Tiny houses for Raleigh’s homeless

Around the corner from my home, up on North Main Street in Wake Forest, is a state marker honoring a North Carolina historian. His name was C.C. Crittenden, and he was known for the concept of history for all the people. In fact, he was responsible for the first historical markers placed across the state.

In a way, I’ve been writing about architecture for all the people for the past decade or so – for national and international publications. My interests reach beyond just modern or classical styles, residential or commercial work, or tall or clustered buildings. I’m interested in it all – and how it affects the people who live with it.

A few months back, someone at the North Carolina chapter of the A.I.A. told me about a new role for a committee of architects there. It’s called design activism – and it seeks to address social issues through public dialogue.

With its Tiny Home Community Ideas Competition, members of AIA North Carolina’s Activate14 committee reached out to the Raleigh/Wake Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness. They then contacted designers around the world, asking them to design tiny houses for those who have no home at all.

From March through June, they received more than 160 ideas for a community of 12 such homes on a city-owned, downtown site. By comparison, 140 firms submitted qualifications to design the Obama Presidential Center in downtown Chicago.

The winner of the Activate14 competition was a small firm composed of three 30-somethings from Athens, Greece.

The winning entry by riza3architects is poised, graceful and well-proportioned. Its site plan is thoughtfully laid out, its common area designed to create a sense of community and its four clusters of three homes each organized for neighborliness. The little homes themselves are models of efficiency and purpose.

They organized the project into four small-scale neighborhoods, responding to the need for both community and privacy. They looked at how the homes related to each other, to the site and to the surrounding community. They arranged them to form a miniature model of nearby Boylan Heights, and encouraged residents to mingle with the locals.

At the heart of the community they placed a common area, with room for a kitchen/dining facility, plus laundry and showers. There’s a community garden – along with a recreational area and a work/study space. A pathway runs the length of the development – through the common area, with exits to city sidewalks.

The homes themselves are 12 feet square, with areas for sitting, sleeping and eating, and a half-bath. The main body is framed and insulated, with wood siding outside and a combination of sheetrock and paneling inside. Both floors and ceilings are wood. A more permanent feel could be achieved with a gabion wall outside, made of rubble stone enclosed inside heavy-duty steel mesh.

The cost for each unit is about $10,000 in materials and $40,000 including labor. Therein lies one challenge for this solution to Raleigh’s homeless population, now estimated at 904 people. Most are housed in apartments, studios, homes and shelters provided by agencies such as the Salvation Army, Urban Ministries of Wake County and The Healing Place for Women, among others.

More than $3 million – from Wake County, the City of Raleigh, the federal government and agencies such as the United Way – is applied to homelessness annually.

Even with volunteer labor to build it, a community of 12 tiny homes adds up to $120,000, plus funding for the common area. At $40,000 per home, that figure quadruples. And the development would house just 12 out of the 904 homeless.

“There are still a lot of questions to be answered,” said Larry Jarvis, Raleigh’s director of housing and neighborhoods. “Part of it is whether City Council wants to provide funding for X number of units vs. conventional housing that would provide many more.”

There’s also the question of whether a community developed solely for the homeless – one where a stigma of “otherness” might apply to residents – is appropriate. A better solution, some say, is affordable housing integrated into the community at large – rather than building tiny homes on lots owned by the city and eschewed by developers.

“What you’re doing is taking people who have no options and putting them in a shed on a piece of land that no one wants,” said Hugh Hollowell, pastor and executive director of Love Wins Ministries in downtown Raleigh. “It’s dehumanizing.”

Another option might be to incentivize developers to include tiny homes in larger projects. “The great thing about the city owning property is that we can dictate what’s put there,” said City Council Member Mary Ann Baldwin.

Or, as Jean Williams, executive director of the Women’s Center of Wake County said about tiny homes: “It’s not the answer, but it’s a part of the menu.”

The Activate14 competition called for 12 homes to be built – and the winning entry responded with an admirable social and architectural solution. So is it the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice or the Parthenon in Athens? No – but this is not the time for grand statements.

This is a time for compassion for the least among us. Here we have an urban infill project, properly scaled, compact and useful, designed to integrate its residents into their own neighborhood and the one surrounding them. It promises dignity for 12 individuals who sorely need it. And who’s to say that an employed millennial or two might not want to live among them in that tiny home community?

The city and the people who care about homelessness here now have some choices to make. They can build these compact homes together on one city lot, insert them individually into other developments – or do nothing.

The preferred solution, it seems to me, would be to adhere to Activate14’s original program and build a community of 12 cutting-edge homes clustered together.

If it succeeds, it can be repeated; if not, the homes can be integrated elsewhere into Raleigh’s urban fabric. They’re certainly small enough to be moved easily.

The city and its agencies have been handed a gift from a thoughtful team of talented designers – and they should take full advantage of it. It’s a model of caring, economy and scale, and an excellent example of well-designed architecture for all the people.

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 7:01 AM with the headline "Tiny houses for Raleigh’s homeless."