elvis Summers’, the 40-year-old founder of the charity Starting Human, started with his neighbor who was without shelter, Irene McGhee. He produced a time-lapsed video of the creation of a tiny home that went viral on social media and has led to more than $84,000 in private donations on the crowdfunding website GoFundMe to fund more tiny shelters.
Summers act, inspired others in Los Angeles, including San Pedro, in which local advocates served the growing local homeless population.
Before 2015, the county’s homeless rate had been declining precipitously from more than 65,000 in 2005 to 39,414 people in 2011. The 2015 Los Angeles County Harbor Services Authority homeless count marked the second such count in which there was an uptick in the homeless population.
Summers worked with the Los Angeles Police Department to find a government-owned lot where more tiny houses could be built for the city’s homeless.
In the end, Summers built more than 40, 50-square-foot tiny homes on donated private property. He’s in the process of building 20 more. He inspired others across the city, including advocates in San Pedro.
But the reason the words “homelessness” and “crisis” are so often spoken in the same breath was that the uptick in homelessness goes hand-in-hand with gentrification and the general lack of affordable housing.
The Washington Post published an editorial by the chairwoman of Santa Clara’s history department, Nancy Ungur, in which she deconstructed the historic opposition to tiny homes. Spoiler alert, today’s tiny homes isn’t the first time this idea has come about. Ungur noted that following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake there was widespread homelessness.
Those resisting the tiny-house movement frequently cite fears that it will bring down the prices of existing homes.
“As a San Jose resident put it, ‘People are sympathetic toward the homeless, but to put this in an established neighborhood doesn’t make sense,’” Ungar said.
Ungur explained that San Franciso’s relief committee constructed 5,610 two- and three-room wood frame houses. These small, green, transportable “earthquake cottages” were placed in parks and on other public lands and made available under a lease system designed to culminate in ownership.
This almost immediately roused complaints from middle to upper class San Franciscans who complained that the camps deprived more deserving citizen of open space and enabled a class of people who didn’t want to be helped.
Ungur stated that then, like today, zoning rules and health scares were used to rid the city of the tiny cottages even as city leaders clucked about what shame homelessness had become.
Across the country, people, like Summers, aren’t just waiting for government — to help or hinder — but leading communities and local governments to act. Here are 10 such projects:
My Tiny House Project LA
My Tiny House Project LA is a nonprofit founded by South L.A. resident Elvis Summers.
What: More than 40, roughly 50-square-foot micro dwellings for the homeless housed on private property, equipped with rooftop solar panels, wheels and a portable camping toilet.
Cost: $100,000 raised via crowdfunding
Status: Twenty new tiny homes are being built on donated land and a mobile shower unit is under development.
Cass Community Tiny Homes in Detroit
Local organization Cass Community Social Services is focused on fighting poverty.
What: A two-block stretch of 250- to 400-square-foot fully equipped micro dwellings for the low-income population, including students, seniors and the formerly homeless; tenants pay rent of between $250 and $400 a month on a rent-to-own model.
Cost: $1.5 million, so far funded by donations from local companies and organizations, including a $400,000 contribution from Ford.
Status: The first tiny house opened in early September 2016, while the latest six houses were completed in May 2017. The goal is to build 25 homes in total as funding comes in.
A Tiny Home for Good in Syracuse, New York
What: A growing collection of 300-square-foot houses for people who have faced homelessness, focusing on U.S. veterans. Each house is built on vacant city lot and offers a living area, bed, kitchen, bathroom and access to a professional care manager; tenants pay rent on a sliding scale-based on income.
Cost: Each unit costs $28,500 and are primarily built with volunteer labor and donated supplies. The majority of the funding comes from private donations; the rest come from grant support and resident rent (30 percent of a resident’s monthly income).
Status: Five houses completed to date, four more broke ground in August and seven more are scheduled to break ground in 2018.
Infinity Village in Nashville, Tenn.
Who: Rev. Jeff Obafemi Carr of interfaith group Infinity Fellowship, in collaboration with Dwayne A. Jones, owner of a construction company in Memphis
What: Six colorful, 60-square-foot shelters for the homeless, housed at Nashville’s Green Street Church of Christ. Each unit can hold a murphy bed, mini-fridge, microwave, hybrid heating and air conditioning.
Cost: $50,000, raised on GoFundMe
Status: Fundraising to build out “Infinity Center,” a 4,300-square-foot community space geared towards youth and families. The Infinity Village project also served as a model for a similar development at Nashville’s Green Street Church, a project that received a $120,000 gift from the city.
Othello Village in Seattle
The city of Seattle in collaboration with nonprofit Low Income Housing Institute
What: The third city-authorized homeless encampment hosts 28, 96-square-foot tiny houses and 12 tents on platforms, which are intended as a short-term housing solution for up to 100 people. The village shares a kitchen, shower trailer, donation hut and security booth.
Cost: The city pays about $160,000 per year to supply water, garbage services and counseling onsite. Donations from individuals, foundations and other organizations have recently allowed all Othello Village tiny houses to install heat and electricity. Donations to Low Income Housing Institute also fund the materials for the tiny houses, which cost about $2,200 per house; construction is mostly courtesy of volunteers.
Status: In December 2016, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced three new homeless encampment sites, two will house up 60 to 70 people in up to 50 tiny houses, while the third will have the same capacity in tents.
Second Wind Cottages in Newfield, New York
What: Built on donated land, the village of 12 tiny houses so far house homeless men, who will pay rent “as they are able” for as long as they need. Each structure includes a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom.
Cost: About $15,000 per house, completely funded by donations from individuals, businesses, organizations and fundraising events.
Status: Working towards a total of 18 to 19 cottages, plus a larger common building on the site.
The Cottages at Hickory Crossing
The Cottages at Hickory Crossing in Dallas, Texas is host of social services organizations, spearheaded by the poverty-focused CitySquare.
What: Fifty roughly 400-square-foot cottages for the chronically homeless. Each dwelling offers a full kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, along with mental and medical health care onsite.
Cost: $6.8 million, $2.5 million of which came from the city and county; the rest of the money came from a foundation grant, private donors and local organizations.
Current status: All 50 homes are completed and occupied.
Community First! Village
Mobile Loaves & Fishes is a charity targeting homelessness in Austin, Texas.
What: A 27-acre master-planned village of tiny homes for the disabled, chronically homeless including 120 micro homes, 100 recreational vehicles and 20 “canvas-sided” homes (tents with concrete foundations). The village offers community amenities like places for worship, gardens, a medical facility, trails and an outdoor movie theater. Rent is in the range of $200 to $350.
Cost: $14.5 million privately funded. Each structure is privately sponsored.
Status: The village hosts about 130 residents and expects to reach full capacity of 250 people by mid-late 2018. Community First! was recently awarded a top prize in Engineering News Record’s residential/hospitality category.
Quixote Village in Olympia, Wash.
Panza is a non-profit comprising various faith communities.
What: A community of 30 tiny dwellings — each measuring 144 square feet — for the homeless, with a shared kitchen, dining area, living room, showers, laundry, offices and meeting space. The more than 2-acre site also includes a vegetable garden.
Cost: $3.05 million in total, at a rate of about $88,000 per unit taking into account donated land and services (detailed breakdown here). Funding came from a mix of state funding, community development grants, and donations from local organizations and individuals.
Status: The village is full, but the organizers are in the process of developing two more similar villages in Washington’s Pierce and Mason counties.
Dignity Village in Portland
Dignity Village is a city-sanctioned, self-governed community on city-owned land. What: A village for the homeless comprising 43 tiny dwellings built of recycled or reclaimed materials and equipped with a bed and propane heater. As dictated by the contract with the city, there’s a two-year maximum stay per person.
Cost: Yearly operating costs are roughly $28,000, covered by a $35 a month fee from each resident, as well as micro-business revenues and private donations.
Status: Founded in 2000, Dignity Village is the longest-running of its kind and continues to host up to 60 people per night.