Can Tiny Houses In People’s Backyards Help Alleviate The Homelessness Crisis?
Posted by haley.hughes | April 11, 2017
If you own a house in Portland, Oregon, the county government wants to make you a deal: It will build you a free tiny house for your backyard if you agree to let a homeless family live there for five years. After that, you can rent it to whoever you want.
“Like many large cities, we have a crisis when it comes to homelessness,” says Marc Jolin, director of A Home for Everyone, an initiative to prevent and end homelessness in the area that is helping fund the tiny homes. “We have at least a couple thousand people unsheltered on any given night, and a couple thousand more in shelters or transitional housing. We’ve done a lot to expand shelter capacity and expand support services, but where we struggle the most is around finding permanent housing options that are affordable for very low-income people.”
“WE DON’T WANT PEOPLE STAYING IN SHELTERS FOR TWO YEARS”
Portland and the county it sits in, Multnomah, have been working on the issue of homelessness for years. In 2016, the city committed to adding 650 new shelter beds to make a total of 1,240. A recently approved $258 million bond measure will fund 1,300 new units of affordable housing, but those units won’t be ready for at least two years. In the meantime, the county thinks that new backyard houses could be one way to help small families–such as a single mother and a child or two–get off the street.