The Times asked in our latest editorial for suggestions for housing homeless individuals over the summer season. Here are some of your responses:
Rachel Spillane: When I first heard that the temporary shelter for the winter had to put the homeless people back outside in April with tents and sleeping bags, I knew that was not a viable solution. There are emergency urban sleeper pods called “Amazing Grace Spaces,” micro houses, tiny houses, etc., that can and should be established here on the Island. There are many other cities across the U.S. that have established tiny homes (nicely designed) to house the homeless. What needs to happen is to find an area that is not intrusive to surrounding abutting areas to build these micro houses. We are better than this, we all need to step up and help either with money, or talents of building, etc. No one should be left outside to the elements; all human beings deserve a roof over their head.
Jean Tatelbaum: 1) Tiny houses in a cluster around a community center. 2) A couple of apartment buildings. One in each down-Island town.
James Jones: We need a lot of housing units, but not all of them have to be big or individual units. Instead of one house on one lot, or an apartment building, I am proposing that a tiny house development of perhaps 10 houses be constructed on one lot. As envisioned, it would have maybe 10 or more individual tiny houses that would be one-bedroom units sited around a landscaped community space green. There would be a common onsite waste disposal system serving all the units, thereby saving substantial costs that would be incurred with 10 separate systems. The central green could serve as the leaching/drainage area for the homes. This is a modern version of the communal housing projects that were built in a lot of places, Lexington, for example, in the ’60s and ’70s.
My idea would be to get individuals to be willing to fund a single tiny house within the overall project, while the overall project developer would be responsible for all of the common-area costs (land, roads, foundations, utilities, waste disposal, etc.). Such a program could result in social investment by the tiny house donors with potential tax benefits, while substantially reducing the cost to the developer. A win/win proposition. Houses could be for sale or rent or perhaps a mix of both, depending on need and market conditions.
