CityLab Daily: Can Tiny Homes Be A Homelessness Fix?
Also today: Can Sweden’s visionary wood city can outrun its real estate crisis? And how ride-hailing has changed in cities.
Portland has established seven villages filled with small pre-fab “sleeping pods” as a form of transitional housing.
Courtesy: City of Portland/KLik Concepts
Tiny homes have emerged as an increasingly popular solution to homelessness in US cities. A pioneer of the approach, Portland, Oregon, has launched several tiny home villages since the early 2000s. Each has dozens of structures just big enough to fit a bed and some other essential furniture, clustered around shared amenities and social services like mental health care.
Proponents say tiny homes safely and efficiently move unsheltered people off the streets. But some advocates for the unhoused question whether the model is a good use of resources — or if it distracts lawmakers from more permanent solutions, like building more long-term affordable housing, Hannah Wallace reports. Today on CityLab: Can Tiny House Villages Be a Homelessness Fix?