HomelessAction!

Nothing about us without us

Tiny House Communities

Tiny House Communities
Tiny House Village In The News
Tiny House Resources

Tiny House Communities

To Top

Tiny House Community News

Is This Coastal Tiny House Community the Ideal Lifestyle?
Tiny Tranquility is a Tiny House Community located on the central Oregon coast with full-time 38 Tiny Home residents. Also on the property is a community green house, living room, game room, large shared kitchen, and more! The beach is only 5 minutes away, and the community also offers unique nightly rentals, such as vintage trailers. [Read more] [Watch video]

Tiny House Nation
This is a series of video documentaries which is into its 4th season with 26 episodes. In “Tiny House Nation,” renovation experts and hosts, John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin, travel across America to show off ingenious small spaces and the inventive people who live in them, as well as help new families design and construct their own mini-dream home in a space no larger than 500 square feet. From a micro-apartment in New York City to a caboose car turned home in Montana to a micro-sized mobile home for road tripping – this is a series that celebrates the exploding movement of tiny homes. From pricey to budget friendly, “Tiny House Nation” is not a typical design show, but one that proves size doesn’t always matter – it’s creativity that counts. [Read and watch full episodes here]

San Diego Approves Region’s First Tiny Houses Law To Help Solve Housing Crisis
By David Garrick, The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 21, 2020

3 Innovations Helping the Homeless in Eugene, Oregon
By Mohamed Hassan Awad, The Conversation, April 17, 2020

Tiny House Villages in Seattle: An Efficient Response to Our Homelessness Crisis
By Sharon Lee, March 15, 2019

To Top

Sacramento Constructing $5.6M Tiny Home Community for Homeless
By Caleb Parke, Fox News, March 6, 2020

San Jose’s First Tiny Home Community for the Homeless Opens
By Ann Rubin, KTVU Fox 2, February, 27, 2020

Family Builds Their Own Personal Tiny Home Community!
By Off Grid News, February 14, 2020

Homeless Move Into Tiny Homes in East Bay
By Alexa Mae Asperin & will Tran, KRON4, February, 13, 2020

San Francisco Boat Designer Sets Sights on Tiny Houses for the Homeless
By Joe Rosato Jr, NBC Bay Area, February 12, 2020

Community Supported Shelters Quarterly eNewsletter
Issue #33 Winter 2020

Bay Area Homeless Taught to Design, Build Shelter Using Found Materials
By Andrea Nakano, KPIX5, January 24, 2020

San Jose, Caltrans Work Together To Set Up ‘Tiny Home’ Village For Homeless
By Len Ramirez, KPIX5, January, 21, 2020

Glencliff Church Builds Micro-Homes to Help Nashville’s Homeless
By Alexandria Adams, News4 Nashville, January 16, 2020

To Top

Tiny Homes for the Homeless? Portland and Beyond Experiment
By Molly Harbarger, The Oregonian, Updated May 17, 2019

Tiny Homes: A Movement Or A Solution To Homelessness?
By Susie Steimie, KPIX5, October 14, 2019

Sonoma County Tiny Home Village for Homeless veterans Expected to Open Next Month
By Hannah Beausang, Press Democrat, December 24, 2018

Mark Lakeman Helps Tackle the Housing Crisis with Creativity, Compassion
By Helen Hill, Street Roots, November 9, 2018

To Top

Tiny House Resources

Building Your Homelessness Strategy: Housing Types
Working with local stakeholders on a housing strategy for your city or county
is crucial. But first, it’s important to understand why people are experiencing homelessness.
Working with local stakeholders on a housing strategy for your city or county
is crucial. But first, it’s important to understand why people are experiencing homelessness. There are a number of factors that lead to people being unsheltered. It’s a myth homelessness is a choice – and important to understand how economic hardship impacts renters. Homelessness is not a personal failure. According to a recent study, “Communities where people spend more than 32 percent of their income on rent can expect a more rapid increase in homelessness.” Read More

  • Pallet – Pallet is a social purpose company which pursues social purpose goals to make the world a better place. “We’re building a company where we invest in people, not profits. A company helping to create a world where all people, in all circumstances, have the shelter that meets the needs of their families and communities. They provide job training, life training, and personal support.”
  • Homes 4 the Homeless – Homes 4 the Homeless is a certified 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2018 after founder Steve Schneider’s house was burned down in the Sonoma wildfires. Armed with a new appreciation of what it was like to lose a home, Steve embarked on a mission to help others left in similar positions. Since then more than 50 volunteers and a dozen organizations have jumped on board in service of Homes 4 the Homeless’s core mission: providing modular, affordable housing to all of those in need.
  • QuickHaven, Inc. – The QuickHaven Transitional Shelter offers comfort when and where it is needed.  It is built with metal framing, locking doors, operable windows, and standard residential insulation.  QuickHaven™ is a safe refuge. Pricing is targeted at $11,995.
  • Miguel Elliott – Living Earth Structures – Living Earth Structures is dedicated to creating earthen ovens, benches, and small huts using all locally sourced, natural materials, while building community in the process. 
  • American Tiny House Association – Too few legal places to live is the biggest problem in going tiny. It’s a source of difficulty and frustration for tiny house dwellers and lost financial opportunity for the businesses ready to serve them. Whether you already live tiny, or hope to one day, it just makes sense to work now to change the rules so that your preferred lifestyle will be a viable option in the place you want to live. ATHA volunteers across the country are helping craft the tiny friendly ordinances that your community needs too. Instead of reinventing the wheel, help support their work.

To Top

Information on Tiny Houses in Sonoma County

sonomacounty.ca.gov/PRMD/Regulations/Housing/Housing-Types/Tiny-Houses/

Many property owners are interested in using tiny houses or tiny homes to house themselves or to rent out. Small homes can provide much-needed cost-effective and energy-efficient housing, and can be a creative solution to the current housing crisis.

But before you buy a tiny house yourself, be sure that you ask the right questions. There is no industry standard definition of a tiny house. The term is used to describe a variety of dwelling types, and the permitting and inspection requirements differ for each type of tiny house. [Read more]

Big Skills Tiny Homes – Marin County, CA

https://bigskillstinyhomes.org

Big Skills Tiny Homes provides self-discovery, mentoring, and skill development to students interested in the trades. Through the process of building a tiny home from scratch to completion, students are exposed to a variety of trade disciplines and are empowered to identify their future career path. 

Press article by Kary Hess, Bohemian, July 8, 2020

SquareOne Villages – Eugene, OR

https://www.squareonevillages.org

Mission – Creating self-managed communities of cost-effective tiny homes for people with low-incomes in need of housing.

Guiding Principles

  • Bridging the Gap
  • Small Footprint
  • Community Building
  • Permanent Affordability
  • Collaborative Initiative

Since our founding in 2012, SquareOne Villages has developed three tiny home villages in Lane County, Oregon—Opportunity Village, Emerald Village, and Cottage Village—and more are in the works including the Co-op Revillaging Project, and others. We’ve also consulted with dozens of other groups looking to build a village in their own community. Through this journey, we have reimagined affordable housing—putting forth a Village Model for addressing homelessness at its root.

The website also has a wealth of information under Toolbox that would provide online resource for getting your village built.

YouTube Videos
– Emerald Village: A Dream of an Affordable Tiny House Community, February 13, 2019
– Opportunity Village: Tiny Houses as Homeless Shelters in Eugene, OR, February 2, 2019

To Top

Eden Village, Wilmington, NC

https://edenvillagewilmington.org

Scheduled to be available by 2021, Eden Village of Wilmington will be a 33-unit tiny home community specially designed to provide permanent homes for chronically homeless individuals including patients of the local hospital. Many patients of the medical center experience chronic illness, which are treatable but require consistent living circumstances to improve treatment results. A home is an essential component to long-term health care for these individuals and a proven, permanent solution to chronic homelessness.

Small House Society

smallhousesociety.net

Founded in 2002, theSmall House Society is a cooperatively managed organization dedicated to the promotion of smaller housing alternatives which can be more affordable and ecological.

Our desire is to support the research, development, and use of smaller living spaces that foster sustainable living for individuals, families, and communities worldwide.

To Top

Resident Owned Communities – ROC-USA

https://rocusa.org

ROC USA® is a non-profit social venture scaling resident ownership of manufactured home communities since 2008. Together with ROC USA® Network, a group of nine regional non-profit affiliates, and ROC USA® Capital, a CDFI lending subsidiary, we work with 250 resident-owned communities in 16 states.

ROC USA® was launched in May 2008 by national and regional nonprofits that joined together to serve one mission: To make quality resident ownership viable nationwide and to expand economic opportunities for homeowners in manufactured (mobile) home communities.

Three nonprofits – the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, Prosperity Now (then called Corporation for Enterprise Development) and Capital Impact Partners – each made equity investments and became Members of ROCUSA, LLC. The LLC structure is rare in the nonprofit structure. For ROC USA, it has meant strong and continuous support for our mission which simply isn’t always the case in less formal organization structures.

To Top

Low Income Housing Institute – Seattle, WA

https://lihi.org/about/

The Low Income Housing Institute develops, owns and operates housing for the benefit of low-income, homeless and formerly homeless people in Washington State; advocates for just housing policies at the local and national levels; and administers a range of supportive service programs to assist those we serve in maintaining stable housing and increasing their self-sufficiency.

Founded in 1991, LIHI has grown to be one of the most productive affordable housing developers in the Northwest. LIHI owns and/or manages over 2,200 housing units at 60 sites in six counties throughout the Puget Sound region. Eighty percent of LIHI housing is reserved for households earning less than 30 percent of the area median household income.

LIHI provides a variety of supportive services to help residents maintain their housing and develop self-sufficiency. Our efforts include providing residents with case management, life skills training, technology access and training, financial literacy training and savings programs, and activities for some of the more than 500 children in LIHI housing.

In partnership with the City of Seattle, faith communities, and building trade organizations throughout the State of Washington, the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) is one of the largest providers of tiny house village shelters in the nation, ensuring that people’s experience in homelessness is as safe, dignified, and brief as possible.

Tiny houses offer tremendous benefits over tents – they are safe, weatherproof, and lockable – and the communities that we help build allow residents to reclaim their dignity and get on a path to housing in a supportive village environment.

Each tiny house has electricity, overhead light and a heater.  Each tiny house village has kitchen and restroom facilities, onsite showers and laundry, a counseling office, and a welcome/security hut where donations of food, clothing, and hygiene items can be dropped off.

Movie about LIHI’s tiny house program:  Tiny Houses:  Big Future
Short film:“Women, Tiny Houses, and Locking Doors”

To Top

Quixote Communities – Olympia, WA

http://www.quixotecommunities.org

We provide permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness.  We create and manage tiny home villages that foster community, encourage personal growth, and promote access to the care and services residents need.

​Living at one of the villages isn’t like living in an apartment building or an ordinary neighborhood! Life centers around the community building, which holds a large kitchen, TV room, lounge area, two staff offices, and showers. As village residents meet and get to know one another, friendships are formed based on similar life experiences. Residents begin to trust and support each other through struggles and hardships and to share the joys and challenges of rebuilding their lives. With recovery comes a new focus on employment, additional education and resuming relationships with family and the larger community.  Village residents are responsible for their own cottages and share the cleaning and light maintenance of the community building and grounds. Their Village Life Committee team plans events and schedules chore rotations. Now we are bringing this self-supporting community model to villages for veterans in Orting and Shelton.

Quixote communities include – Quixote Village, Orting Veterans Village, and Shelton Veterans Village.

To Top

The Tiny House Project – Long Beach, CA

https://thetinyhouse.org

The mission is simple. Build emergency tiny house shelters for people who are homeless, ignored and forgotten. How can anyone have purpose in life if they don’t have a place to call home. It’s not big, in fact it’s small. But it’s a start. We simply help people. It’s time to start being better humans.

The Tiny House Project is a Non-Profit 501(c)(3) Corporation that builds Emergency Tiny House Shelters for the Houseless. While people who are houseless wait for affordable housing to be built, allowing them to wait in the gutter, especially without basic needs for human survival is wrong and inhumane.

Our mission is to bring people together and provide warm and safe Emergency Shelters for people who need shelter and provide a safe environment for them to get services and programs while they wait for affordable housing to be built. We MUST do better as a Whole Society if we want to survive and grow. 

To Top

Noah’s Community Village

https://www.noahscommunityvillage.org

Our vision is to restore hope for those experiencing chronic homelessness in Shasta County through community. It is our dream to build a community of permanent affordable, supportive housing that is nurturing and sustainable as a long-term solution.

News report – Tiny houses on BLM land? California group pitches plan to get ‘more and more people off the street’
By David Benda, Redding Record Searchlight, January 22, 2020

Second Wind Cottages – Newfield, NY

https://www.curbed.com/maps/tiny-houses-for-the-homeless-villages

The mission of Second Wind Cottages is to house and walk with people toward restored lives.

A not-for-profit organization that provides a place where homeless men can find a safe home in a beautiful setting with a supportive environment and they can learn the life skills necessary to reintegrate into society.  It is situated on 7 acres of land in Newfield, NY.  Each single-room cottage has a bathroom, kitchenette, and bed area.  Second Wind Cottages provides the time, space, and most importantly relationships to mend broken lives.

To Top

A Tiny Home for Good, Inc – Syracuse, NY

https://www.atinyhomeforgood.org

A Tiny Home for Good, Inc. supports those facing homelessness by providing affordable, safe, and dignified homes and fostering strong community partnership to ensure resident stability.

We build and manage affordable, safe and dignified housing for individuals facing homelessness in Syracuse, NY. We carefully research potential properties across Syracuse. We seek vacant city lots with zoning codes appropriate for building single-occupancy tiny homes. Each home is rented to one individual who has faced homelessness. Recently, we focus on support U.S. veterans. Rent is determined on a sliding scale, depending on the resident’s income.

Homes are 300 sqft and equipped with all the amenities of a regular sized home. We partner with local contractors and businesses to build from the ground up. Volunteers from around the community also lend a hand in construction efforts.

Each resident is connected with a professional care manager through a partnership with one of several care management organizations in the Syracuse area.

To Top

Tiny Homes Detroit – Detroit, MI

https://casscommunity.org/tinyhomes/

Cass Community Social Services is in the process of building 25 different Tiny Homes (250-400sf) in Detroit, MI. Each home will be on its own lot (roughly 30 x 100 feet) and everyone will be on a foundation. Most will have a front porch or rear deck to increase the living space. The residents will have a combination of experiences (formerly homeless people, senior citizens, college students and a few Cass staff members) but all will qualify as low-income. At first, the residents will rent the homes. Anyone who remains for seven years will be given the opportunity to own the home and property.

Tiny Homes Detroit are being built by both professional tradespeople (under the supervision of a general contractor) and volunteer teams who will manage the finishing jobs – tiling, drywalling, painting, gardening, building decks and erecting fences.

To Top

Infinity Village – Nashville, TN

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/AC.

Community First! Village – Austin, TX

https://mlf.org/community-first/

Community First! Village is a 51-acre master planned community that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. A development of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, this transformative residential program exists to love and serve our neighbors who have been living on the streets, while also empowering the surrounding community into a lifestyle of service with the homeless.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes is leading an unprecedented collaborative effort to mitigate homelessness in the city of Austin. This transformative community exists to care for and serve our friends who are coming out of chronic homelessness and yearn for a permanent place to call home. Phase 1 of the Village covers 27 acres and, once at full capacity, will be home to more than 200 formerly homeless men and women.

Cost: $50,000, raised on GoFundMe

Current 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 St. Church, a project that has received a $120,000 gift from the city.

To Top