Photo credit: ABC News
Shipping containers have been transformed into refuges for several unsheltered people. Known as “The Melody,” the gated micro-community no longer looks like a parking lot.It has artificial turf spread across the asphalt, potted plants and fed Adirondack chairs abound with a dog park.
The shipping containers have been made comfortable by being divided into 40 insulated apartments, each with a single bed, HVAC unit, microwave, small refrigerator, TV, sink, and bathroom.
Cynthia Diamond, a 61-year-old former line cook who was in a wheelchair and chronically homeless, said, “I’m just so grateful. I have my own door key. I ain’t got to worry about nobody knocking on my door, telling me when to eat, sleep or do anything. I’m going to stay here as long as the Lord allows me to stay here.”
City officials have been faced with years of rising homelessness rates. Across the US, they have embraced rapid housing options emphasizing three factors: small, quick and cheap. Unlike shelters, officials believe microcommunities offer stability that, combined with wraparound services, can more effectively put residents on the path to secure housing.
Denver has opened three micro-communities and converted five more hotels for formerly homeless people. In Austin, Texas, there are three villages of “tiny homes.” In Los Angeles, a 232-unit complex features two three-floor buildings of stacked shipping containers.
The Mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, said, “Housing is a ladder. You start with the very first rung. Folks that are literally sleeping on the ground aren’t even on the first rung.”
Over 1,500 people have benefited from the program; as of last month, over 80% were still in housing. Cheap units are particularly a boon for cities with high housing costs, where moving many people directly into apartments wouldn’t be financially feasible.
Atlanta’s and Denver’s programs are stepping stones to getting people jobs and more permanent housing. Denver aims to move people out within six months.
For most of his 28 years on earth, Eric Martinez has been in limbo between the street and the bottom rung. Martinez was flung into the revolving door of foster care at birth. He’s wrestled with substance use all while sleeping on couches and pitching tents.
He said, his eyes downcast, “It’s kind of demeaning, it makes me feel less of a person. I had to get out of it and lookout for myself at that point: it’s fight or flight, and I flew.”
Martinez’s encampment was swept and, along with others, directed into the micro-communities of small cabin-like structures with twin beds, desks, and closets. The city built three such communities with nearly 160 units total in about six months, at roughly $25,000 per unit. The 1,000 converted hotel units cost about $100,000 each.
Although the Salvation Army delivers meals, the micro-community contains bathrooms, showers, washing machines, small dog parks and kitchens.
The program represents an about-face from policies that for years focused on short-term group shelters and the ceaseless shuffle of encampments from one city block to the next. That system made it challenging to keep people scattered throughout the city, connected to services, and on the path to permanent housing.
The services in the two cities are largely centralized, offering residents of the micro-communities case management, counselling, mental health and substance abuse therapy, housing guidance and assistance obtaining anything from vocational skills training to a new pair of dentures.
The Atlanta site clinician, Peter Cumiskey, said, “We’re able to meet every level of the hierarchy of needs – from security and shelter, all the way up to self-actualization and the sense of community.”
An Emory University political science professor, Michael Rich, said the Melody and projects like it are a “very promising, feasible, and cost-effective way” to tackle homelessness. Rich, who studies housing policy, also said that transitional housing is still the first step toward permanent housing.
Similar ones inspire the programs in Denver and Atlanta, as well as in cities like Columbia, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. They offer privacy and security not found in congregate shelters or encampments. Giving each president their bathroom and kitchen is a crucial feature that helps set Melody apart, said Cathryn Vassel of Partners for Home, the non-profit that oversees the micro-community. Although residents are forbidden to have overnight guests, they are treated as independent persons.
The project cost about $125,000 per unit and took about four months to complete. Staffing and security operations cost about $900,000 a year. The Melody is the baby of Atkanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who aims to supply 500 units of rapid housing on city-owned land by December 2025. A 2023 count found there were 738 unsheltered people in Atlanta.
Mayor Johnston said\ he attended at least 60 town meetings as Denver tried to identify locations for the new communities and faced pushback from residents worried about trash and safety. He said, “What they are worried about is their current experience of unsheltered homelessness. We had to get them to see not the world as it used to exist, but the world as it could exist, and now we have the proof points of what that could be.”
“We need more Melodies as fast as possible,” said Courtney English, the mayor’s chief policy officer.
Source: AP
