Can a bakers dozen of 10 by 40 foot houses end someone's homelessness, provide a healthy space to live, create a "village" network of collaboration and be a path towards building wealth, while also reviving a deserted Baltimore alley?
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| Hope Village on Holbrrok Street in Oliver (Photo: Philipsen) |
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| Wrap around porch, side and front yard (Photo: Philipsen) |
The officials dedicated 13 homes on what used to be 27 alley lots to a dozen applicants who had gone through a rigorous vetting process. Applicants, officials and onlookers toured the houses that feature a L-shaped porch, a living room, full kitchen, full bath and a small bedroom which can accommodate two beds. 11 days after the ceremonial opening no home is occupied yet, the finished homes still need the necessary use and occupancy permit (it will surely be issued, given that Housing Commissioner Kennedy attended the ribbon cutting) and a painter is pulling out all washer/dryer combos to touch up wall paint in the kitchens. One home is still waiting for a telephone pole to be moved so its rear and side siding and gutter work can be completed Reportedly it has no final designated taker yet. But other than theses small delays nothing stands between the new homeowners and a safe life: The houses are fully equipped with furniture, rugs, silverware, trash cans and even towels and a week's supply of food donated by Harris Teeter. The front yards are landscaped, the side-yards are sodded that will need some upkeep come spring.
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| Senate President Ferguson at the ribbon cutting (HABC) |
The 13 homes represent the Baltimore version of a concept that has been offered nationwide and in Canada as one of the responses to the housing crisis, the homeless crisis and the explosion of housing costs. The houses that are just a bit bigger than a single car garage are the extreme opposite of the trend to bigger is better of the last 70 years or so that has manifested itself in enormous SUVs and giant McMansions. Baltimore tried the tiny house concept once before with a version that never matured beyond the prototype. Will these 13 homes open up a new era?
Cities that really have a space problem, New York and San Francisco come to mind, would indeed profit from a mindset that small is beautiful and the realization that home sizes have run amok while the number of people living in a household have steadily declined, but the last thing such cities need is a suburban freestanding home. In those cities the tiny house's urban sibling, the micro apartment, makes eminently more sense.
Meanwhile, in Baltimore, a village of tiny houses could be a way of offering the homeless a transitional structure that is better than a tent city. Those tiny houses, to be truly affordable, though, need to be stripped of kitchen and bath, the two most expensive items which in a transitional village should be located in a communal service center just like on a campground. (Community Architect, 2017)
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| Full kitchen with eating space (Photo: Sovich) |
In 2016, we had adopted a tiny house amendment that would allow smaller footprint homes that are built slab on grade. ...the city zoning code does not allow tiny homes on wheels, but we do have the ability to build tiny smaller footprint homes, slab on grade (Alice Kennedy, Baltimore Housing Commissioner)
In spite of being grounded via footings and a concrete slab on grade (and not on wheels as some other tiny homes), no commercial lender was willing to lend the prospective owners the $25,000 sticker price
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| The bedroom is large enough for two beds side by side or stacked (Photo: Sovich) |
Certainly the homes offer an attractive reprieve for those who were homeless. With an efficient heat pump, good insulation and the low mortgage the monthly cost would be tolerable even for people at 30% AMI or slightly below. The City offers to cover the closing costs through a grant, provided the buyer stays in the home for a minimum of 5 years. Heating and cooling costs are further written down because the project used the Community Solar program to create off-site solar energy that get balanced with the actual usage in each home. The roofs were all oriented south for solar panel installation, however the community solar program was ultimately deemed to be more efficient and the only solar panel graces a small sheltered bench provided on the common ground that is slated to become a community garden. As houses are fee simple purchases, there is no HOA and no common ground as of yet. With the future community garden chances are good that a certain "village" feel among the new homeowners may emerge.
13 homes are just the infamous drop in the bucket in light of the city's estimated 3000 homeless. Can the project scale up? Senate President Ferguson assumed as much in his ribbon cutting speech. But one cannot assume that all those donations would be available for future projects. How to scale is a question that developer Sapperstein asks himself as much as architect Randy Sovich who has started thinking about urban affordable infill housing more than 30 years ago.
A precedent may come from our neighbors to the north, where the Canadian "Homes for Heroes" Foundation has villages for homeless veterans completed or underway in four cities.
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| Architect designed street numbers (Photo: Philipsen) |
Although the tiny-house movement is on fire culturally, the actual number of tiny homes out there is still quite small. Only a fraction of a percent of homes listed on multiple listing services qualify as a tiny home. (Realtor)
Key for any replicas would be a better relation between cost of construction and sale price. As any affordable housing builder knows, affordable units are not cheaper to build than market rate units. Smaller units are cheaper overall but the square foot price is actually higher. How can one achieve a drop in the cost of construction and open up other avenues than private charity to subsidize tiny homes in a similar way as other affordable housing?
For cost cutting various possibilities come to mind: Shipping containers turned out to not provide the expected savings, but prefabricated panels may cut cost. Pairing two mirrored units as duplexes would save 40% of the exterior surface finish, wall framing and also energy and still allow the wrapped porch. A smaller bathroom as it is used in "micro hotels" may be cheaper. Getting the land for free or putting more units on the same amount of land would save some cost. (The Hope Village cut the original alley house density in less than half). The biggest construction cost saving would come from scale itself. If various Baltimore CDCs would come together and develop a program of several hundred tiny homes scattered through neighborhoods in which previous small alley houses had been razed, builders could potentially see some of the same benefits they see in production homes by traditional home builders such as Ryan Homes or Lennar whose cost efficiency is the envy of every custom home builder. Plus the tiny house infill would restore the original Baltimore development patterns and fill the frequently not very useful alley green spaces
Some US states have started tiny home incentive programs, but Maryland is not yet one of those states. From financing to permitting and insuring, the path of the tiny home is not as well travelled as that of conventional homes and even with its new-found status in the residential code the tiny home still face many uphill battles.
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| Covered bench with solar charged receptacles for smart phones fabricated by Open Works (Photo: Philipsen) |
The trickiest question for the HOPE village in Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood is if these house will, indeed, create equity and wealth through homeownership.
Now, 13 families have an opportunity to unlock generational wealth with long-term stability and equity when they open the doors of their $25,000 homes. (Baltimore Banner)
The wealth barriers that red-lining created are still present and the problems of depressed home values in disinvested and formerly red-lined neighborhoods likely affects tiny homes as well. It is unlikely that the $25k investment will put the new owners "under water" but whether a sale would recoup the actual construction cost remains an open question. Even though Oliver has seen investment and is considered a turn-around community, only time will tell if tiny homes would appreciate in value in tandem with the full size neighbors.
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
The article was corrected after its initial publication. The original wrongly named Johns Hopkins as tutor. The actual tutoring is provided by UM-Social Work. The original stated that the total construction cost was 10 times the sales price. The Architect corrected this to 5 times.
On this blog:
Does the Tiny House solve a real problem? (2017)
Elsewhere:
Tiny Houses as a stepping stone to end homelessness
Evaluating Tiny Houses as a Solution to the Housing Affordability and Environmental CrisesHomes for Heroes (Canada)
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