In response to a national crisis that has left more than 650,000 people homeless, 100 tiny house villages for the homeless have opened across the United States in the past five years.
That growth, from 34 in 2019 to 123 today, represents a quadrupling, according to data collected by Yetimoni Kpeebi, a researcher at Missouri State University. At least 43% of those villages are privately funded through donations from philanthropists, businesses and corporations, Kpeebi said.
Sobrato Philanthropies, led by billionaire Silicon Valley developer and philanthropist John Sobrato, and other groups such as James M. Cox The Valhalla and Michael Dell Foundations have helped fund tiny house communities in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and other expensive California cities. The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is a lead donor to a 51-acre tiny house community in Austin, Texas. And in rural North Carolina, the Oak Foundation supported the construction of a tiny house community for people with serious mental illness and the chronically homeless.
As ambitious as these efforts are, they serve only a fraction of the estimated homeless population. While tiny homes — which typically measure between 100 and 400 square feet and sometimes include a kitchen and bathroom — can be built quickly and cheaply, the larger tasks of obtaining permits, financing and approval from local authorities can add significant costs and delays.
Skeptics worry that building smaller homes won’t solve the bigger problem of a widespread lack of affordable housing.
At best, tiny houses are a short-term solution to the long-term problem of lack of housing and social services for low-income Americans, said Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco.
“I would say tiny houses are an absolutely important part of the ecosystem, but they are not housing,” Kushel said.
Small rural houses
In Chatham County, North Carolina, where the median home sale price is about $690,000, it took eight years to open a tiny-home community. Tiny Homes Village at the Farm at Penny Lane is the brainchild of Cross Disability Services, or XDS, a local health and wellness organization affiliated with the University of North Carolina that owns the 40-acre farm.
“We were providing all these expensive, high-quality services to people, but they don’t have a place to live. They don’t have anything permanent. And that’s a huge problem,” said Thava Mahadevan, executive director of XDS.
XDS wanted to create housing that would rent less than $400 a month and would be located on the farm. The UNC School of Social Work became a partner in 2016. The Oak Foundation, a longtime UNC funder, provided two grants totaling $1,050,000.
XDS’s first step was to ensure it could get county approval for zoning for the village and that there was adequate underlying infrastructure, such as county water lines connected to the farm’s well. Construction workers then began building the village in March 2020, but work was delayed by the pandemic.
The 15-home village, which will open to residents in the fall, will provide affordable housing for people with serious mental illness. Each home will be about 400 square feet and include a bathroom, kitchen, living room and porch. Medical and mental health services will be provided. And residents will be able to live in the homes indefinitely.
The county is now exploring how it can encourage developers to build additional low-cost housing for its population of about 79,000 as housing prices continue to climb, said Karen Howard, vice chairwoman of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners.
The skyrocketing cost of living is particularly hard on minimum-wage workers in rural areas like Chatham County. North Carolina has one of the highest eviction rates in the country, with more than 1 million households spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina have higher eviction rates than major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, according to a study by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.
West Coast Efforts
But nowhere is the housing and homelessness crisis as dire as in California, where more than 181,000 people are without permanent housing. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged to provide 1,200 tiny homes for that population. So far, only about 150 have been purchased and none have opened, CalMatters recently reported.
Charities have backed efforts to build the homes faster, often in partnership with local governments. Last year, the Sobrato Family Foundation announced it would lease a private two-acre plot of land in San Jose to build 75 tiny homes for $1 a year over the next decade. The 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 tiny home village and similar communities across the state.
“In our model, philanthropy funds the construction, and then the city is expected to pay for ongoing support services,” said Elizabeth Funk, CEO of Dignity Moves.
This type of temporary housing is relatively new and different from the types of group homeless shelters that cities typically fund, she said. In temporary housing, everyone has their own room and can stay for at least six months to two years rather than a night or two, Funk added.
Tiny house communities offer more stability and can be places where social services can be administered efficiently “because people are not in crisis mode,” she said.
California, Oregon and Washington are the states with the highest concentrations of tiny-home villages, according to data compiled by Missouri State University. Some communities have also tried to combat homelessness in more punitive ways. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, wants to impose fines and jail time on people found sleeping in public spaces and has filed a lawsuit against a court ruling blocking the policy. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in April and could issue a decision as early as this month.
Building tiny homes is better than penalizing people for living on the streets, but it’s not enough, said Jesse Rabinowitz, director of campaigns and communications at the National Homelessness Law Center.
“It’s a good thing that cities and states are taking steps to address the problem of people living outdoors. No one should be living outdoors, especially in the richest country in the world,” he said.
“I personally have mixed feelings about tiny houses,” he added. “It seems like a way to put people in temporary housing rather than provide them with affordable, permanent housing, which is what many homeless people want,” Rabinowitz said.
Funk chafes at criticism that tiny homes aren’t part of the “housing first” approach, which prioritizes permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness. Transitional housing is one step in that process, which is fundamentally about getting people off the streets and into shelter, she said.
“It’s 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 story. 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 of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.