The city of Los Angles has teamed up with Pacoima nonprofit Hope of the Valley to address a big problem with a small solution.A tiny home village containing 75 interim beds for unhoused people opened earlier this month on Chandler Street in North Hollywood, between Colfax Avenue and Tujunga Avenue. The half-acre lot holds 35 structures of 64 square feet, each containing two beds, a desk, heat and air conditioning and a locking front door.
It is the first of five such developments slated to pop up throughout the Valley region this spring. Hope of the Valley will manage the city-funded developments once they open and provide long-term case management services to occupants.The Chandler Street location is one of three planned for Council District 2, represented by Councilmember Paul Krekorian. Others will open in April at the corner of Saticoy Street and the 170 Freeway and in Alexandria Park on Victory Boulevard, near the Wells Fargo tower. The Alexandria Park village will be the largest tiny-home community in California, with 200 beds in 103 units. Hope of the Valley Chief Executive Ken Craft said once all three are open, the district will have enough beds for every constituent experiencing homelessness on a given night.
Two other villages will stand up in Bob Blumenfield’s Council District 3, in Tarzana and Reseda.
“The cabin community model of bridge housing is a vital new addition to the city’s solutions to homelessness,” Krekorian said in an email to the Business Journal. “Often, congregate shelter is not an option for a homeless couple or a parent with an adult child. These cabins provide safe and private shelter that allows these families to stay together as they begin the process of rebuilding their lives.”Hope of the Valley has deployed outreach and engagement teams to advertise the villages to local homeless encampments and organize a waiting list.“You can’t just show up and stay there,” Craft explained. “Each site is designated for people who live within a 3-mile radius of the shelter.” To ensure the zones are safe for occupants, the villages are surrounded by 9-foot perimeter walls and monitored with 24-hour video surveillance. There’s also a 24-hour security guard on site. Everyone who enters the village will be checked for weapons, drugs or other contraband items.
Craft stressed the importance of interim housing in transitioning people out of homelessness.“Getting people off the street is one of most important things we can do. … We want to stabilize people.”For the city, there’s another motivating factor behind the project: a federal lawsuit filed last May in which a judge found that the city had done a subpar job providing accessible housing options for its poorest constituents and halted districts from enforcing their “no camping” laws until they can come up with beds for at least 60 percent of the unhoused population.
Tiny homes present a spatially efficient and relatively cheap way to work toward that goal. Craft said the material cost of each unit – minus the land and underground piping – is about $8,000.
“It takes two people an hour and a half to put one together,” he said.
Hope of the Valley will offer on-site case management and health evaluation services to residents, as well as pair them with long-term housing navigators, job centers and public benefit options.
With the tiny home project materializing at the same time as the nonprofit enters escrow on its purchase of the Skateland roller rink in Northridge, the group is stepping up its game during a critical year.“We have 507 beds and nine shelters. By the end of year, we’ll have 14 shelters and over 1,100 beds,” Craft told the Business Journal. “We have to be innovative, creative and aggressive to address this crisis. What’s really scary is: What is the fallout going to be post-COVID? Right now, there’s close to 70,000 people in Los Angeles that are homeless. What happens when (the eviction ban) is lifted?”
Tiny Homes Springing Up in NoHo
