In response to a nationwide crisis that has left more than 650,000 people without shelter, 100 small villages for the homeless have opened in the United States over the past five years.
That increase, from just 34 in 2019 to 123 today, represents a quadrupling, according to data compiled by Yetimoni Kpeebi, a researcher at Missouri State University. At least 43% of these villages are privately funded through donations from philanthropists, businesses and corporations, Kpeebi said.
Sobrato Philanthropies, run by billionaire Silicon Valley developer and philanthropist John Sobrato, and other groups such as James M. Cox and Valhalla foundations have helped finance small villages in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and other expensive California cities. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is a major donor behind a 51-acre tiny home community in Austin, Texas. And in rural North Carolina, the Oak Foundation has supported the construction of a small home village for the severely mentally ill and chronically homeless.
As ambitious as these efforts are, they serve only a fraction of the estimated homeless population. While tiny houses – which are typically 100 to 400 square meters and sometimes include a kitchen and a bathroom – can be built quickly and cheaply, the larger tasks of securing permits, financing and local government approval can add huge costs and delays.
Skeptics worry that building tiny houses doesn’t solve the bigger problem, which is the widespread lack of affordable housing.
At best, tiny houses are a short-term solution to the country’s long-term issue of inadequate housing and social services for low-income Americans, said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Initiative on Homelessness and Housing at the University of California, Berkeley. in San Francisco.
“I would say tiny houses are an absolutely important part of the ecosystem, but they’re not housing,” Kushel said.
Small rural houses
In Chatham County, North Carolina — where the median sale price for a home is about $690,000 — it took eight years to open a tiny house community. The Tiny Homes Village at Penny Lane Farm was the brainchild of the local health and wellness nonprofit Cross Disability Services, or XDS, which is affiliated with the University of North Carolina and owns the 40-acre farm.
“We were providing all these expensive, great services to people, but they have nowhere to live. They have nothing permanent. And that’s a big problem,” said Thava Mahadevan, executive director of XDS.
XDS wanted to create housing that would cost less than $400 in monthly rent and be located on the farm. UNC’s School of Social Work partnered in 2016. The Oak Foundation, a longtime UNC funder, awarded two grants totaling $1,050,000.
XDS’s first move was to make sure it could get county zoning approval for the village and that it had adequate basic infrastructure, such as county water pipes connected to the farm’s well. Construction workers then broke ground for the village in March 2020, but work was delayed by the pandemic.
The 15-unit tiny home village, which will open to residents in the fall, will provide affordable housing for people with severe mental illness. Each house will be about 400 square meters with a bathroom, kitchen, living area and front porch. Medical and mental health services will be provided. And residents can live in the house indefinitely.
The county is now looking at how it can encourage developers to build additional low-cost housing options for its population of about 79,000 as housing prices continue to rise, said Karen Howard, vice chairwoman of the Chatham County board of commissioners.
High living costs have been especially hard on minimum wage workers in rural areas like Chatham County. North Carolina has one of the highest eviction rates in the nation, and more than 1 million of its families pay over 30% of their income on housing. Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina have higher eviction rates than big cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, according to research from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
West Coast Efforts
But nowhere is the housing and homelessness crisis more severe than in California, where more than 181,000 people are permanently homeless. Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom pledged to provide 1,200 tiny homes for this population. So far, only about 150 have been purchased and none have opened, CalMatters recently reported.
Philanthropy has supported efforts to build homes faster, usually in partnership with local governments. Last year, the Sobrato Family Foundation said it would lease two acres of private land in San Jose to build 75 tiny houses for $1 a year over the next decade. San Francisco-based nonprofit Dignity Moves is managing community development and providing social services, with support from the James M. Cox and Valhalla foundations. The nonprofit was also part of the team that developed San Francisco’s 70-unit Little Native Village and similar communities across the state.
“In our model, philanthropy pays for construction, and then the expectation is that the city pays for ongoing support services,” said Dignity Moves CEO Elizabeth Funk.
This type of temporary housing is fairly new and is different from the types of clustered homeless shelters that cities have typically funded, she said. With temporary housing, everyone has their own room and can stay for at least six months to two years instead of just a night or two, Funk added.
Tiny house communities offer more stability and can be places where social services can be administered effectively “because people are not in a state of crisis,” she said.
California, Oregon and Washington are the states with the highest concentration of small villages, according to data compiled by Missouri State University. Some communities have also tried to deal with homeless people in more punitive ways. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, wants to fine and jail people found sleeping in public spaces and launched a legal challenge to a court ruling blocking the policy. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in April and could issue a decision later this month.
Building tiny houses is better than penalizing people who live on the streets, but it’s not enough, said Jesse Rabinowitz, director of campaigns and communications at the National Homelessness Law Center.
“It’s great that cities and states are doing things to address the fact that people are living outdoors. “No one should live abroad, especially in the richest country in the world,” he said.
However, he said, “I’m personally conflicted about tiny houses.” It appears to be a way to get people into temporary housing instead of providing the more permanent affordable housing options that many homeless people want, Rabinowitz said.
Funk bristles at criticism that tiny houses are not part of a housing-first approach that prioritizes permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness. Temporary housing is one stage in that process, which is essentially about getting people off the streets and into housing, she said.
“It is true that this is not a long-term solution. It’s a waiting room,” Funk said. “It’s a dignified waiting room.”
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Stephanie Beasley is a senior writer at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all AP philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.