Can tiny home communities solve the homelessness crisis?

CLIP You are listening to a Frequency Podcast network production in association with city news.

Jordan Heath Rawlings If you live in a city, there’s probably a park or a field or a forest area, or even just a street not far from your house with some tents on it. That is just the reality, of the homelessness crisis in this country right now, and what most municipalities have done with this is well listen for yourself.

CLIP This was the scene earlier today at Trinity Bellwoods Park. When the city moved in to try to remove a homeless encampment, then police were there to back up and the clashes began.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Of course that doesn’t actually solve the problem or house the people or do anything but create tension, ruin their stuff, and maybe put up some ugly fencing in a public park. And then the tents go elsewhere, or the people have to huddle in doorways or on transit and on and on we go.

CLIP We’re making ourselves mobile and stuff like that and getting outta here. Uh, and as soon as they’re gone, we’re coming right back.

Jordan Heath Rawlings But what if there were a better way? So basically there’s 50 people living here. I manage and take care of them well. They take care of themself, but I live and work here, and people get to live their life on their own terms. People who were experiencing homelessness now of a home here that is a tiny home community in Kitchener, Ontario. What exactly is a tiny home community and how does it work? And could these communities be a model for ending homelessness as we know it? We’re about to find out. I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Justin Chandler visited a tiny home community and wrote about them in general for T V O. Hi Justin.

Justin Chandler Hey Jordan. How are you?

Jordan Heath Rawlings I’m doing very well. Thanks for coming on the show. Well, thank you for having me. It is a really interesting topic that we’re gonna discuss today and maybe we’ll begin with Kitchen or Waterloo at a place that’s called a Better Tent City. Can you just describe this community to me? Like what is it, how it’s sprang up?

Justin Chandler Sure. So a better tent city. Um, I guess just to start with a description to look at it. It looks kind of like a portable and then a bunch of smaller sheds, uh, just tucked in between a school board building and the highway. Um, so it’s in sort of a, a surprising corner of land, uh, in kitchen or Waterloo. And, uh, when you actually get a little bit closer, you see there’s a big sort of shipping container converted building that’s used as the kitchen and the common area. There’s a washroom building and then there’s, uh, several small shed sized tiny shelters, uh, that people actually sleep in. As far as how it got started, uh, that takes us back to 2020 when two people in Kitchener Waterloo, Jeff Wilmer, who was a former planner for the city and the, the c a o and um, Ron Doyle, who was an active, uh, person in the community and a business person, they got together and were trying to come up with a way that they could help people who were unhoused. They were seeing that. That was a, a big issue in the region right now, especially at the time with, uh, the first part of the pandemic raging. They were just trying to think of a safe way to get people out of encampments. Uh, and Ron had a property on some industrial land and uh, he thought, well, what if we could house people there temporarily? And that’s how a better tent city got started. They set up there and eventually, uh, they’ve moved a couple times, uh, and now they’re where they are now.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You said temporarily there, is this meant to be, uh, just sort of a, a stop gap for people to move towards, uh, permanent housing or other solutions, or is it a long-term solution for people who’ve been living without shelter for a while now?

Justin Chandler Well, in the case of a better tent city, it started off as being temporary. And that’s what a lot of other tiny shelter projects are, are aiming to be. Um, but with a better tent city, it, it looks like it really is going to be much longer term than they initially thought. Um, and that’s something that. Um, Jeff, who’s still running it, Ron has, uh, since passed. Um, but uh, he said that really they’ve come to realize that people are going to be staying there a lot longer. They’ve had a couple people move on into more permanent forms of housing, but for the most part, people are, are staying. Um, but that also has to do with who’s living there, a better tent city. Uh, tries to find residents who really have no other options, whereas there are other models of this where they try to pick people who are maybe not doing well in shelters, but are more quote unquote housing ready. Uh, maybe people who don’t have as high needs.

Jordan Heath Rawlings When you mention people who have no other options, why don’t those people have other options? And why would, um, somebody who’s unhoused prefer a community like this to a more regular bed at, you know, the typical shelters we think of if, if I realize. If there’s room there?

Justin Chandler Yes. Well, the room is, is a big concern. I mean, a, a region like, uh, Waterloo, uh, has far more unhoused people than they have shelter spaces. Um, but even if spaces are available, there’s a lot of barriers that, uh, she, that people find to getting into shelters, for example, they might have sobriety requirements. Um, and if someone has an addiction, that can be very difficult to, uh, stick to. Um, maybe you can’t live with your partner or your pet. Uh, and so somebody might feel like they really don’t wanna leave their family members, uh, in order to go into shelters and that they feel safer altogether. Some people feel unsafe in shelters or uncomfortable because of how, uh, rigid the rules can be. Um, and how, you know, you’ve gotta be out at a certain time or in at a certain time. Some people have really bad insomnia or they can’t sleep in, in a group, or being unhoused has led them to adopt more of a nighttime schedule, and they, they’ll just find that it really doesn’t work for them. So those are reasons people might stay in encampments in the first place because they, they feel they’ve got no other option. And then this sort of solution is an idea of saying, well, if that other thing doesn’t work for you, encampments are not safe and not a place anybody wants to live.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What about this? So tell me how this community works like on a day-to-day basis. You know, you mentioned there’s a kitchen, uh, and a common area. Who does what? Do residents pay rent? Is there communal cooking?

Justin Chandler Like, just give me a sense of what life there can be like. Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty open to what residents want to be part of. Um, they, they get to live, um, pretty independently. There is, uh, a common kitchen and they’ll have, uh, volunteers come in. There are a few staff who are paid, and then there’s a lot of volunteers, uh, who can come in and help cook. For example, when I visited, somebody was doing that, prepping a big meal. They’ve got quite a large kitchen. There’s a, I think I mentioned earlier, a washroom facility. So, you know, people can shower, change, um, do whatever they need there. But if people are just staying in their cabins during the day, that’s okay too. There’s also, um, they try to connect people with different programming as well. So the day that I was there, there was, um, a bus from, uh, it was called Sanguine Health Service Provider. And people were coming and getting, you know, medications, appointments, um. Earlier in the pandemic, there was a big push to get people vaccinated. So there’s sorts of activities and things like that going on, but people get to keep. Kind of an individual structure. For the most part, the live-in site superintendent keeps a nighttime schedule so that, um, there’s always somebody who’s on staff and available when help is needed.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Justin Chandler And then more of the volunteers and people like that are there during the day. You mentioned that so far only a few people have moved on, uh, to other forms of housing. But what do we know in general about the effectiveness of this kind of community and this kind of program in terms of getting people help, helping them adapt a, all the stuff that we would like programs for unhoused people to achieve. It’s difficult. We don’t have great data as far as, uh, analyzing these programs because this is fairly new in Ontario. There are American programs, um, and there’s some data around those. Um, but they’re different enough that I don’t feel we can really make an, an apples to apples comparison. So somewhere like a better tent city. It’s, you know, only a couple people have transferred, but there’s not really a benchmark to compare that to. We’ve got, uh, other programs, for example, the City of London tried to pilot, which they ended up not continuing, and city staff did a, a review there and said that a lot of people who did not find success, In shelters and couldn’t stay there long term. Were more successful and comfortable staying in their sort of tiny shelter pilot. We’ve got a program in Kingston, which is, uh, in part funded by the municipality, and there’s a little bit more data and information about that one. And so we can see for there how many people have moved through, but it’s also a very different model than a better tent city. So it, that part’s tricky. And I, I guess I should say too, um, This isn’t to say that the people who are running these programs are doing bad data, record keeping, the homelessness data system over overall, the auditor general just issued a report last year saying that it’s really pretty bad in Canada.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Justin Chandler Um, as far as data sharing and tracking information. Um, so I, I think just, the whole system. It’s hard to, to make that sort of statement and say like, definitively, this is, this is working, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence and that that’s growing right. Um, and certainly the people who are running these programs and residents, uh, even, you know, people who live nearby are, are giving positive reviews. So the people who live near a better tent city are giving it positive reviews.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Do we know what public approval is like in general, uh, for these programs?

Justin Chandler And, you know, cuz I know, uh, encampments in the park can be really polarizing. And I wonder how a community like this, uh, is received in different places where it goes up.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Justin Chandler Well, a better tent city is a little bit of a, a special case in that, because it started with somebody who had private land in an industrial area, there weren’t really neighbors to complain. And this is actually a, a feature that, um, that Jeff Wilmer, uh, who’s running, uh, like the current, uh, director there was telling me, um, he feels as.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Benefited them is that Betterton City kind of just did it, right?

Justin Chandler They said, we’ve got this land we’re setting up, and uh, eventually they got zoning permission from, you know, the city. But a lot of other sites, uh, in, for example, Hamilton, Peter Burrow, Bellville, um, I should say potential sites, groups that are trying to set up their own tiny shelter programs are trying to go through the city and they are routinely running into public opposition. It seems like a lot of the time people think for the same reason that they worry about, uh, encampments, that if unhoused people live near them, they’re going to face some sort of negative consequences that the area’s going to be unsafe. Or, you know, somebody, uh, in Hamilton complain that children walking to school might see things like drug use. People worry, there’ll be needles left around, there’ll be property crime. And advocates, uh, for this type of model will say that really that’s not the case. A lot of the concern that people tend to have with people who are unhoused is because they don’t have anywhere to go. So people will be out, sitting around trying to kill time, trying to, you know, find somewhere safe to stay. But if they actually have a site to live on, that’s not gonna be happening so much. Um, now with a better tent city, there has been, you know, still some concern with neighbours. They’ve got mostly industrial and business neighbours. Um, but there have been ones who’ve reached out to them and said, Hey, like, we’re worried about people coming onto our property, or we’ve seen property crime. Um, what can we do about that? And uh, Jeff says that they’ve been actually able to work quite successfully with neighbours to address concerns. Right. Um, in a way that, um, Uh, they feel is working pretty well for them, um, because they do know that, uh, if people start complaining to the politicians, then that could cause issues as far as how long they’re, uh, allowed to stay and where they are.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What do we know about the chances of these programs and I mean, we can start with a better tent city. You mentioned other ones. You mentioned one in London that’s been discontinued, but what do we know about the permanence of them and is this something that should be built? Um, And stick around and cycle people in and out, or are these temporary options that sort of have a time limit on them?

Justin Chandler Well, a lot of the advocates who, uh, are supportive of these programs don’t want them to be around long term. I mean, even with a, a better tent city where people are living. Um, for a longer time, they would prefer if there was housing for people. Um, a, a good example I think to look at for this would be, uh, in Kingston, our livable solutions, which is a more transitional program. So the goal is to take people who are closer to being ready to move into longer term housing. And to help set them up with what they need, get them to a point where they can stabilize and then move on into that. And they’ve been around, uh, since 2021 now, and they’re moving seasonally. Um, so they’re, they’re gonna be moving into an arena for the summer, and then they’re going to be back in the harbor for the fall and winter, uh, which is where they’re at currently. So, a program like that now has been around a few cycles and the municipality continues to support it and find that it’s effective. But again, the people who are running it, they say this is better than an encampment. And that’s why we want to be around.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings It’s maybe better for some people than the traditional shelter system, but is it better than affordable housing?

Justin Chandler No, probably not. And uh, that’s the same thing with a Betterton city. They say better is in the name. And the whole point is that they’re just trying to be better than an existing option. They’re not trying to say that people should live in tiny shelters all the time. And I think that’s something I kept noticing in comments on my article when it came out as people were saying, oh, are you saying we should just build shanty towns? And no, nobody’s saying that. They’re saying, These sorts of tiny shelter programs with sleeping cabins, um, that people can stay in and living in these communities is a program that we think would be better for people right now, given the lack of other options. Not that this is a place that people should be, um, staying in long term or something that we should be building up forever. We should still be putting efforts toward building housing, toward making homes affordable for people. If there’s only so many resources available to be used to help those who are unhoused, do we worry about spending, yeah. That money, but also that political capital on getting these programs approved instead of, you know, pushing for more affordable housing options at the municipal and provincial level. Like does this maybe take our eye off the ball a little bit, would be my question. That’s definitely a concern for people. The, the advocate, Kathy Crow. I spoke with her. I wasn’t able to, uh, put it into the story, but, uh, she’s a, a well-known street nurse in Toronto and she had said that, uh, in the past this was a sort of program that she wasn’t, uh, supportive of. But, um, now she is, and she believes that they need to be paired with, uh, advocacy for housing. That you don’t want this to be something that. The city builds and then says we’re done. And the, you know, the, the push needs to continue. And I think, uh, in Hamilton there’s been work I’ve been following for, uh, over a year now to try and get a community like, uh, our livable solutions set up.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And, you know, that’s a question that keeps coming up into counselors. Counselors will say, okay, well you want this much money from us. What else could we do for this?

Justin Chandler And city staff have been able to say, okay, well, uh, you know, this costs X and for this we could be providing this many rent supplements or this. But do they actually do that when they say, well, we could do this instead? Yeah, well if it’s money that’s, uh, unallocated, then yeah. It’s not currently going, uh, going to that. And you know, of course there’s questions about how people are able to access it or how good those other systems are. You know, if people are not in a position where they can currently live independently, maybe that wouldn’t help them at all. So that’s a, that’s a fair question. But definitely the idea of, uh, the political capital when a lot of people already don’t want to. Uh, sacrifice or don’t want to help people who are unhoused. Um, this is asking them to, you know, open their minds to a new sort of solution. And that’s something that not every community is ready to do. And there’s certainly been pushback in places, but we’re also seeing, you know, places like, uh, Kitchen or Waterloo, where the region is now actually looking to make their own program. So they’ve seen how a better tent city has played out and they’re trying to set up their own tiny shelter, uh, system. And so, you know, we’re, we’re actually gonna see something that’s publicly run and organized. So, Maybe there is a bit of a shift happening.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Well, the last thing I want to ask you is, you spent so much time investigating these plans politically, but also time in these communities. So, you know, I’ll just ask you, I guess, the question that your article posed, is this really a solution for homelessness? When you talk about solution, it’s uh, it’s difficult. You know, the, is this a solution for homelessness?

Justin Chandler Probably. Not, is this a, a possible answer or a solution to somebody being in an encampment or being, uh, unhoused in a certain way? Uh, it could be. And in some communities already, you know, Kitchener Waterloo in Kingston, uh, it is, this is a solution that is currently, uh, Available to people. It’s an answer. Um, that can keep people out of encampments. Is it the right, uh, long-term way that we want to be doing this? Is it the, the perfect situation? Um, that’s, I’ll leave that to somebody else to answer. Um, but you know, it’s happening. I. And I think it’s something that people should be paying attention to and looking at because if this is something that communities can get off the ground where they cannot get housing built, um, maybe this is a way that people can get into housing and, uh, be safe and, you know, not sleeping in bus shelters or under bridges.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Justin, thank you so much for this. It’s really nuanced and I feel like I’m much better equipped to discuss it now. I appreciate you taking the time. Justin Chandler writing for tvo.org. That was the big story. For more, you can head to the big story podcast.ca. Lord knows we’ve covered the homelessness crisis and we will not stop because unless a miracle hits, it ain’t going away. You can talk to us on Twitter at the big story fp n. You can write to us at hello at the big story podcast.ca, and you can call us (416) 935-5935 and leave a message. The big story’s available absolutely anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you would like to leave us a rating or a review, we always appreciate it. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We have a little bonus episode for you tomorrow. And then we’ll talk again on Monday.