Renew Our Community offers tiny solutions for major problem

Sometimes big problems can have tiny solutions.

The homeless services group Renew Our Community is hoping to reduce crowding at area homeless shelters by giving those with nowhere to go a little place of their own; specifically a 120-square-foot house on wheels.

ROC founder Dale Dove said he got the idea after attending a national “Tiny House” conference, and now has what he hopes will be the first of many such homes under construction locally; hoping to reduce the number of men filling beds at temporary shelters.

“Our community needs a solution to the housing problem,” Dove said. “There’s just too little affordable housing, and what sparse housing we do have gets snatched up by families with children.”

Tiny houses are the product of a growing trend of homeowners voluntarily downsizing to smaller, more efficient living spaces, usually between 100 and 400 square feet, in order to save money on the roof over their heads. Dove calls them the pad of choice for “urban hippies,” but says homes that cost a minimal expense to build and own could create opportunities for the homeless too.

“If one of these houses is good enough for a college-educated urban hippie, it should be good enough for somebody making minimum wage,” Dove said.

The ROC’s tiny home will be come fully equipped with sleeping quarters and storage place, plus a small kitchen and a full bathroom. Dove hopes to sell it to a deserving tiny homeowner for no more than $12,000, or $100 per square foot.

‘More of a burden’

The first tiny home will be built at a time when shelters are seeing some of the highest numbers of people in need. Since the men’s warming shelter at Bethel United Methodist Church opened Nov. 15, the volunteer-operated center has seen a 30 percent increase in the number of men they serve, said shelter chairwoman Liza Holmes.

“We’re averaging 31 to 35 men a night,” Holmes said of a shelter with 25 regular beds. “We’ve had 70 different men use our services this year … and it hasn’t even been that cold yet.”

When the main shelter inside Bethel is full, any overflow crowds are sent to the church’s gym, which creates a new funding challenge “because it’s like operating a whole different shelter,” Holmes said. The shelter has had to seek more donations at the church to keep the additional space open, including a $5,000 grant this month from Bank of America.

The demand has created frustration among the warming center’s clients. At the end of November, a security person was struck in the face by a man angry over the lack of beds in the shelter.

To make matters worse, Bethel’s gym won’t be available to the shelter after Dec. 30 as the church needs the space for a soup kitchen over the winter.

Instead, men who show up to eat dinner at Bethel at 6 p.m. nightly will be taken by ROC volunteers to another center at Emmanuel Church of the Nazarene for the night, until the shelter closes at 8 a.m. After being taken four miles out of the city, there won’t be any regular transportation back to Rock Hill for those in the overflow center, unless the weather is bad.

From what Holmes has heard from other service organizations in York County and Charlotte, demand is up all around this year compared to last winter. Around a third of those spending the night there have never used their services before, according to shelter records.

“My personal opinion is that it’s just because the area is growing so much,” Holmes said. “It’s putting more of a burden on people who are lower middle class and below, and we’re going to continue to see more of that as we grow.”

Under construction

The first tiny houses may not be ready in time to relieve the pressure this winter. Dove hopes to begin construction of the home in January at the ROC center on East White Street. Men from the ROC Works program will provide the labor. The same program has provided woodwork and construction for ongoing renovations at the historic Fennell House on North Confederate Avenue.

To keep the homes affordable, Dove says buyers should spend no more than $30 a month on utilities, even if it means it has to hook up to a septic tank and put solar panels on the roof.

“If you could park it, it could connect to the sewer,” he said, “but if it has to move, it will need a camper reservoir.”

Dove would prefer to see a tiny village of such houses form, preferably in a location where they would have access to services. But the tiny homes won’t meet the minimum footage requirement for a home in Rock Hill, so the homes may be regulated as campers, which might limit how long they can be parked in one location. Dove said he hopes local churches will offer the tiny homes space to set up residence.

He he also hopes to have something to offer once the warming shelter closes for good in mid-March, when the demand for beds will need to be redirected somewhere else.

“Unless something religiously significant happens, March is going to come,” Dove said. “And then those people will have nowhere to go.”

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Renew Our Community offers tiny solutions for major problem."