May 3, 2023
"Twelve people who had been living on the streets of Seattle are now snug in 12 tiny houses tucked into backyards throughout Washington’s largest city."
"And each little dwelling is likely the most sustainable house on its block.
Solar arrays on the roofs of the homes provide more than enough power for heating, lighting and cooking, even in Seattle’s not-so-sunny climate. And all the materials and fittings — from the juniper wood for the exterior of the 230-square-foot structures to the induction cooktops in the kitchenettes — were chosen to meet the highest environmental standards.... Each Block home piggybacks on the homeowner’s water bills... and is hooked up to the grid via the homeowner’s account with the local utility.... The homes are built as permanent housing but are designed so they could be deconstructed and moved elsewhere. So far, all the structures have stayed put."
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84 comments:
12. wow.
12... problem solved.
Now - house the thousands of drug transients.
Twelve people in 12 houses. So, no families. No mothers with children.
The houses are sustainable, but are the tenants?
Those 12 homeowners must be really popular with their neighbors now.
Here's the 21st century grift: split the air bnb funds with your homeless backyard neighbor. You get some rent, they get drug money.
Sustainable environmental progress with supplements.
Twelve people. Problem solved then.
Paywall so I can't see if this is a program where you're forced to accept a few of these sheds in your backyard or more like an adopt an addict kind of thing. I ask because the guy who cuts my hair in South Carolina had to leave his home in San Diego because some addicts set up a tent encampment on his property under his bedroom window and he wasn't allowed to mess with them in any way. I guess it was the last straw when it was being implied he could be responsible for their welfare because they are living on his property...
Cute little toy houses. I'd happily live in one. They do absolutely nothing to address the problem of homelessness of course. It's no more than an architect's play project and a way for municipal planners to get their names in the news. I do believe that it should be much easier to build this sort of stuff in single family zoned neighborhoods. It would help relieve some of the pent up demand for housing, and lower prices. That's not what this is about though. Check back in a year or two and lets see what is left of these "sustainable" dwellings. If these are actual homeless people being housed, you can be certain that the solar panels and induction stoves will be long since traded for meth and fentanyl. The well meaning homeowners will have given up in frustration. Homelessness has little to do with lack of housing, and everything to do with drug use. I know, I am beating a dead horse pointing this out.
Snug and dry in their little tax-payer's havens, but inside, the virtue is about knee-deep and it smells like someone taking the piss.
...now snug in 12 tiny houses tucked into backyards throughout Washington’s largest city.
The words "snug" and "tucked" are meant to instill warm and fuzzy feelings among NYT readers, and to signal to NYT readers which side of the issue to be on.
And as we all know, the problem with the homeless is that they don't have homes.
12 people? Out of how many? And how much did each house cost? It's kind of a joke.
Who is paying for this? More to the point —since the shine will soon come off these little houses, as their occupants struggle to care for them— who will be paying for their maintenance and repair?
Is the city the landlord, and if so will it effectively supervise these tenants, charge and collect rent, and evict them if they fail to pay or start to wreck the dwellings? And that supervision will be needed: because by definition these tenants are coming from chaotic conditions, probably suffer more than the average level of dysfunction, lack “life skills” etc.
Come back, NYT, with a progress report in 6 months and again after a year or two.
How sustainable will these tiny houses prove to be in the face of homeless people being moved there rent-free? I suspect these homes will not be able to sustain themselves for long.
Cost? Toilet?
Juniper though? I know juniper as a large evergreen shrub. Big in some places but not enough for lumber.
"hooked up to the grid via the homeowner’s account with the local utility."
Sustainable.
On someone else's dime. A perfect distillation.
Analogous to the destruction, invisible to western eyes, caused to the earth by mining for the lithium, cobalt, and nickel that go into EV batteries
I hope these people are well vetted.
I am currently living in Santa Monica, really close to a. park. There are a lot of homeless people here, although not like Koreatown, DTLA, or Venice Beach.
The other day I was sitting on a bench, and one of the homeless guys came up to me and asked me for a hug. I told him I don't really hug. Then he started talking to the tree next to me. Then he sat down next to me, and I didn't want to be one of those people who just moves when a homeless person sits next to her. He was talking non stop, none of it made sense.
He started telling me how we are all one, and that he knew I had a heart and lungs,
Finally, he said "I know you aren't a monster because I can see your mouth slot"
I don't know, man. For me, I got up and left. I wasn't real comfortable with someone talking about my vital organs trying to decide if I was a monster or not. I wouldn't want him permanently sharing my yard.
Awwww...
Will NYT check back in 6 months?
And what is the cost per unit? I bet Clayton Homes could do it cheaper.
What's in it for the homeowner that owns the land the tiny houses have been placed?
If Madison would put a small house in my backyard such that I could charge rent and oversee a person living there, I might consider it. Not sure what would happen to my plants however.
I give it 1 month before the cracks in utopia start to show
My WA friends tell me one of the big problems with this garden shed living arrangement is there's no financial incentives for sanitation so the crap piles up- not just the green and white garbage bag but all the other accoutrements of homeless living and the shopping carts used to move them...
So, a Serious Question:
How Long? Before these 12 houses are reduced to torn out shells, full on trash and sh*t?
How Long? Before the fancy 'sustainable' equipment is sold for drug money?
How Long? Before the houses are just set on fire?
How Long?
How Long?
How Long?
"The homes are built as permanent housing but are designed so they could be deconstructed and moved elsewhere. So far, all the structures have stayed put."
And will be rendered un-usable in 10, 9, 8, . . .
Ah more happy happy fun time reporting on the little houses. Progressives absolutely love the idea of shoving us all into tiny environmentally sensitive tiny houses. Look how cute they are “piggybacking” on the host house! One may recall the halcyon days of olde when the media praised the forward (!) thinking Portland pols who took a hands-off policy to the tent villages popping up around town twenty years ago when homeless advocates said if we just give them a little space they could get their shit together and aren’t all those brightly colored REI tents kinda pretty!
What happens when a host home changes ownership? Is the new owner obligated to keep supplying the piggyback power? Free water? Does the property owner have any rights that offset this responsibility to maintain the property for the leeches er guests er piggybackers? Can the tiny house dweller invite friends to camp next to his tiny home? What about sewage and trash disposal and property taxes? Can the main house dweller claim the tiny house occupier as a dependent?
But we are in the mindless promotion phase in which every DNC-Media article will sing the happy happy fun times song about the tiny houses. Yay!
This is the future for all of us.
The 'regular' houses will soon be demolished and three more tiny homes will take their place.
Good for the planet, so STFU.
Can’t wait till the bums move back out to the streets where their hearts are. Hope they can trade those solar panels for a days drugs.
Let's check back on the condition of these structures in six months. (I could not access the NYT article, but I did not see the word 'toilet.')
Big or small, Seattle could indeed probably use some more trap houses.
>The architects decided against metal siding because of concerns about toxic runoff and instead selected juniper<
But, of course...
Twelve homes will do lot to help the homeless population in Seattle. One survey of the local homeless population puts their numbers at more than 13,000. [Feb 3, 2023, Seattle Times] That's 0.00923% of the solution to the homeless problem in Seattle. What a joke these wokes are.
How long before these structures no larger than jail cells end up trashed?
How do you get that approved by a homeowners association? Most don't even want you to keep a camper or boat in your driveway. Or, build a storage shed in your backyard. Can't imagine getting approval on a "tiny house".
But this is insane Portland.
How long until they start telling residents they HAVE to accept a tiny house in their back-yard, and a new government placed squatter on their land? I wouldn't put anything past Portland.
These "formerly homeless" individuals have massive challenges in their lives - many self-inflicted. However, the good news is their government provided tiny homes are "sustainable" - if they don't get destroyed by their occupants within six months.
What a failure of priorities.
There's a company called Boxabl that makes tiny prefab homes.
"Unpacks in an hour."
When Elon Musk was down in Texas with SpaceX, apparently he lived in one. Imagine a billionaire, renting a $50,000 house!
Sam Walton used to drive a beat-up pickup truck. I think Musk has him beat!
The persistant problem of homelessness has a lot to do with addiction and mental illness. Lack of housing is the effect of the problems. The cause is the mental illness and addiction. Economic homeless are easy to help, the addicted/ill are not. Plus there is the issue of many homeless do not want to be told what to do to live in a space.
Not so sure this is a great idea, even if the motives behind it are ultruistic. Like the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog, when you do something very nice, understand the nature of the person you are helping.
Sounds really keen. How many do you want in your back yard?
It's sad, but if there is a pool spot open for "disaster in six months" put me down for $20.
I'll go out on a limb and say that despite 40+ years of experience from people at Habitat zero was used to produce this project.
Ok, I just checked that with DuckDuck's search engine and can't find any reference to partnership or consultation. I'm a winner. We know who the losers are.
Imagine the kool aid drunk to put that in your backyard? Anyone want to bet the front yard has one or more of the following: BLM, Nobody is illegal, I believe in Science, ....
-XC
I can’t imagine that anything could go wrong or awry.
Mark said...
"How long before these structures no larger than jail cells end up trashed?"
It's the old 10,000 monkeys and 10,000 typewriters and a hundred years chestnut.
You'll never get a Shakespeare play. In about two weeks you'll get a room full of broken typewriters and dead monkeys.
It will take them less than a month to destroy their new homes.
BTW the energy efficiency of tiny houses is subject to the laws of physics. An energy-efficient design would minimize surface area (through which heat flows in or out) and it would maximize the interior volume (and number of occupants) being served by the heating/cooling investment. But what is a tiny house? It has minimal volume --room for 1-2 people-- and maximum surface area. Even with good weatherproofing it is a less efficient design. You'd be way better off, energy-wise, building a big box for lots of occupants.
They used to build those. They were called "apartment blocks." But I guess they're not cute and you can't feel very tucked-in when it's just another welfare mass housing project, even if it's been slathered with R-100 insulation and given triple-glazed argon-filled windows.
Sorry about that.
Expat(ish) said...
It's sad, but if there is a pool spot open for "disaster in six months" put me down for $20.
Expat(ish) is bolder (or rasher) than i am.. i WOULD NOT take that slot.. No Way! No HOW!.
Now, if there is a pool spot open for "disaster within six months" put me down for $2,000.
In Oakland, tiny homes have 'spontaneously combusted' or have been trashed. That said, I find the idea beneficial, say, for a mother w/child/ren.
'Piggybacks' on the homeowners' water bills? another warm & fuzzy word. How about 'parasite' or 'steals from' the homeowner?
there is a father daughter team of grifters, that are making(taking) the money off this
She, too, quit her job, and in 2017 formed Block Architects with her father to get their home-building idea off the ground. They convinced Facing Homelessness, which by then had its own staff and board of directors, to take the project on.
Today the organization has a prefabrication workshop where panels for the houses, which cost about $75,000 each to build..
really? COST? how much of that "COST" is profit? $10k $20k? $30k?
Facing Homelessness could shift into high gear and, with adequate funding, crank out 20 homes a year.
so? with "funding" they could be making what? More than you'd think, because..
it's hard to find property owners willing to dedicate their backyards to housing a formerly homeless individual
so, They'll accept your donations.. But they JUST WON'T BE ABLE to build many more houses
(the two grifters are on record as saying, that They'd NEVER have one it THEIR backyards.
So PLEASE! Donate to THE BLOCK PROJECT. The grifters need (well, WANT) your money
Let's put a few of these cute little houses in a few gated communities.
Let's put a few of these cute little houses in a few gated communities.
As a homeowner, the question arises, who is going to handle the maintenance and upkeep? Who is going to keep the solar panels working and the batteries replaced?
Typical liberal arts major thinking with apparently no thought to lifecycle.
"Antiliberal policy is a policy of capital consumption. It recommends that the present be more abundantly provided for at the expense of the future."
Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism
Good luck to any of those homeowners who decide to sell their property in the future. I guarantee removing those tiny houses will not be allowed by the local jurisdiction.
Also, 12 is like a spit in the bucket of the Seattle homeless problem, and the bucket is the size of a truck bed.
"And each little dwelling is likely the most sustainable house on its block."
Only a pessimist would fret that the left will someday float the idea of mandating tiny houses for all. I'm not a pessimist!
Warm fuzzy verbs? Check. Pie in the sky outlook preserved? Check. Value neutral verbs where needed? Check? Paywall to keep Deplorables from reading the facts buried in paragraph 41? Checkaroonie! Per cent chance of follow-up article taking a clear-eyed look at "how it's going now?" I'm out of zeroes to put to the right of the decimal before I even get to the one.
"Tiny Homes" have been a thing for a few decades now. But they have never caught on ... or at least I've never seen one ... for some reason. But proponents are still trying.
TinyHouse
1. The physics are wrong -- surface to volume ratio makes them expensive to heat/cool on a per square foot basis.
2. The cost is high -- again on a per square foot basis.
When colleges and universities were concerned about housing costs they built dormitories.
"since the shine will soon come off these little houses, as their occupants struggle to care for them"
You jest, of course. Their occupants will never do a single thing to care for them.
I will be interested to see what things are like in 12 months. Though I suspect the 12 homeless people are anything but representative. Both for humanitarian and publicity reasons, the proponents will choose the 12 most likely to succeed that they can get.
They treat illegal aliens with better accommodation.
When black people needed housing the Feds built huge 2000-unit "projects" in many major cities and subsidized rent. When white people are homeless by the thousands they build a dozen tiny houses and keep them all separated from each other. (Wouldn't want them forming a tenants' association or anything.)
Maybe the white population of Portland should file a disparate impact suit. As I recall the black tenants got to continue drug dealing and gang banging even in the projects. Disparate treatment indeed!
Sustainable? I maintained a home for 21 years that I sold last fall for almost exactly 2x what I paid for it. What do you think these tiny houses will be worth in 21 years? In 2 years? In 2 months?
Sustainable, right.
Link to local Real Change article, in which the project is called an "astonishing success".
https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2023/04/26/block-block-backyard-cottage-program-homeless-people-boasts-astonishing-success-rate-so
"Juniper though? I know juniper as a large evergreen shrub."
Western Juniper is a tree with 2-3 foot diameter trunks. It grows like a weed in Oregon, and is used for construction lumber, fencing, etc.
Western Juniper
Tiny Houses
Dear landlord
Please don’t dismiss my case
I’m not about to argue
I’m not about to move to no other place
Now, each of us has his own special gift
And you know this was meant to be true
I expect this experiment will fail. OTOH, there is no single, overarching solution to the problem, so you have to try different options. Perhaps you can find a dozen people who are homeless and responsible enough to make it work. I'm impressed that they were able to get twelve homeowners to agree to the proposal!
Well Seattle (Washington state), like a lot of big, blue cities actually pays the homeless population a certain amount of money each month. Contrary to expectations, this actually draws more homeless folks to the area. They get to camp out for no rent, they get fed, and have money to buy drugs and party - which if you actually go ask them, they will tell you that is what they do.
The tiny house bit makes the 'progressives' feel better about themselves and keeps the state and federal money flowing into the local homeless industrial complex. And just like the military industrial complex, it is all about making money off the tax payer without returning much. There is a lot of money flowing into the groups 'helping' to solve the problem. They get rich, yet the problem persists.
Interesting.
Wonder how much of the building code they waived to build these tiny houses. I researched building one as a vacation home and gave up under an avalanche of local ordinances. Maybe if I was a homeless addict i would have made out better.
I knew a woman who was raped as a young teen by a homeless guy given shelter by a neighbor. Tiny houses don't solve people problems.
Yes In My Backyard?
Wow. Changing zoning and regulations helps homelessness. Who knew?
The main causes of homelessness are drug addiction and mental illness, often both. Lack of money and a physical lack of shelter are relatively minor problems; the large majority of homeless persons can get shelter if they only ask for it. Not a lot of homeowners want a drug addled crazy person living adjacent. I suppose they could have found a dozen good candidates for which this does some good, but it is not a homelessness solution except at the very fringes of the problem.
The idea that the solar panels provide more than enough electricity is pure fiction, unless something has changed. Typically, solar panel electricity goes right into the power grid so it is not powering the house directly, and often the utility does not even want this extra power and has to unload it at a loss.
Let me also add that solar panels literally cannot power a house all day. When the sun goes down, those solar panels are producing nothing. So even if the power was being directed into the house directly, which it is not, it would be insufficient. It does produce power during the day, typically when it is least needed, assuming it is not cloudy or raining, which never happens in Seattle, I'm sure.
But the architects don’t have these houses in their own backyards.
“Mr. Hohlbein said his yard isn’t large enough, for example, and Ms. LaFreniere and her husband, who have a growing family, do not plan to stay in their current house for long.)”
Hmmmm
California has made it much easier for homeowners to put up an ADU (cottage) in their backyards. In my area, most are used for relatives or for an employed person able to pay market-rate rent.
We have lots of low-wage workers sleeping in cars and campers (or their cousins' garages) because rents are so high. Expanding the housing stock could help them. But nobody wants a mentally ill and/or addicted person living in their back yard.
Let's see an honest update in a year or two. We won't, of course. The "homeless" are crazies or addicts. Neither wants a normal home.
"It takes time to find property owners willing to dedicate their backyards to housing a formerly homeless individual. Not every property is big enough. (Mr. Hohlbein said his yard isn’t large enough, for example, and Ms. LaFreniere and her husband, who have a growing family, do not plan to stay in their current house for long.)" (The organizers of effort)
"Once a host is found, people from across the city pitch in, digging the foundation and assembling the house, or contributing landscaping, or helping pay for a welcome kit of essentials, including a mattress, bed linens, towels, trash bags and toothpaste. Hosts typically assume the modest monthly utility costs of a Block home, usually around $30. Each Block home piggybacks on the homeowner’s water bills, for instance, and is hooked up to the grid via the homeowner’s account with the local utility.
The residents, who have been referred by social workers, live rent-free and are connected to a network of support services to ease the transition and help them process whatever trauma they have been through."
Pushback:
https://bronx.news12.com/tarrytown-residents-fight-back-against-plan-to-allow-accessory-dwelling-units
Way back in the late 1980s I was a Ga Tech postdoc in Atlanta. The architecture students there decided to perform "guerilla housing" by taking dumpster scraps from construction sites and building really small shelters for the homeless in the rampant kudzu all over the place. They built solid, dry, lockable boxes the size of a tent, but made from wood & OSB & shingles. They told no one, and let the homeless find and use the safe, secure, hidden "homes" without any oversight.
The homeless loved them. The city tore them down with a rapidity not often seen from city workers. Go figure.
The scary thing for us on this was how they were talking about such possibilities here in Metro Portland, OR.
In characteristic Oregon Leftie fashion, they were talking about rezoning on properties with a bit of land for extra tiny homes, and/but essentially confiscating the use of the extra area to build the homes and house homeless and there would not be recourse. We have a third of an acre on a little creek very conveniently located. we could fit a good five tiny houses headed down the long yard to the water.
Dr. Zhivago came to mind.
This was just before Covid, haha, where Oregon championed an amazing display of Authoritarian Micro-Policing on every citizen. Oregon politics are lost in the Democrat Machine.
I could see them launching this tiny homes business again with new Police State gusto down the line.
Single room occupancy transient housing with shared bathroom facilities like college dorms are illegal for the homeless. Living in sheds hooked up to the homeowner's utilities is legal. Makes very little sense.
We spent one night in a tiny house - a bnb- and never, ever again. The vertical ladder to the bed was a deal-and- neck breaker. Of course, given enough drugs, one could fly up and down.
I was taking photos downtown, on a block with a lot of junkies, (fentanyl=skittering and staring zombies). There was a flyer on a bus stop for ‘meet your city council member’. City council members have a lot of power. A smiling, posing fella with rainbow suspenders not out of his twenties with quotes about ‘sheltering all bodies’ and ‘bringing climate justice’ blah blah blah.
Oh my aching back! This problem will never be resolved as long as we refuse to identify it correctly. "Homelessness" is not the problem. Mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction are the problems. Homelessness is just the consequence.
Typical progressive feel-good crap.
The neighbors must be thrilled.
Two architects start a nonprofit that solicits donations and massive, massive volunteer help say they lack the capacity to produce more than what are essentially 20 tiny sheds in a year, and they haven't even done close to that yet in four years?
I had two aging carpenters build something four times that size that could efficiently house two people with minor finishing build-out. It took a little more than a week and about eight thousand dollars, pre-building materials inflation. Another 10K would make it residential and of better quality than the houses here suggest.
The Facing Homelessness/ Block Project is quite late reporting its taxes. In 2016, the dad's art project pulled in 260K, out of which he paid himself 130K and spent 59K on project services, which was probably to pay others for websites and fundraising and maybe pay himself office rent. Their latest 990, from 2019, pulled in $1,759,000 and boasts 500 volunteers. They have a huge fabrication factory. That year they spent $722,000 on programs and the rest on the nonprofit. Clearly they built no housing, but dad's art project is folded into their finances. Dad and daughter paid themselves 78K and 72K salaries in 2019, but there is an additional $323K in "architectural services." Paid to the daughter's firm.
All to *potentially* build up to 20 mini-sheds a year. Even worse, four years later, they say they finally have the capacity to build 20 a year but have only built 15 to date. Since their fundraising was exploding even four years ago, I guesstimate they have spent at least $8 million. To build 15 sheds total so far, built by volunteers. That's $533,333 per shed.
Welcome to the wonderful world of nonprofits.
mikee: I remember those shacks.
They dumped dangerous, unstable druggies in poor neighborhoods that didn't need more of the same. Sorry, but that was a bullshit move to pull on poor communities. If the GA Tech students wanted to "house" the homeless, they should have snuck them into their own dorm rooms.
And on the other side, the sleazy homeless coalition run by a pedophile weren't going to let anyone "house" the homeless without manufacturing the infrastructure of their organizations to get the profits from federal grants and city money.
My taxes. Which also subsidized Georgia Tech.
Idiocy all around.
"The main causes of homelessness are drug addiction and mental illness, often both. Lack of money and a physical lack of shelter are relatively minor problems; the large majority of homeless persons can get shelter if they only ask for it."
You're being rather glib.
In NYC, one of the reasons (perhaps the main reason) many homeless persons choose to sleep where they can in the streets, subways, etc., is that the homeless shelters, currently seeing record levels of occupants, are often dangerous and violent. and what meager possessions some of them may have may be stolen from them. Most homeless persons are not criminals or violent, but those who are find easy prey in the shelters.
(I can't speak about the levels of safety or danger at homeless facilities outside NYC.)
"Today the organization has a prefabrication workshop where panels for the houses, which cost about $75,000 each to build..
really? COST? how much of that "COST" is profit? $10k $20k? $30k?"
Most of it. Out of 75,000 I bet 70% is profit. Go price the materials yourself at Home Depot. Better yet price garden sheds. Now consider that these shacks are prefabbed someplace to save even more. The foundations are cinder blocks. The grift is in.
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