In Seattle, a project that began with such hope is winding down. Tiny homes were assembled on a site and made available to people who were homeless. The lucky folk who moved in had a stable place from which to take their bearings and move on. Only the moving on didn’t happen and the project unravelled from there. See in Komonews: Licton Springs Tiny House Village Days Away From Closing
Faced with a firm closure date, the project sponsor worked with each occupant to find a permanent housing solution. Happily the vast majority of the 60 occupants have moved to permanent housing. So, while the site is lost, the sponsors can say their strategy of assisting residents to move to permanent housing worked. Unfortunately, continuing that strategy at that site isn’t an option.
From the stability of an office, council chamber or armchair, one can see that trial and error at the individual project level is a very slow way to end homelessness. Can’t we skip over the trial and error and go straight to result? For some situations, the answer is yes. The authors of the article linked below have assembled the available evidence about what works and when to use it. If the article had been available when the Seattle project was in the planning stage, the project sponsors would have known that the residents are going to need assistance with planning and executing their transition from the temporary tiny house to permanent housing.
The authors of the article also delved into a more confounding problem: if we know what works, why don’t we do it? Reviewing available literature and interviewing key informants uncovered seven barriers to doing what’s right. At the top of the list? Access to affordable housing. For more on this and the other barriers, see in the European Journal of Homelessness: Ending Street Homelessness: What Works And Why We Don’t Do It
