U.S. cities try out homeless villages
The foreclosure crisis and growth in homeless camps across the United States has sparked a series of experiments with homeless villages and tiny houses.
With residents and some Edmonton city councillors looking to reduce the $1.7 million spent on cleaning up homeless camps each year, Postmedia reached out to Andrew Heben, a researcher who first lived in these camps, then helped set up several villages in Eugene, Oregon. He’s project director with SquareOne Villages and wrote the book Tent City Urbanism.
According to Heben, “these homeless camps are growing because there isn’t enough shelter in our cities. They grow and become more organized in every city where authorities aren’t continuously evicting people, something courts have ruled against when people have no housing alternatives.”
But the camps aren’t all bad. When Heben lived there, he found positive social dynamics. Left to themselves, people experiencing homelessness were organizing in a democratic, horizontal way to ensure the camps were safe and sanitary.
Opportunity Village was established in 2013 on one acre of city-owned land with some basic rules, but the format encourages residents to come together and make their own additional rules as needed. There are now at least a dozen of these villages in the northwestern states alone.
Heben says US$100,000 in donations and roughly US$140,000 in labour and gifts in kind was raised for setup costs.
“That paid for 30 tiny, woodframe bedroom units, plus a large yurt with a kitchen and computers. The residents all contribute toward utilities or help fundraise.
Opportunity Village is meant to be transitional housing. But the group’s second village upgraded the units slightly to offer more permanence.