In Los Angeles, the nation’s homelessness epidemic is playing out in broad relief. Criticized for an inability to visibly stem the local crisis, Los Angeles is now responding. Opening villages of tiny homes for people experiencing homelessness is part of a recent package of efforts gaining traction in the city.
The situation in Los Angeles is complex. Roughly 66,500 people experience homelessness here each day. Through a local sales tax passed in 2017, local shelters are now housing more than 17,000 people each night. And more than 13,000 new units of permanent housing have opened since 2019 or will soon. Yet, the tide of homelessness is overwhelming. While 207 people exit homelessness daily, 227 become newly homeless.
As part of a housing-first strategy, tiny homes represent a new County-legitimized way of visibly sheltering the community. Naysayers abound. A petition to stop a local project had nearly 800 signatures. But efforts to welcome the neighborhood into its design, its function, and into the village itself, are generating more local support than opposition.
An Unused Lot Next to a Freeway Is Now a Tiny Home Village
We visited an open house for a tiny home village in our neighborhood of Highland Park. Located northeast of downtown, the village was built at one of the many local parks that dot the Arroyo Seco Parkway (the nation’s first freeway) in Highland Park. These parks are home to hundreds of people experiencing homelessness, camped under the bridges and along the nearby Arroyo Seco riverbed channel.
Highland Park’s Tiny Home Village, located adjacent to the 110 Freeway.
This tiny home village is the seventh to open in Los Angeles County and the largest in the United States. The idea originated with the City of Los Angeles, which built the facilities using city funds at an estimated cost of $55,000 per bed. It is led by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that was tasked with rapidly creating housing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The village in Highland Park is operated by Hope of The Valley Rescue Mission, a non-profit homeless services organization that manages five other villages.
Like services that deliver medical care out on the street, the goal of the Highland Park village is to serve people where they are, bringing shelter and essential services to people within a 3-mile radius of the site. This keeps communities together rather than disrupting relationships.
Tiny Homes Aren’t New, But in Los Angeles They’re Now Legal
Tiny homes have deep roots. Utilitarian spaces like caves, igloos, yurts, and early frontier houses have all sheltered people from the elements. Living in a small space was most famously espoused by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 book, Walden; or Life in the Woods. And tiny home pioneers Lloyd Khan and Bob Easton, who published Shelter in 1973, launched a tiny home movement that is flourishing today.
But that tiny home movement is about choosing to live simply. Most unhoused residents don’t have this choice. However, this tiny home village concept builds on that history and fits the moment. And it presents an opportunity to help people transition out of homelessness. Los Angeles isn’t the only city experimenting with such homes for homeless residents. Similar programs have popped up in Minneapolis, Seattle, Albuquerque, and even London.
L.A.’s new tiny-homes-for-the-homeless renaissance isn’t the first time tiny homes have been made available to the homeless population of the city. In 2016, Elvis Summers started building small, solar-powered structures and placing them near homeless encampments in South Los Angeles. The response from homeless individuals was so positive that that Summers launched a GoFundme campaign to build even more small homes.
But area residents and city officials didn’t share Summers’s zeal. Locals saw the homes as eyesores and dens for illegal activity. Officials declared the small buildings safety hazards, classified them as “bulky items,” and had them all flagged for confiscation.
A Shelter and a Quilt, But You Can’t Escape the Freeway
As their name suggests, these homes, provided by Pallet, are quite tiny. Most of the homes on the site use the Shelter 64 model which is eight feet by eight feet with a nine-foot ceiling. Each home features a locking front door, four screened windows, and both a heater and air conditioner. Pallet also equipped every home with a smoke and carbon monoxide detector.
One of the tiny homes we saw at the Tiny Home Village open house.
Furnishing for each tiny home is minimal. There’s just enough space for two fold-up beds and a small shelving unit. Although most of the 117 homes have two beds, a few are more accessible for disabled residents. The village also features toilets and shower facilities and free laundry services. One nice bonus — each resident is gifted with a handmade quilt that’s theirs to keep even after they transition out.
During our visit, the noise of the passing cars on the 110 freeway was incessant, even through the thin noise barrier. Perhaps the constant sound of highway-speed traffic won’t bother individuals used to living on the street, but the question of lessened air quality that results from proximity to constant automobile exhaust remains.
Painted by the Community: Berries, Bees and Peace Symbols
In addition to being functional, these tiny homes also convey a sense of fun. Artist Zach “ZHC” Hsieh, host of the YouTube Original series Instant Influencer partnered with other Los Angeles-based artists and muralists to decorate the exterior of each home. The result is an uplifting and colorful series of berries, bees, hearts, peace symbols, and geometric shapes. And if that’s not enough to raise a person’s spirits, artists painted the inside of each door with inspirations such as “You Are Always Enough” and “Hope Starts Here”.
The tiny homes of Highland Park’s Tiny Home Village are decorated with fun, colorful designs.
Wrap Around Services Help Build Social Connections
Buildings painted with cheerful words may help fix “houselessness”. But they don’t solve the larger social challenge of homelessness, which some have aptly described as an “inadequate experience of connectedness.” Without addressing social isolation, the tiny homes project would likely fail. But building that connectedness is central to the mission of the village.
Ken Craft, founder, and CEO of Hope of the Valley told us that housing navigators work onsite with each person to house them permanently. Community partners, including the County Department of Mental Health, will deliver mental health and substance abuse services on site. A local community health center will provide medical services. And Hope of the Valley is building other local partnerships.
The community should also work to build relationships with the village, welcoming it to remain as open and visible as possible. Local neighborhood council members should invite tiny homes staff and residents to their meetings. This would give a voice and presence to the village after the media attention subsides. Local schools, libraries, and public officials might also consider organizing volunteers to serve the village.
The village is now part of the larger Highland Park community. And as Los Angeles works to address its homeless crisis, members of the housed and unhoused community may find common good around the mission of the tiny home village.
Gregory Stevens
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