Tiny homes serve as a middle ground between permanent housing and congregate shelters in California.
Sign up for a weekly digest of reporting and analysis on one of the Golden State’s most pressing issues: inequality.Mia Salvaggio organizes her room at the DignityMoves tiny home village in downtown San Francisco on Oct. 3, 2023. The program provides interim supportive housing to individuals experiencing homelessness.
The site of Pizarro’s tiny home, on Guadalupe Parkway in the city’s downtown, opened in May as the newest of San Jose’s six sites that aim to fill the steps between traditional, congregate homeless shelters — think “room full of bunk beds and cubicles” — and an apartment of one’s own. Laundry and kitchen facilities Other elements that emphasize residents’ dignity, like the dog run and weekly community events.
In June, San Jose officials diverted $8 million of the city’s $137 million in homelessness and housing funding from developing affordable housing to running and building more tiny homes. putting 36% of the housing funds, which come from a 2020 property sales tax, toward temporary housing and 53% toward permanent housing for low- and middle-income households .
California has for the past decade been shifting its focus from temporary shelter towards building permanent supportive housing: affordable, long-term living options that come with social services.
“I’m very hyper and active, and I like to work because I know if I sit around, I’m going to fade away and I’m not ready for that yet,” she said. Rojo, a former janitor, said she’s recovering from leukemia and depression and working on getting her IDs after most of her documents were stolen. The more each tiny home feels like a real one, the more it costs — and the closer it inches to the “real housing” that advocates say is what actually solves homelessness. In San Jose, plumbing and utilities for the Guadalupe Parkway site drove the cost of each unit from $30,000 for the structure itself to more than $175,000.
She said she didn’t expect the controversy she sparked. A group of advocates pushed back on the bill, arguing that, as Alex Visotzky of the National Alliance to End Homelessness put it, “it blurred the line between housing and shelter.” Sharon Rapport of the Corporation for Supportive Housing pointed out that certain shelters already can bypass permitting restrictions.
“I am not a supporter of this type of housing becoming a substitute for permanent housing,” King said.
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