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Joe Supervielle:
Welcome to Voices in Local Government, an ICMA podcast. My name is Joe Supervielle. Today I'm joined by Yuriko Ruizesparza, Brielle Acevedo and Marisa Crater, to explain tiny homes, how local government can bridge the gap from shelter to permanent housing. Thanks for joining today.
Yuriko Ruizesparza:
Glad to be here.
Joe Supervielle:
Quickly on titles. Yuriko is the community service supervisor of the city of Baldwin Park. Baldwin Park is kind of the hub of the San Gabriel Valley there as part of LA, which we'll get into a few more details here in a minute. Marisa, executive director of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments and Regional Housing Trust, COG as we're going to refer to it as we keep going as kind of the agency. And Brielle, the Housing Trust Manager of the same organization. So again, I really appreciate your time. These three also gave an excellent session at ICMA Annual Conference in Columbus, it is available on demand. The podcast webpage will have a link to that and if you were not able to attend, you can still register for digital access to that and other great sessions.
So before we get into the Valley there and the COG and some of the details, for others listening who might be skeptical from the start, like hey, that's LA, they are huge, their budget's huge, their population's huge even their perceived problem with the homeless is even bigger than other locations. A big part of your presentation, what we want to cover today is scalability. How does this tiny homes program scale to other locations that are also, regardless of the exact scope, facing similar challenges?
Marisa Crater:
Sure. I actually think that was really what inspired us to take this approach with the tiny homes. We are part of the county of Los Angeles, which has 10 million residents, so it's enormous. So the San Gabriel Valley has 2 million residents and we have 31 cities. So the individual cities in our region are much smaller and much more similar to cities across the country and the size of the population of people experiencing homelessness in cities, again is smaller. So we have a range of, some cities only have five people experiencing homelessness up to maybe, I think our maximum is about 500 in some of our larger cities.
So we had been told before that it was not financially reasonable to have a shelter with less than a hundred beds, that it wouldn't pencil out. But we knew that that was far too large for any of our cities and too big of an ask. So that's where we came across this concept of doing the tiny homes and being able to create a model that was financially viable at 25 beds. So that was something we worked really hard on to make something that was scaled to the right size of our cities. And part of it is the cost of the individual units, but then we also just really worked hard on the service delivery model to make sure that it was comparable to a larger congregate shelter.
Joe Supervielle:
Okay, so this is not downtown LA, it's not even necessarily the immediate suburbs, I don't want to say outskirts, but the Valley there is comparable to other normal locations across the country where as you said, a hundred bed facility maybe in the past was kind of that marker. That's the only way to make it financially sustainable. But then that was maybe too big for a lot of locations so this is the solution which is exactly why it's scalable. So from there, can you give the quick version again, this is in the session, even the PowerPoint that's available, but what is a tiny home? I think people can do the math and figure it out, but can you give us some specifics on the square feet, heating, cooling, locking doors, that kind of thing? What actually is it physically in these sites that have 25 of them?
Brielle Acevedo:
Sure, I can take that. So our tiny homes for individuals are eight by eight, so roughly 64 square feet. They include a bed and a desk and some shelving. Also outlets for clients to be able to charge their laptops or their phones. They have an overhead light, they have AC and heat, a fire extinguisher and a smoke detector. And then as you mentioned, a locking door, which we have been told is just so life changing for people to be able to come inside and really get a good night's rest without worrying about someone entering their tent or otherwise being able to access them when they're most vulnerable. At our family site, our tiny homes are larger. They're about eight and a half by 17 or 144 square feet.
Joe Supervielle:
Okay. And you said it there, it's not just about the stats or even the cooling, the sense of security and the literal being more secure is something that is maybe the biggest deal of all and is the first step to bridging that gap to permanent housing or making people secure enough to progress. So Yuriko or anyone else can you, I think the math was mentioned a little bit, but how did you make the math work on cost per unit?
Brielle Acevedo:
So when we first started, we offered this as a one year pilot program to cities that were interested in participating. So the city of Baldwin Park ended up hosting our first project Esperanza Villa and we allocated $500,000 to that project, which ends up being about $25,000 per unit. And the way that these costs break down, it's just under $9,000 for the tiny home unit that we use at that site, which is a pallet shelter. And then it also includes the communal spaces. So the restrooms and the offices, we have a dog run at that site. Some of the additional features, so dining tables.
But really the way we broke down the cost was based on some of the really important ratios. So the reason this site is 25 units is because a best practice is to have a one to 25 ratio between your case manager and your participants at the site. And then another figure we talked about in our presentation too is the best practice ratio with the restrooms. So you want to have a one to 15 or better ratio for the restrooms. So those numbers really help you back into how big you're going to make your site. If you want to go 50 beds, you need two case managers and then you would need to divide by 15 to determine your restrooms.
Marisa Crater:
Yeah. I think just like one thing to really keep in mind and how we were able to achieve that incredible $25,000 unit cost was first of all, I do want to mention the city did donate the land. It was land that was already owned by the city, so we didn't have any land costs associated with this project. But additionally for any city thinking about this site selection is incredibly important. So having a flat surface where you don't have to spend a lot of money grading it to be flat and ability to connect to utilities, that's where you're going to achieve in our experience the most savings. So you want to have a place where you can easily access electric, gas and sewer and water because those are the costs that are going to way out scale in the costs of the actual housing unit. So when you're thinking about a site, you want to make sure that all of those are relatively easily accessible.
Joe Supervielle:
So that math all works out, but the funding itself, is there a mix from the county, the city, the individual cities or towns? You mentioned the Measure H tax in your presentation. Where's the actual money come from? Both to build the site but then ongoing operations?
Marisa Crater:
Sure. So we were fortunate enough to receive a state earmark from our senator, Senator Susan Rubio. And she really believed in the work that we were doing at the Regional Housing Trust. So we were able to use that funding to fund the capital costs and the first year pilot. I think because of the success that we were able to demonstrate the fact that we were able to have the site operational and be able to operate it at about $85 a day per participant, we convinced the county to develop a countywide program for these types of sites for operations. So for the second year we received approximately $800,000 to continue to operate the site from the county through a mixture of different funding sources that they were getting. But I think that really spoke to us being able to prove that this was a financially viable model.
Joe Supervielle:
Okay. Yuriko, can you give your take on how it worked at Baldwin Park, your role in the process and then also how that can be replicated elsewhere?
Yuriko Ruizesparza:
Of course. I think it really starts with our leadership. We do have a very supportive city council and a multidisciplinary team in the city of Baldwin Park. That includes many administrators, public works, director of community services and recreation, you have PD, you have the planning division and economic development as well as housing. This team really came together to address the need for interim housing in our city. And one of the things that I think it's really important and can help to address the scalability in other communities is attending to the needs of your individual city. So this program because it was a pilot program and part of this innovative process, it really allowed the city to dive in on some of the specifics that were needed in our community. So addressing the individual population was primarily one of our first goals because of our homeless count, which was very high for individuals.
And then moving into our second site, we also identified families needing a huge need for interim housing. So I think that when communities are thinking about this is really addressing what is required, what is wanted in your community and engaging in that process. So engaging residents very early on. So the city really took on this project from a very local perspective, we really wanted to ensure that our local residents were part of the project. And this really made it possible for other communities and other cities around our region to start thinking about how when we all work at one task together we can really have an impact. So other cities like Montebello and of course round two with our city of Baldwin Park, we have really stepped up and addressed local homelessness. So we are incredibly proud the city that the entire team is just excited about what these opportunities can bring to our residents and how locally we are making a huge impact with our regional and county-wide homeless issues.
Joe Supervielle:
Yeah. It's clear how enthusiastic all three of you are and I can imagine everyone else that was involved. But on the other hand, it probably does get complicated when there are that many entities involved. The kind of proverbial red tape of local government bureaucracy can become a factor. So how did you avoid that or overcome that?
Marisa Crater:
Well, one thing that we stole from... We have a really big construction authority and we do grade separations and hundred million dollar projects and transportation. So something we use in our capital projects department that we brought over to this was our weekly delivery team meetings and I think that was critical. So all the representatives from each department and from the COG and the Trust that were involved in some aspect of the project, we all met every single week and we kept ourselves accountable and then that was our opportunity to communicate. So Yuriko and Brielle were working on the procurement for the service provider. And then we had Sam and the public works team doing all of the site prep and every week we talked about issues, challenges. We had a delay happening on the electrical panel, what we were going to do, was that going to affect the opening?
And I think that was a really great way for us to collaborate, work together and solve challenges. And actually think it was really beneficial to have multiple agencies because it helped us something that we might be quicker at we took the lead on. So if we felt like we might be more able to quickly do a procurement and go through our process to do an RFP, then the COG took the lead on that. But if the city of Baldwin Park already had a vendor that was able to do XYZ and they could just add to that contract to have work done there, we had them be the lead on painting or whatever. So I think we actually benefited from having multiple agencies rather than it being a hindrance.
Yuriko Ruizesparza:
I think that we needed part of this project was a very innovative approach, so we needed new ways and rethink government. So that collaborative governance piece is really what made probably this and other projects that have evolved as a result of this initial project to address homeless services is really engaging everyone at the table from the state to the county to our regional partners at the COG and the Trust as well as other local cities. We need to rethink how we do things in government and sometimes it is that lack of timeliness to get these projects out. But with this we were able to turn it over in about six months, which is impressive.
And having everyone at the table engage in that collaborative governance model really just took it a different direction. Before it was a very top down or bottom up approach, this time around it was like very, it just engaged so many different players that it really was a true collaboration across the agencies. And of course needing to balance out that dynamic around who... We took a stab at it, all of us took a really honest and great stab at ensuring that this project would work. So that's really what made us I think successful and can encourage other cities and counties to think outside the box because we really do need outside of our regular process solutions to address this huge, huge problem.
Joe Supervielle:
And I laughed a little bit when I even used the word bureaucracy because that implies this nameless, faceless government. But when you actually start talking to individuals like the three of you, you can see the care that's put into it and the energy and the time and that's different. And the collaboration sounds great but still did the COG have the authority over the budget and deadlines and decision making? Collaboration is great but ultimately there still has to be deadlines and assignments given and accountability. So how did you balance that? Marisa as executive director did that fall on you? Not fall on you, you're the dictator of the whole thing, but how did you balance the input from so many locations and agencies with decision making that still at some point there has to be an individual or a small team making those calls?
Marisa Crater:
Yeah. And I again would say that's really where the delivery team group was the key piece of how we were able to get it done. We had set an opening target date and so we worked backwards from there.
But we had a memorandum of agreement between the two agencies. But we did leave it a little bit more flexible than we have in other instances because we knew that the COG or the Trust might be the lead contracting agency on certain items and Baldwin Park might be on others. Every purchase that Baldwin Park did got ended up being approved through the Housing Trust and they had a set budget that Brielle spoke to. But I really honestly think it was truly collaborative.
We talked about every issue and it was like we need to buy outdoor furniture to be able to have a dining area that's going to cost X. How does that fit into our budget? Are we able to save money other places? What can we move around in order to achieve the opening by the date that we wanted to and be able to get all of the elements that we wanted and can we get other stuff donated? So we really truly worked as a team, more so almost than any other project that I've done where it was the six or seven of us that regular came to delivery team came to decisions about how everything was going to be done.
Joe Supervielle:
So you kind of gave the explanation on the actual tiny house itself. Brielle, can you give a little bit more on the full site? One of the goals was reducing the service calls in that same area. Can you explain a little bit more about the site itself and the participants? Specifically one question is how are the selections made? Is that part of your team?
Brielle Acevedo:
Sure. So we worked with the city to identify the site and as you mentioned, it's a city owned parcel. It used to be a space where they stored some of their ewaste I believe. So it was a public works yard. And this site was also perfect because it had been identified as part of the homelessness point in time count as an area that was a hotspot. So it meant that there were a lot of individuals experiencing homelessness within this area, its across the street from a Walmart, which used to have a 24/7 parking so it was a natural gathering space for people that were maybe living out of their cars or otherwise unhoused. So the location, since it was city owned and since it was, you're really bringing this resource to the people that need it, that's how it was selected.
It's a long and a little bit thinner site. So we really made sure to develop the site in a way that really maximized its potential. So when you walk in, it's the security booth and immediately behind there is the restrooms and the laundry so that they have oversight of those communal areas. And then going out from there are all of the individual units, there's a dining area and a dog run at the back. Really just wanted to remove all of the barriers to housing that we could so wanted people that had a pet to be able to come inside and not feel like they're making the choice between shelter and their animal.
And in terms of selecting participants for the site, it does depend on your funding source. So that was the really great part about the Trust being the funder was we didn't have to go through quite as many layers of red tape and using the countywide system or another process. So really it's a first come first serve resource to clients that are experiencing homelessness within the city of Baldwin Park. So referrals go through our service provider at the site, which is Volunteers of America, and they maintain a wait list. So as soon as a unit opens up, we're able to pull the next client from the wait list and get them moved in.
And some of the responsibilities for participants entering the site is that they need to be able to handle their activities of daily living. So to be able to shower by themselves, feed themselves, otherwise take care of themselves and not need to be in a different type of facility. And that they work with Volunteers of America on their housing plan. This is interim housing and we're so grateful to get people indoors, but ultimately we want to get them into their forever homes. So that's the other requirement is that they work with the service provider to achieve those goals on their permanent housing plan.
Joe Supervielle:
Do you have a target, I don't want to say turnaround, but is there a range or a timeframe that's not necessarily a hard rule or kick people out, but a goal as this is intended as a transition from homelessness to permanent housing, is there a timeframe that you target?
Brielle Acevedo:
Sure. So I'll kick this one off and then have Marisa add to it. But basically 90 days was our original goal. We wanted clients to have enough time to settle in and start working on their housing plan and services plan. We did get some clients moved out really quickly. We were surprised to find out that a majority of the initial residents were actually senior women and it was really awesome to get two of them housed within the first 120 days or so. We have since encountered some difficulties based on some discrepancies between voucher rent and median rent in Baldwin Park and a couple of other issues like credit checks. But I would love for Marisa to give a little more background on what the COGs doing to address those issues.
Marisa Crater:
Yeah, so I think touching a little bit on what you were both saying is that I want to highlight that this is just one of a suite of solutions that we're working on to help people experiencing homelessness. But on this particular case, this is the first step. It's to get them stabilized and indoors and start working on a housing plan. But we know that that's not the end. We want to get them into a permanent location. We do have challenges. LA County is a very difficult rental market and the amount that is reimbursed from the voucher and the average cost of apartment, it's a razor thin margin. And so we're often finding that the voucher is a hundred dollars less than the cost of units that we can find.
Additionally, people experiencing homelessness, they can have a lot of difficult experience in their life and it's hard for them to just send them out and say, "Hey, here's a voucher, go find an apartment." So one of the things that we're working on now is housing linkages to do that difficult work to help them find apartments because they may not know the process of going on Craigslist, going on the internet, finding apartments, how do they easily get to apartments, make open house time. So we're doing that really, really on the ground work. And also importantly, having either service provider staff or city staff, whoever it may be, go with the participants to the sites, to the units because it's often clients may not present well, they might be very, very nervous when they're talking to a landlord.
So helping convince the landlord to take a chance on a client and understand what a voucher is, that this is actually guaranteed income for rental payments and having that level of comfort is something we're having a service provider or a city staff person go out with the participant is really critical. So that's a new area that we're working on and we've seen some incredible success working with Baldwin Park and Montebello and taking that much, much more hands on approach. Even though the systems exist, the vouchers exist that doesn't necessarily get people into homes. So we're doing that really, really on the ground work to help people.
Joe Supervielle:
Yuriko, I was going to ask, can you give an example from Baldwin Park there about the community outreach? Because again, it's a sensitive subject and residents, citizens, they want to help and they're they're mindful of this but also there's some stereotypes or pushback like yes, let's help them but I don't necessarily want that near my neighborhood or next door to me, which is difficult. And then Marisa was mentioning the landlord outreach, but how did that go in Baldwin Park?
Yuriko Ruizesparza:
Absolutely. So the city of Baldwin Park started to engage in the city's implementation plan since 2018. So from the very beginning we had everyone at the table. We had what was called a 360 stakeholder model input process. So we literally went out to the community, engaged everyone, we wanted to hear both the positive and the negative of what homelessness looked like to them, their experience with it, even the ones not in my backyard. We really wanted to hear it all. We wanted to hear from the school district, the faith-based community, our city leaders, our residents, and even people with lived experience about their experience being homeless in Baldwin Park sometimes for generations. Others for... That because we are the hub of the San Gabriel Valley people that were just kind of what we consider transitional homelessness, that they're just going from city to city. We have a metro link, which is a big location where people just travel through our city.
So community engagement really took on its kind of own place in this project. I think that through that engagement we were able to offer a variety of different platforms where these groups can engage. So we did start this project during the pandemic, which was also very difficult to do, but we offered virtual classes or virtual workshops that allowed them to know who was going to be in the project. So our first session was Who's Next Door and really talked about who will be living there, debunking some of the myths around what the site could possibly look like. We did take time to educate the community about non congregate shelters and that it was not going to be something like where people had to line up outside of the project, it was not going to be an at attractor, it hasn't. And our community engagement program really allowed us to learn the best practices, what the community actually wanted from the program. With the lived experience, we learned that we do have a lot of seniors that are experiencing homelessness in our community.
And then that we also found an amazing just group of supporters that were not only were supportive of the site but are actually engaging in ongoing volunteer opportunities, donations from as small as the Girl Scouts to senior programs that are coming together in a true sense of community to support the projects, both the individual Esperanza Villa as well as Serenity Homes. So we're super excited about that. And we have found that it does take that community approach. So in terms of engaging landlords, creating those housing linkages, it has to be once again at the local level because relying on just these systems that exist within our overall LA county COC, it's a great way to tap into them. But we also know that nothing beats that personal referrals and getting landlords that perhaps may have a back unit or an extra room in their homes. So we are very excited about the housing linkage program, which will create an opportunity to continue that local community engagement to ensure that we move people from the interim housing sites into their permanent housing solution.
Joe Supervielle:
Yeah. And there are other complimentary programs. I know workforce development, food recovery, recreation, crisis intervention, these are the things that are essential to complete that bridge. It's not just a matter of where the physical house or permanent housing is, it's all these other things that come into play to actually help the people move forward. Thanks for all that background information. I suppose for the listeners who are still early on in the process, whether they want to replicate this closely or just have parallel programs, what are some lessons learned that you can share with them that you wish you knew when this started a couple years back. Not necessarily just one went smoothly, but what went wrong, unexpected hurdles, just anything you want people just starting out to know now. I know site selection was one on my list I want to make sure we brought up. But anything else or details there that you can share your experience with the audience?
Marisa Crater:
I want to say the supply chain issues are real. And I really want to credit Baldwin Park for being creative, but we literally could not get the types of paint that we needed to paint the asphalt and we couldn't be stuck to a very specific color selection for it because we had to say those colors that we wanted for the paint are not available and if we stick to exactly what was in the design, we're going to delay six weeks. We also had different shelters get stuck on a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean. So we switched vendors midway through and we've had both vendors, they're both great, but we had to switch which ones we used at this site. So we were very much impacted by supply chain. Also with electrical panel, that was another challenge. And again, shout out to public works for being very creative and being able to use an oversized panel and make that all work.
But I think the overall from all that is just, we say relentless optimism. Don't let that get you down and give up. Okay, that happened and that's terrible that those pallet or whatever are stuck in a boat, but we're going to move on and we're going to keep going and we're going to get something different and we'll be fine and we can do it. So everything is not going to be super, super easy, but it's doable and be creative and this is your chance to do something so incredible that you just have to keep pushing. So I think that's our lesson learned about it was you have to be flexible because you're building a site, you're trying to build it quickly so you're going to use what you can and just be willing to change things on the go as you need to.
Joe Supervielle:
Brielle, did you have any lessons learned?
Brielle Acevedo:
I do. So Yuriko added the really positive side of community engagement and I can't stress how important it's to really get out there. I think having those in-person site tours was really critical, but something we learned at a different project that didn't proceed forward was how important it was to get ahead of the message. So there had been some discussion just during the application phase of, oh the city is considering turning in an application for this pilot program and a certain population of the community got wind of it, started putting out some messaging, those platforms like next door that can turn negative really quickly. So really making sure that when this was brought to council or even before that materials were made available that were true fact sheets that really showed what the project was going to look like. And also that those are made available in the languages spoke within that community.
So we are going to talk more about this later, but we have a resource which is basically just a repository of all of the documents that we put together. We want to make this easier for other communities. So that also includes those fact sheets and community engagement materials. So it's just super helpful to get out ahead of this and then to continue to engage the community as you're going. So ongoing volunteer opportunities. We were really, really thrilled to see some residents that had potentially been against the project during the community engagement process, attend the city council meeting and actually be in support of the project after really getting all of those hard hitting questions off their chest and learning more about what it was going to look like. And very proud of the Baldwin Park police department data, which shows that calls for service in the area are down since the site opened.
Joe Supervielle:
Yeah, this is all to help others, but there can be the skeptical resident. Ultimately this is supposed to help everyone. It's supposed to improve the full community, reduce those service calls, make it safer for everyone. So I don't think it's unfair to bring that up or ask those questions. Like you said, even if it's uncomfortable, once those questions are asked, they can be answered and the skeptic can be turned around into a supporter because it really does help everyone.
Brielle Acevedo:
We definitely tackled that question of property values and some fears around what the site would look like. And I know we can't thank public works enough, but they created the most beautiful entryway fence for the site. It's wood panel that's up lit. You would not know what the site was if you didn't actually know what it was. But this can be a resource to the community, it beautified what was once a site that just had a chain link fence around it. And I think we were able to really assuage those concerns about this being a blight or otherwise detractor for the community.
Joe Supervielle:
Yuriko, what was your main takeaway, especially from the city side and our audience always likes hearing about like, well how did you deal with council? Because that's not always easy. What were your main takeaways or lessons learned?
Yuriko Ruizesparza:
Yeah, lessons learned from the city is really to engage your leadership, engage counsel early on. We had a series of study sessions that walked through the project. We were able to leverage technical assistance from the Trust in terms of ensuring that all of the information, the architectural support, the community engagement process was very transparent, that we were very in this together in terms of creating solutions that we worked across different agencies and different partners to ensure that we addressed the unhoused community in our city. So council was a true champion in our effort to get the site up and running and not only just one site, but two in a matter of just one year. So I know they are very proud of the work that we have been able to accomplish with these tiny homes.
Joe Supervielle:
Yeah, you said a phrase there, I think city and county managers probably perked up. You said council was our champion, so they don't have to be the enemy or the adversary to get things done in this case if you show them the math works and obviously the cause is important, I think, I don't want to say easy, but I think people will get on board and the elected officials can be an ally, not a side that makes it difficult.
Really just two more questions. Marisa covered this a little bit and even Yuriko there, but how do you balance the humanity on this topic compared to that what can be cold math on this is the budget, this is how many people are homeless, this is how many maybe we think we can help in a year or two years, five years. I think feedback ICMA has received in the past on this topic is a little bit of just let the politicians deal with it. It's also been a little bit of, this is so overwhelming and even depressing, the numbers don't seem to work out. And then we're talking about numbers, but these are still real people. It's almost a rhetorical question, but how do you three balance that in a nutshell? Which you've kind of covered as we've talked over this last half hour plus, but it seems difficult and for the people listening who haven't started yet might be one reason they haven't yet. So how can they overcome that?
Marisa Crater:
Well, one thing when you talk about the actual costs, so we've done a ton of different homeless programs. And a typical way that a lot of cities deal with trying to help people experiencing homelessness and having them kind of in a holding pattern until we can get them a voucher, is to place them in a motel. And when you compare the cost of this to placing a person in a motel, this is less expensive. I can say that from getting a lot of invoices from cities where you're spending $90 a night just to house the person to no end. For up to six months, you're not getting the meals included in that and you're not getting the case management. I'm just saying the cost of the room is $90.
Then the motels frequently want to hit you with damaged charges because they know that they're serving a population. Whether or not those damages are real, you're getting several thousand dollars in room damaged charges afterwards. So just from that perspective, this is much less expensive than getting a motel room and placing a client there. So that's like if you want to look at cold hard math, that's the case for doing it.
Additionally, we run a lot of programs. Our Montebello program focuses on high acuity populations. Those are the same people that the fire department is going out to every day in the riverbed. Having them go to the shelter operations, Stay Safe in Montebello and be able to get them stabilized, get them into outpatient treatment is much less expensive for the city than for the city to be sending a fire department squad out there into the riverbed to deal with whatever issues are. So if you want to make the financial case, this is the financially much more sustainable thing to do than to be either placing people in motels or leaving them in encampments where you're constantly getting calls for service in the encampments.
Joe Supervielle:
So is it fair to say a city county manager shouldn't or does not have to feel guilty about looking at numbers and not forgetting that these are people, but from what I just took away from that answer was it's not mutually exclusive. You can look at that math and that financial cost and that doesn't mean you don't care about the actual people. Is that accurate?
Marisa Crater:
Yeah, that's where it's crazy. It is both the compassionate and morally right thing to do, but it's also the financially logical thing to do. It's in complete alignment to do these types of projects because it's where you're not having to make that choice between the two. You are treating the person with respect, dignity, you're getting them help, you're helping them deal with their trauma, but you're also saving a lot of money on the city service provision side.
Joe Supervielle:
Okay. So resources, Brielle mentioned them earlier, we're going to link everything on the podcast page and on the ICMA webpage. In addition to that, your website is sgvrht.org/tinyhomes and that has some examples and some success stories that people can check out. I mentioned it earlier, the tiny homes conference session and slide deck that goes with it is available on demand through December 31st, 2022. Anyone who missed conference can still register for the digital on-demand, it'll be available. The last question is, aside from those resources, what is the one step city county manager, you've convinced me, I want to either do the tiny home project specifically or something very similar. Who is my first phone call? What is the next thing I have to do so I'm not sitting on this for three months? What can I do today?
Marisa Crater:
So I would say there's two things, I can't say one. Two things would be from a practical point of view, start getting a list of sites that might work. And again, it doesn't need to be huge sites, but start thinking about site selection. That's super important. Everything else we have for you, all the RFPs, all the specs, everything. We don't have a list of your sites. And then the second thing related to what Yuriko is talking about, I would recommend organizing a service activity for your council, other key stakeholders and try to find another tiny home in or another similar project near you. Go out and do a meal service or some type of activity that's going to get people really inspired and excited and might challenge some of the ideas of what they have, of what it would be like. There's nothing like going to the site and talking to the residents. So we've done that and I think that's a really good way to change minds and hearts about it.
Joe Supervielle:
Brielle?
Brielle Acevedo:
Great. And I would just add to what Marisa said, I'd say that step two is to reach out. So any of us are happy to answer questions. And I think if you are lucky enough to have a tiny home site near you, more likely than not they're going to be happy to welcome you and show you the site. That was probably step two for our team we went and we toured the Redondo Beach Tiny Home site. You learn so many questions just by being there, be able to get on your hands and knees and figure out how they secured the units to the floor or ask questions about why they chose that specific type of office to be used at the site.
And each site is a little bit different and yours will have it's own nuances too, but rather than spend a ton of time trying to figure something else out, there are sites like this across the country now, there's even one in Hawaii. So reach out to another site, get some feedback, and we are more than happy to help you both with tiny homes and if you need a regional housing entity, we're always happy to talk Housing Trust and how you can build collaborative assistance across your cities and your jurisdiction.
Joe Supervielle:
Okay, well Yuriko, Brielle, Marisa, thanks for sharing your insight with others in local government and thanks for the great work you've done in Baldwin Park and the San Gabriel Valley. Appreciate it.
Episode is sponsored by
Guest Information
Yuriko Ruizesparza, Community Services Supervisor, City of Baldwin Park, CA
Marisa Crater, Executive Director, San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments/ Regional Housing Trust
Brielle Acevedo, Housing Trust Manager, San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust
Episode Notes
Leaders from Baldwin Park and the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust explain how Tiny Homes is a financially sound and effective way for local government to bridge the gap from shelter to permanent housing.
- How Tiny Home sites are selected and set up.
- Scalability to show how this program can help your town address the homeless crisis and reduce service calls. This is not just an L.A. problem or L.A. solution.
- Complementary programs, including: workforce development, food recovery, landlord outreach, recreation, crisis intervention, prevention, and diversion.
- Funding and the financial case for the program.
- How to engage with city council and the public.
San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust with RFP templates, case studies, and more to help take a first step.
Contact Brielle Acevedo with questions about Tiny Homes or Regional Housing Trusts at bacevedo@sgvrht.org.
ICMA Annual Conference Presentation Slide Show
Sponsor Resources
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