It’s known around Sodo and the Duwamish industrial district as the place where they make the tiny homes. More than 500 of them all told, hammered together by volunteers and sent out into the region as colorful, 100-square-foot missionaries, to “get people up off the ground.”
“I didn’t know what to do,” said Barb Oliver, who runs the factory for Sound Foundations NW. “Here I’m making shelter for the homeless, I’ve got a couple hundred idle, unused homes sitting in storage. And now people are breaking in to get a night’s sleep.”
It’s an absurd situation, if you stop to think about it — which nobody is.
The number of never-used tiny homes sitting in three storage lots in Sodo now tops 250. As I wrote nearly two years ago, when there were 71 in storage, some are “so fresh they still have that new-house smell.”
They’re lined up in rows next to the BNSF rail corridor, waiting to be put into service by a city, or a church, or anybody who needs stopgap emergency shelter to help get people off the streets.
Why haven’t they been? No one has a straight answer to that.
Some say it’s bureaucratic feuding, or clashing “fiefdoms.” Others say the 9-by-12-foot shelters aren’t dignified enough; they’re “shacks” in “shantytowns.” Or bare land is too hard to find, or money’s too scarce, or community support is too weak.
I’ve been told that the problem with tiny homes is that people like them too much. They stay in them too long, so the little huts aren’t as “efficient” as other types of emergency shelters which have higher turnover.
One social services official told me once he opposes them because he fears they’re not temporary — that Seattle over time will conclude they’re “good enough” to serve as permanent housing for a stuck underclass. They’ll be forever Hoovervilles.
I don’t know — all I know is that if you go out to people living in abject squalor in parks or greenbelts and try to get them to come inside, they’ll do it for a tiny home.
And a study this year by Portland State University found that tiny homes are three times more effective than conventional shelters at transitioning people into permanent housing.
I also know that these 250 shelters sitting in storage are available immediately for free. It costs to send utilities to a site, and it costs a lot for ongoing management of a village with counseling, food, a shower trailer and so on. But it costs a lot to manage any homeless recovery facility. Here, the actual shelters have already been built.
They’re just sitting there. And we won’t use them. (...)
On a recent day, volunteers from the Chief Seattle Club tilted up the walls of the factory’s 549th tiny home. Most of the $2.3 million cost for all those homes came from private donations.
The volunteers have a tradition of writing messages inside the walls — “you’re gonna be OK,” or “we’re in your corner,” or “this is now YOUR home.” The messages get covered with wallboard and so won’t ever be seen. The idea is: They’ll be felt.
Except all that volunteer love is lately heading straight to storage.
At one storage lot, a line of RVs with a few tents butts up right outside.
“I think this is the most depressing place in all of Seattle,” Oliver told me. “I’ve got beautiful new shelters here locked behind a fence, with people outside the fence sleeping on the ground.”
All of this is coming to a tipping point. It has obviously occurred to the Hope Factory folks that their mission may be becoming hopeless — that they might have to stop. They can’t keep pumping out fresh tiny homes for nobody. (...)
But the volunteers keep coming. Every day for the next three months is booked solid with teams eager to build.
It’s a maddening Seattle mix of civic spirit and compassion, lost in a fog of dysfunction.
It’s an absurd situation, if you stop to think about it — which nobody is.
The number of never-used tiny homes sitting in three storage lots in Sodo now tops 250. As I wrote nearly two years ago, when there were 71 in storage, some are “so fresh they still have that new-house smell.”
They’re lined up in rows next to the BNSF rail corridor, waiting to be put into service by a city, or a church, or anybody who needs stopgap emergency shelter to help get people off the streets.
Why haven’t they been? No one has a straight answer to that.
Some say it’s bureaucratic feuding, or clashing “fiefdoms.” Others say the 9-by-12-foot shelters aren’t dignified enough; they’re “shacks” in “shantytowns.” Or bare land is too hard to find, or money’s too scarce, or community support is too weak.
I’ve been told that the problem with tiny homes is that people like them too much. They stay in them too long, so the little huts aren’t as “efficient” as other types of emergency shelters which have higher turnover.
One social services official told me once he opposes them because he fears they’re not temporary — that Seattle over time will conclude they’re “good enough” to serve as permanent housing for a stuck underclass. They’ll be forever Hoovervilles.
I don’t know — all I know is that if you go out to people living in abject squalor in parks or greenbelts and try to get them to come inside, they’ll do it for a tiny home.
And a study this year by Portland State University found that tiny homes are three times more effective than conventional shelters at transitioning people into permanent housing.
I also know that these 250 shelters sitting in storage are available immediately for free. It costs to send utilities to a site, and it costs a lot for ongoing management of a village with counseling, food, a shower trailer and so on. But it costs a lot to manage any homeless recovery facility. Here, the actual shelters have already been built.
They’re just sitting there. And we won’t use them. (...)
On a recent day, volunteers from the Chief Seattle Club tilted up the walls of the factory’s 549th tiny home. Most of the $2.3 million cost for all those homes came from private donations.
The volunteers have a tradition of writing messages inside the walls — “you’re gonna be OK,” or “we’re in your corner,” or “this is now YOUR home.” The messages get covered with wallboard and so won’t ever be seen. The idea is: They’ll be felt.
Except all that volunteer love is lately heading straight to storage.
At one storage lot, a line of RVs with a few tents butts up right outside.
“I think this is the most depressing place in all of Seattle,” Oliver told me. “I’ve got beautiful new shelters here locked behind a fence, with people outside the fence sleeping on the ground.”
All of this is coming to a tipping point. It has obviously occurred to the Hope Factory folks that their mission may be becoming hopeless — that they might have to stop. They can’t keep pumping out fresh tiny homes for nobody. (...)
But the volunteers keep coming. Every day for the next three months is booked solid with teams eager to build.
It’s a maddening Seattle mix of civic spirit and compassion, lost in a fog of dysfunction.
