Tacoma’s Hilltop to get a tiny home village for the homeless. How’d that go in Olympia?
It was a standard question, at least for these types of interviews, but this time the answer was piercing — smashing any illusion that anything less was at stake.
Sitting at a long, collapsible table inside a greenhouse-like community meeting space at Olympia’s Plum Street Village, I asked 59-year-old Colin Towler where he thought he would be if it wasn’t for the the tiny home community surrounding us.
Dead, Towler told me with an alarming certainty.
Six months ago, Towler lost his job, he explained, and then his housing.
He had “about $200” to his name — enough to get him to San Francisco, he thought.
From there, Towler said he planned to end his life by jumping off a bridge.
“It was my backup plan,” Towler said. “I wasn’t going to live in the streets. I’m too old for that nonsense.”
It was a jarring acknowledgment and one that instantly crystallized just how much Plum Street Village has meant to Towler.
Instead of the alternative, Towler became one of dozens of people who have taken refuge at Plum Village since it opened in February.
A 29-unit tiny home community inconspicuously tucked behind the Yashiro Japanese Garden in downtown Olympia, Plum Street Village is operated by Seattle’s Low Income Housing Institute and part of Olympia’s multi-pronged response to the city’s homelessness crisis.
There are lessons to be learned here.
Why do any of them matter in Tacoma?
Because on Tuesday night, the City of Destiny followed Olympia’s lead, voting to fund a 22-unit tiny home village on Hilltop, also to be operated by LIHI.
On Wednesday, I toured Plum Street Village, which consists of 8-by-12-foot shelters, along with bathroom and shower facilities, a communal kitchen, a community meeting space and offices for LIHI staff.
Colin DeForrest, the city of Olympia’s homeless response coordinator, later described the village as a “bridge,” designed to help individuals move from living outdoors to something better.
The goal, DeForrest said, is to quickly move people from tiny homes into more permanent housing, whatever shape that takes — and as hard as that often is.
So far, DeForrest, who held a similar position in Tacoma before being hired in Olympia, considers it a success.
Plum Street Village site director John S. Brown agrees with the assessment. He said the village has helped to stabilize a segment of the city’s homeless population that’s ready for the personal assistance and structure it provides.
Drugs and alcohol are banned at Plum Street Village, he said, and along with regular meetings with case manages, residents are expected to adhere to a code of conduct and complete daily chores. The same will be true in Tacoma.
“I’m probably biased, because I’m on the ground, but I think it’s worked out well. I think it’s been better than most thought it would be,” Brown said.
Brown and DeForrest both noted that a number of Olympia residents initially were afraid the community would bring unintended consequences and problems — like drugs and crime — but that hasn’t been the case.
That will come as welcome news in some areas of Hilltop, where Tacoma’s new tiny home community will soon take shape.
The city hopes the new village, which will be built on undeveloped property at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 8th Street, will provide an alternative for individuals now living a few blocks away at a growing tent encampment at People’s Park.
DeForrest cautioned that it’s important to identify individuals best suited for such a tiny home community, noting that it’s not for everyone.
People with the most barriers and challenges to being housed might not be successful, he said. In Olympia’s experience, tiny homes have been best suited for those ready and able to take the next step.
“A tiny home village fills a gap for the individuals who are ready to transition out of the mitigation sites. They’re on the path to being housed,” DeForrest said. “It’s a bridge from tent stability to permanent housing.”
“If the city of Tacoma thinks all of these people from People’s Park are just going to go into these tiny houses, that’s not going to be successful,” he continued. “You’ve got to get the right people.”
So what does success look like, and at what price does it come?
In nine months of operation, according to Brown, Plum Street Village has helped 10 individuals successfully moved out of the tiny home community and into housing.
Eight moved into a place of their own, while two were reconnected with family.
As The Olympian’s Abby Spegman has reported, LIHI’s one-year contract with Olympia listed setup costs of $405,000 and operating costs of $613,000.
In Tacoma, the City Council agreed to pay LIHI $388,000 to operate its tiny home community for no longer than eight months.
In a revelation that should be shocking to absolutely no one, DeForrest said Olympia’s success moving individuals out of Plum Street Village has been hamstrung by a lack of permanent housing options.
Tacoma certainly knows the feeling, and — given the acute shortage — will almost certainly have the same experience.
That won’t make it a failure, DeForrest said.
“If success is completely hinged on housing as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, well, that’s great, but you also have to understand our system is not equipped for that yet. So some of these individuals might take some time ,” DeForrest said.
For Towler, on the other hand, any talk of measuring success of Olympia’s tiny home experiment takes a much more individual tone — as it should.
Plum Street Village literally saved his life, Towler believes. He now has a job at Safeway, is looking for another and hopes to move out on his own in the coming months.
“They’re not perfect. There are no singing angels here, but there are very few singing angels anywhere,” Towler said of his temporary home.
“The longer you leave people out in the cold, the harder is gets to bring them back.”
