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Across western U.S., more cities are erecting tiny home villages for unhoused people to quickly get people indoors and connect them to basic resources like electricity.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that 300 tiny homes planned for Sacramento will be placed in an abandoned office park and the state fairgrounds. Another 900 tiny homes from the governor will go up on a parcel of land in San Jose and to-be-determined locations in Los Angeles and San Diego. Newsom first announced the plan for the 1,200 homes in March.
The structures − which are about 100 square feet − are one of the latest solutions to America's homeless crisis, in which local leaders across the country are trying to get tens of thousands of people from the streets indoors to homeless shelters, temporary hotel rooms or apartments paid for by government vouchers.
But the problem is enormous: More than 580,000 Americans live without adequate shelter, and about a third of them are in California. Those numbers also are growing, because a rising tide of evictions and sharp increases in rents in booming markets push more people into homelessness every day.
In Los Angeles, hundreds of residents have moved from the streets into tiny homes as part of Mayor Karen Bass' housing push in recent months. But some say they feel coerced because they're forced to give up belongings, like tents, before they can be taken to a tiny-home neighborhood. Some are required to pair with random roommates and some couples are separated, said Carla Orendorff, a homeless advocate in Los Angeles' Van Nuys neighborhood.
