EMERALD VILLAGE: a Dream of an Affordable Tiny House Community

I'm Dan Bryant I am a pastor of First Christian Church in downtown Eugene and also serve as the executive director of square one villages that created emerald village Eugene this project actually began with another facility opportunity village Eugene that's a transitional housing program where we were just trying to get people off the street to give them the most basic shelter just sleeping cabins a place to be a place that was secure and safe to help them get their life back together so that they could move into permanent housing and we discovered after about our first year that we were having great difficulty assisting people and moving out that they were not able to find any place that they could afford because rince in our community are simply too high and there's not enough affordable housing so we found for instance that the housing authority here in this area had a waitlist for single bedroom and studio apartments that was over six six years long and frankly they're just too many people that don't have that long to wait so we decided we needed to build our own style of affordable housing using the concepts we developed at opportunity village a self-managed community of tiny homes ranging from 160 to 280 square feet place for a single person or a couple or maybe a parent child that small households one or two people where they could afford to live and have really a nice quality built home and most importantly where they could afford to pay their own way so this is designed so that the individuals who live here are actually paying for all of the operation costs the long-term maintenance of the facility the staffing and so forth the utilities all of that's covered in their payments of 250 to $350 a month depending on the size of their unit so that they have the pride of being able to pay their own way hi I'm Trisha I come on in and I'd like you to come in and see my house this is my house they ease it was built by Rainbow Valley construction I have hearing for my granddaughter up here she's 17 and she's gonna come stay with me and go to school we have a nice big place I love it we got a lot of counter space this is what we cook on here and then microwave we're one of two places that have a bathtub and a shower so we were fortunate it was one of the few things that I needed so I was at home when keys Bay and I was watching the news and there was like a tiny house village in Eugene and I love Eugene I lived here already so after the application and six months later I got accepted so and I spent four hundred and ten hours building my house and amazing the residents have all been required but in a minimum of 50 hours on the building of their own home and in most cases they put in way over 50 hours they just really are excited and enjoy being a part of this process I see it involved in the project so I put in my 50 hours of community service and then after that I put in about 50 more and then 50 more one of the biggest things that like I help make the house so I have a special love for it that you know I see myself in the walls and which is a really big deal to me building this house saved my life because I was so depressed and so angry with what happened what my significant other put me through and it was a godsend so I build my house from all the way up I really like my space like it's a very calming neutral tone of my walls the lighting in itself helps it kind of give it a nice glow to everything and it's a very good space to be in it's refreshing like knowing that it's built out of clay and straw some earthy materials I thinking about how my house was made the things that went into it I love looking at the overall architecture of everything and everything is carefully thought about in detail and all the wood matches it's very eclectic because the nature of the design so we had this friendly competition among the architects who could design the cleverest most efficient and cutest little home and now we have all these wonderful designs so many of which are available on our website that we actually offer to others but it just gives it a different feel and I've visited some other projects where they have you know kind of a cookie cutter approach and they're all cute then they're all nice but it is a different feel when you know that's my home it's unique and you just have a different sense I think because of the uniqueness of it so I that really adds to its a attractiveness as a village so in order to keep the price point low for the people living here we had to find a way to finance the construction of this so we've done that in a couple ways one just through traditional fundraising we've raised probably at this point little over a million dollars for this project from community members we asked the city to pay our system development charges which was about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars which they agreed to do and then we went to a group of builders and we ended up with 13 different teams of architects and builders each of whom are designing building and donating a tiny house to us so out of the 22 13 of them that are being donated by these groups of builders and and just that portion is over a half a million dollars worth of in-kind contributions from these builders I really am thankful for the people who put this together because it has given me a permanent place to live I honestly thought I was going to be in my car forever and that was not a prospect that I really looked forward to after having spent my whole life working and being a productive member of society and contributing to this great country I found myself being marginalized and treated as a second class citizen given nothing but hassles because I couldn't afford to pay rent I had an income just wasn't enough and this I can afford this I can live in and I'm so thankful for having this place to live in and I had my doggie and I love my little dog I've had her since she was a 10 week old puppy and she's 11 years old now so she's been with me a long time and that was another thing it's hard to find a place to rent when you've got an animal but she's my baby and you just don't throw your kids away because you can't find a place to live Oregon is a state like many places right now that is struggling to find ways to house and shelter people and in our case we've had a lot of unhoused people around here for a long long time and especially heartbreaking is the amount of young people that are on house din our areas it's not easy house priced houses prices are going up constantly and minimum wage isn't you know people can't afford where they live and right constantly goes up every year I worked all in my life and I was shocked at find out at 64 years old and by myself that I couldn't rent a place I ended up living in my car I spent four months living in the woods in a tent I just really was scared to death blaming people for not being able to afford housing on the wages that they make I think is a fruitless activity I think we need to be focused on justice and fairness in terms of wages and then we need to be focused on housing that really works for people of a variety of incomes I have social security benefits and a little bit of tiny retirement and I'll pay 375 a month and that will be my parking and my rent my electricity and my Wi-Fi for my computer and plus $50 will go into a fund for me and when it caps off at $1500 then it stays there in case say I wanted to move and it would be a first and a last to help me move on to something different if I chose to do that so it's very affordable now you know 375 out of the 900 I get you know that still leaves me enough to pay my car insurance and you know my telephone and my medications and my doctors and things so I can do just fine on them I love this house because like it gives me a sense of security and like a space that's my own this is 288 square feet and I don't need anymore I have a little front room I have my own bedroom a bathroom yes the square footage is just fine that's all we need this is my baby I've had her for three and a half years now my house is about three hundred square feet it's pretty easy kind of living day-to-day in this amount of space just because I don't have much one of the biggest things is that I'm I'm a bit of a minimalist so I have very small things the biggest things that I actually own are my cello and my couch here that I can get rid of at any moment but I'm not gonna tiny is not necessarily a bad thing as you can see this really has got quite a bit of room in it anytime you downsize it's a challenge but I found that it's really not that hard and on top of that there's a bonus to it there's not so much housework there's just a huge interest of both in the tiny home movement as well as in using some of the innovations of tiny homes and self-governed communities to address the problem of the lack of affordable housing to make it easier for people to be able to support themselves with their very modest incomes and to have a decent home when we began focusing on this site we did something very unusual we went to the community the neighborhood council here and talked to them about it before we even talked to a realtor about buying the site so involved them from the very beginning and said you know we want to know what concerns questions you have and we worked with them in that process so for instance we said what if we give someone who lives in this neighborhood a seat at the table for the vetting committee so they can be a part of the process and selecting who gets to live here yeah you look around you go how could you not love it and we do emerald village has been fabulous for the neighborhood almost everyone that fearow is this going to be a magnet disappears like no this is great this is actually housing for people this isn't a magnet this isn't anything like that and and you know I like I said I live right up the street and I would say that since since building started on this those nuisance level crimes have actually decreased initially they were very concerned and afraid what is this going to do to our property values and and we have enough problems with homeless people doing things in our neighborhood you know so there was a lot of nervousness now that they've seen it I mean that's just flipped 180 degrees where we manage services that are provided managing responsibly there's no relationship between crime and caring for people who would like to be off the street people are excited we hear from neighbors we can't wait till this is finished we're so glad you're here the neighborhood council has invited our residents they just told me recently we hope that we can get someone from this village to be on our board for our council and they're pitching in we get all kinds of donations from the neighborhood and so it's really become something that I think they're proud to have in their neighborhood and they can see this actually improves the neighborhood improves the look and has something that adds value to this neighborhood so I think we have a demonstration here of not only how you can start out but how you can continue in this work and how you can do it successfully and what you have to do is create a space where people can succeed so I think the fencing the expectations of the on-site oversight hosting all of those kinds of things matter a lot and keeping a place a great respect for the people are going to be there and live there this is about empowering individuals so that they can better take control of their own lives and giving them the dignity of being able to do that so it's not a handout it's really working with someone so that they have that pride and dignity of their own home and have a lot of ownership in it as well this project has 22 tiny homes and community space the land itself is a little under $300,000 the total cost of the project was about 1.8 million so how can you make it possible for someone to have that sense of being an owner without necessarily have to pay that entire capital costs so the first thing you do is you separate out the land so the land is owned by the nonprofit there are a lot of different models for this what's known as a Community Land Trust so that it's held separately and then the construction of the home itself and again we raised the money to construct these homes so that the residents don't have to pay that cost they're gonna pay all the costs from this day forward but the unique thing that we are doing here is that the residents own the coop they are organized in what's called a equity co-op they own it their membership has a value of $1,500 they are paying $50 a month towards that membership fee so after 30 months that $50 drops off of their rent and now it actually goes down so instead of 250 for our smallest home it's not only 200 a month but the important thing is is they own a piece of their own home not technically but they own the coop and so they have that sense that this is something that I own and therefore I want to take responsibility for it as well as I get the benefit of it I really think that's really key to the success of any project like this this place it allows me to breathe and it lets me have hope that I can achieve my goal which is go to school become a teacher save for a house have a family all those things had seven and half months of electricity warmth companionship with all the other people in the village it has been just a godsend I can't begin to express just how much it means to me to finally know that I will be safe for the rest of my life I will have a place that will make sure I am taken care of that I have got a roof over my head and a way to cook and eat and clean and be still thought of as having value to this society we're so fortunate to be able to be picked to come here in this to e village and we need more of them there was a lot of people have given a lot for this village to happen and we've given a lot everything that they asked of us to help build this village and we go out and speak to other people and other places so that they will support in their cities what is going on here because this is a great thing I believe this can be this can definitely be replicated and on a very larger scale like we're talking in New York that's one thinking this size of New York I'm four so that'd be great I think we'll keep doing traditional low-cost housing that we've have done for many years with in partnership with the federal government we will continue to do that as opportunities arise and money is available and then we'll continue to try to find innovative ways we have to actually convince the federal government that looks tiny houses are legitimate and should be funded in the regular funding streams right now that's just not not the case but it should be because this is one option that really works for some folks and you have to have a variety of options to help people get back on their feet again hmm

Channel: Respectful Revolution

Views: 292,863

Rating: 4.9511862 out of 5

Keywords: Respect, Respectful Revolution, Affordable Housing, Tiny House, Homeless, Homelessness, Emerald Village, Eugene, Oregon, SquareOne Villages, Dan Bryant, chico housing action team, CHAT, Tiny House Village, housing crisis, america, pacific northwest, First Christian Church, pastors, permanent housing, transitional housing, community

Id: KX2_Q5ejUpc

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 13 2019