Spencer Gage: Tiny homes could solve homeless problem

Spokane is currently growing at a rapid rate, adding 20,293 members to our community from 2016 to 2017, according to worldpopulationreview.com, a site focused on the population of different communities around the world.

Although a growing community is beneficial to Spokane, there are many persistent problems that occur with growing cities all over the U.S., one of the most pressing being homelessness. On trips to Seattle, I’ve seen giant homeless camps all over town, and it makes areas of Seattle look uncared for. Spokane soon could be headed for the same fate, for I am starting to see more homeless on the streets, sleeping on sidewalks covered in blankets or in tents. It’s a common myth that many homeless people choose to live their life on the streets, but according to spokanecares.org, a website where people can volunteer and help those in need, only 6 percent of homeless people choose to be homeless. That means 94 percent, given the chance, would love to turn their life around, and a tiny-home community provides the perfect opportunity to do so.

One significant advantage of tiny homes is how simple and affordable they are to create and purchase. Housing the homeless can be expensive. Charterforcompassion.org states extremely low-income housing costs about $200,000 per unit. Tiny homes are much cheaper to build, the average cost being $23,000 to do it yourself, according to an article written by Erin Carlyle, a member of the Forbes staff focused on real estate. The average cost of buying a tiny home, according to an article on rd.com, is somewhere between $30,000 to $40,000. Therefore, combating homelessness with tiny homes is much more cost-effective than building low-income housing.

Another reason the tiny home is the perfect solution to homelessness is because they are, of course, “tiny.” This means residents have a lot less to clean, so it would require little maintenance to keep the house looking nice. Many people argue the size of a tiny home is problematic, for it can be difficult to fit lots of things in a tiny home, especially with many personal belongings and appliances, but according to thenewstribune.com, this is no big issue. The News Tribune did a report on a tiny home community in Olympia, Washington, known as the Quixote Village.

The Quixote village is located on 2.17 acres of land and has 30 tiny homes, of which all are occupied by chronically homeless adults. The tiny homes have a very basic structure, only being 144 square feet and having two rooms. All that’s inside is a bed, small closet, and a half-bathroom. The house has heating and electricity, plus a porch out front as an outside space. Then in the middle of all the tiny homes there is a shared community center where all the appliances are, such as a kitchen, laundry room, showers and mailboxes. There are also social services provided in the community center, where you can contact people to help with addiction or get mental health treatment. With a community center in a tiny-home village, the smaller size of tiny homes is not an issue.

The Quixote Village has been very successful, each tiny home costing $100,000 per unit when factoring in construction costs and the land purchased – still exponentially cheaper than the cost of low-income housing. The Quixote Village has been a model for other smaller tiny-home communities along the Puget Sound. For example, a community for veterans known as the Orting Village is being created in Pierce County, Washington.

A tiny home village would be perfect for Spokane, and according to past experiences, many people would rally around the ides of a tiny-home community. According to charterforcompassion.org, a village was proposed in Newfield, New York, and in only 100 days, they received around $100,000 in funding and hundreds of people volunteered to help with the construction. Homelessness in Spokane won’t cease unless something is done about it, and with support from many Spokane residents and spreading the word about a tiny-home community, homelessness could soon be ended in Spokane.