Editor’s note: This is the second story in a two-part series on solutions to homelessness. The first, “Shelter, services, support: Local governments along the Pacific Coast innovate to address the growing issue of homelessness,” ran on April 14.
When the COVID-19 shelter-at-home mandate went into place in March 2020, 5 Cities Homeless Coalition (5CHC) Executive Director Janna Nichols had one question: “Where will my people shelter at home?” South SLO County doesn’t have any homeless shelters.
SLO County Parks gave the coalition 10 spaces at the Coastal Dunes Campground to offer to people already in the organization’s case management program. Out of the 10 people who participated in the two-month program, Nichols said, most ended up finding permanent housing.
“That program really helped me see that if people weren’t swirling around trying to figure out where they were going to sleep at night, they had a better opportunity to focus on other things,” Nichols said.
With the lessons from this program in mind, the 5CHC is partnering with SLO County and the city of Grover Beach to implement a non-congregate shelter model on county-owned land in Grover Beach. The plan is to use modular cabins made by a Washington-based company called Pallet.
“When you first hear our company name, chances are wooden planks forged together might be one of the first images that come to mind,” Pallet’s website explained. “But unlike wooden shelters, ours are made of durable materials that won’t rot.”
In addition to a roof, Pallet shelters offer privacy: People have a space either all to themselves or shared with one roommate, a place to keep their belongings 24 hours a day, a bed, and a door that locks.
Tacoma was one of the earliest adopters. The city started its Pallet shelter program in 2017 and now has 58 of the structures.
“This site is their home for 24 hours a day: There’s no ‘out at this time and in at this time,’” said Megan Snow with the city of Tacoma. “When you are in a shelter situation where you have to vacate at 7 a.m., you have to leave with all of your stuff.”
The Pallet model gives unhoused people one less thing to worry about, and acts as a stepping stone for people who aren’t ready for permanent housing yet.
“When you don’t have a place that’s safe, you tend to lose some of those important governmental documents. You’re not ready for those reasons,” Snow said. “This is that intermediary step where caseworkers are on-site, they’re helping you get all your paperwork back in place, and while you’re doing that, you have a place where you can lock the door and your stuff is safe.”
Since starting in 2017, the Tacoma program has served more than 570 individuals, and about 20 to 30 percent of them have transitioned to permanent housing. Snow said that’s a higher rate than traditional congregate shelter models.
A bit closer to home, Good Samaritan Shelter in Santa Barbara County also implemented Pallet shelters, first in Isla Vista, and more recently in Lompoc. Brian Halterman, Good Sam’s director of homeless and housing programs in Lompoc, said the main goal of the Pallet program is to provide “a sheltering opportunity for clients or homeless individuals who typically would not enter the traditional, mainstream, congregate living facilities.”
“This option of having a smaller, personal area has been an opportunity for that,” Halterman continued. “We have one individual who I’ve known for almost 14 years. They took this option when they would have never considered a shelter before.”
Halterman talked about another client who dealt with extreme social anxiety, which stopped her from using congregate shelters in the past. But things have changed for her since coming into Lompoc’s Pallet shelter program.
“Over the past two weeks, numerous times she’s been over in the main shelter, sitting with groups of people, talking to them, which is something that wouldn’t have happened when she first came into the place,” Halterman said. “So [there’s] those little victories that you see.”
There are challenges that arise when dealing with a service-resistant population, Halterman said.
“The challenges have been helping them develop that trust that they’re going to be OK, that we can help them,” he said. “Even with the Pallets, there are policies and procedures that have to be followed, and for some, even with their own little living space, they just can’t.”
But the challenges, Halterman believes, are well outweighed by the success of the program.
“Without these Pallets, the 20-plus people we’ve been able to serve in the past six months would not have been served in a traditional setting,” he said. “They would still be out living homeless within our river bottoms and in dangerous positions.”
Building a community
In Oregon’s Lane County, the success of one nonprofit’s tiny-home shelters is measured both incrementally and by getting people in permanent housing.
“Successfully exiting our program would be a move to traditional permanent housing. Continued success within the program is getting along every day and achieving any number of goals. We want everybody to move towards permanent housing, but there are a lot of steps to that,” SquareOne Villages Coordinator Ian McBride said. “We don’t have a time limit on how long people can stay here as long as they’re meeting with the housing coordinator and working to get closer to housing, which can look so many different ways for different individuals.”
Currently, the nonprofit runs Opportunity Village—a 30-unit tiny-home village on an acre of land. Open since 2013, the village charges $35 per month from participants. It rests on city-owned land that’s leased to SquareOne for $1 every year. The shelter temporarily houses people while they get back on their feet before moving into more stable living situations. Residents can also transition to one of SquareOne’s handful of co-op housing facilities.
But SquareOne needed support from the community it serves and elected officials before it could move forward with the concept.
“One of the things we do really well is building political will,” said Amanda Dellinger, SquareOne’s community relations director. “In 2021, we received $2 million from the Oregon state Legislature to develop one of the villages we’re working on now. We just received another $3.3 million from advocacy work from one of our senators, $750,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act for some of our political relationships.”
The SquareOne tiny village is a popular idea among San Luis Obispo County’s homeless advocates. It was lauded at a tiny-village workshop organized by Hope’s Village in March. After years of studying model sustainable community villages, its founder Becky Jorgeson teamed up with Nevada City architect Charles Durrett in hopes of finally getting the ball rolling for SLO County’s first tiny village.
“It just takes political will. It will take the [SLO County] Board of Supervisors to say, ‘We need to take better care of the people.’ We don’t have homeless people in Europe because they all say, ‘It could be my brother.’ That’s what I want people to think here,” Jorgeson told the Sun.
Hope’s Village already has a site in mind for its planned village of 30 tiny houses: one of the SLO Social Services building’s unused parking lots at 3433 South Higuera St. It’s close to offices and grocery stores, isn’t surrounded by residential housing, and many homeless people already live in campsites nearby. Jorgeson said they’ve already vetted potential tiny-village residents.
“We have worked with them for five years at Saturday Showers,” a project description states. “We know who is on drugs, who drinks and who does not. We know who wants to work hard to get into and keep housing, and we know who is not ready yet. We will pick and choose very carefully who is offered admission. We know who the drug-pushers are, and they will not be welcome.”
Hope’s Village does have support, as evidenced by letters sent to the Board of Supervisors from Public Safety SLO and SLO County District Attorney Dan Dow.
But Jack Lahey, the director of homeless services at Community Action Partnership of SLO, questioned the viability of tiny homes—though he added that he supports it.
“My criticism is rooted in what HUD [Department of Housing and Urban Development] will fund and what they will not fund. If they find a way around that, then great,” he said. “If HUD is not recognizing it as an intervention, then they could potentially lose their homelessness status, which disallows them from other resources.”
Dellinger, from Lane County’s SquareOne, said the project doesn’t receive HUD dollars for its tiny village because HUD only defines something as housing if it includes plumbing. SquareOne’s tiny homes don’t come with individual bathrooms, but residents share a common bathhouse and an outdoor kitchen. Their projects are funded through grants and public donations.
Jorgeson, too, said she’s looking beyond HUD funding.
“We don’t ask for or want government funding because we think we can do a better job,” Jorgeson said. “I know everyone is working hard, but you just can’t throw government money at homelessness and expect it to improve.
“In the end, it’s not about housing but about community.”
New Times Staff Writers Malea Martin and Bulbul Rajagopal contributed to this story. Reach them through the editor at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 21-28, 2022.