Portland Tiny House Concept

An example of a tiny house that could be built using recycled material and be easy to construct in just a few days (Courtesy of TECHDWELL)

Portland is preparing to endorse the construction of communities of tiny houses on publicly owned land to get homeless people off the street and offer low-income residents safe, clean and cheap places to live.

Josh Alpert, Mayor Charlie Hales' director of strategic initiatives said the question isn't whether the so-called micro-communities will happen, but when.

Tiny houses offer a cheap and replicable method of trying to address the city's nagging homelessness problem, Alpert said. "Let's figure it out."

Alpert said the city plans to ask TriMet, Portland Public Schools and Multnomah County to share their surplus land inventories to provide options for suitable sites. Hales' office also has organized a task force to investigate the legal and zoning challenges of making the micro-communities a reality.

"Lets' be bold," Alpert said, saying that the city is partnering with Multnomah County to make the micro-community vision a reality. According to county officials, representatives from the mayor's office and Chair Deborah Kafoury's office met Monday and agreed to "put it on the front burner."

"Before people can get back on their feet and take advantage of job training and drug and alcohol counseling, they need a place to live," County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury said Wednesday. "This helps accomplish that."

The actions from City Hall are a strong signal that the city sees the tiny house concept as a small investment with potentially big returns — helping to get dozens of the more than 2,000 people sleeping outside on any given night off the streets.

The concept could also be part of the solution for Right 2 Dream Too, a homeless encampment that the city has struggled to relocate from its prominent home at the gate to Old Town/Chinatown.

The Portland Mercury first reported Hales' interest Wednesday.

Alpert said lots of unknowns remain, including the city's financial role, but he said few obstacles are in the way. He hopes the first micro-community can be in place by February 2015.

'Infatuating' idea

Right 2 Dream Camp 9 Gallery: Right 2 Dream Camp

Portland is already home to a growing tiny house movement catering largely to the young and the hip. Few options exist for residents living on the fringe. But earlier this year, a Portland housing advocate teamed with a metro area company to start pushing for what the partners say is a cheap and eminently doable idea.

Their plan calls for 25 housing units on a given property, with additional buildings for laundry, administrative offices and others services. The buildings would be roughly 16 feet by 12 feet, or 192 square feet total, and cost $250 to $350 per month to rent.

The prototype is engineered by TECHDWELL, a Sherwood-based company.

Mike Withey, a Portland housing advocate and executive director of the nonprofit Micro Community Concepts, teamed with the TECHDWELL founders to push the idea.

Alpert said Hales became "infatuated" with the idea after Withey testified before the City Council in June.

Portland and Multnomah County officials have already begun conversations with TECHDWELL.

Withey said his nonprofit and TECHDWELL are excited the city is moving ahead.

"If they want us to take the reins and run," Withey said, "that's fine."

Company's plans

So far, much of what TECHDWELL has in mind is conceptual.

The company has only erected one tiny house, in Haiti shortly after the 2010 earthquake that leveled much of the country's infrastructure.

But the company has well-known leaders in Dave Carboneau, a former PGE executive, and Rob Justus, one of the founders of nonprofit homeless services provider JOIN.

Carboneau, Justus and Tim Cornell created TECHDWELL. Carboneau says the company's dwellings are ideal for very low-income occupants.

"People making $5,000 to $15,000 a year, they're hard-pressed to find anything in Portland that would be able to be covered with that kind of income level," he said. "They could afford this."

Similar dwellings in Portland would cost roughly $12,000 each to build, Carboneau said, plus another few thousand dollars a piece to hook up sewer and electricity.

Each unit could house two single adults. Each would be equipped with a bathroom, small kitchen and a futon couch that converts into a bed for sleeping. The units could be adjusted to accommodate families or other living arrangements, Carboneau said.

According to the company's website, the buildings take just two to four days to be built and can be assembled with basic hand tools and little to no construction background. The structures will be made of reused and recyclable materials and can be tailored to include additional features such as composting toilets.

The tiny homes are quicker and cheaper to build than an affordable housing complex, but Kafoury noted they're not a trade-off.

"We still have to do build affordable housing, as well," she said. "It's going to take a whole menu of options in order to house people."

What's next

Supporters of the TECHDWELL design say applying it to specialized housing in Portland has broad appeal. Withey said the possibilities are endless, such as creating communities to house veterans, families, single mothers, or seniors. Ideally, all those subsections of society would be housed in any given location, Withey said.

He described the communities as "self-replicating," saying the rent generated by one community would pay for half the construction costs of new buildings at another location. "

Alpert said the city is interested in using one of the micro-community sites as an "auxiliary location" for Right 2 Dream Too.

Six months after the City Council approved a complex deal with direct $846,000 to help the Right 2 Dream Too find a new home, the group remains at its prominent Old Town Chinatown location.

Alpert said the city "hasn't given up" on finding a permanent home for R2D2. He said the micro-community idea would help R2D2 expand.

Withey said the micro-community concept would benefit groups beyond Right 2 Dream Too and the homeless.

"We believe that there's lots of folks that are sleeping in their cars or vans," he said.

— Andrew Theen

-- Kelly House