Across the street from a train track and between an asphalt plant and a small church is an area where a nonprofit group wants to do more to help the homeless in Greer.

Daily Bread Ministries wants to build 5 tiny homes in a corner behind its soup kitchen at 511 East Poinsett St. The houses would serve as transitional houses and emergency shelters for homeless people.

Chip Patat, the applicant, has asked Greer City Council to rezone the site to allow the houses.

The planning commission denied the request because the property is in an area zoned commercial and the project "would not fit the spirit or character of the area."

However, Greer City Council may override the planning commission and make an exception.

Two doors away from the soup kitchen is a homeless shelter, directly behind it is another homeless shelter, Patat said.

"I believe this project exactly fits the character and spirit of this area because of what's already there," he said. In fact, I'm not sure there would be a better place to put it."

The soup kitchen is between a small church — Iglesia Pentecostal De Dios es el Poder and Blacklidge Emulsions, a Mississippi-based producer/distributor of asphalt products.

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The church was closed Friday morning and a spokesperson, when contacted by phone, was not available for an interview. A spokesperson for Blacklidge had not returned a call by Friday afternoon.

A few mill village houses are part of the backdrop from the train track and East Poinsett (also State 290), opposite the soup kitchen. Also on the opposite side of the road, less than a mile east, is Greer's Inland Port.

Greer City Council debates plan

City Council members debated whether to go against the planning commission's recommendation and its own landuse plan to make an exception for the tiny house community.

Counciilman Wayne Griffin, whose District 2 represents the area which includes Daily Bread Ministries, is among those who favored rezoning.

"Sometimes I think we need to use a little common sense especially when we're dealing with people's lives," he said. "Giving people the opportunity to have a second chance, I think that's what those houses represent."

City Administrator Ed Driggers said the planning commission's recommendation was not whether the organization should or should not have the tiny houses in that location.

It was solely based on the council's adopted land-use plan, he said.

Mayor Rick Danner said he believed that none of the council members present would deny that they should do what they can to help anybody who needs help.

"I think we have illustrated through the years that we are attune to those things," he said.

He said his struggle was whether they should go against the zoning ordinance council put in place.

"What happens is if we do it once? Are we going to do it again?," he said "I find myself wanting to err on the side of the plan that we put in place."

In the end, they voted to wait until they gathered more information.

Building five tiny houses would enable the Daily Bread Ministries to help more of the homeless population in the most cost efficient way, Patal said.

Opportunity Village in Easley the model for Greer

The model for Daily Bread's tiny home project is Easley Dream Center's Opportunity Village. It opened in 2017 and has 23 tiny houses, along with 10 transitional houses, to serve the homeless population.

The Easley program has served 22 residents so far and a new class is coming on board later this month.

The program has worked "really really well," said Shelby Dickard, Dream Center executive assistant. "We are still figuring things out and we change things along the way when we find they aren't working."

Dickard said their tiny village came about during their research to expand their services to the homeless.

They found a place that was using tiny houses for emergency shelters and adapted it fit their purpose.

"We loved that idea just because of the liability purposes, insurance, and all that it's really just a safer environment to have tiny house units," she said. "It works out great because they have their own living space, sleeping space, so it's rally just a smarter way to go and it's efficient as far as cost."

Hundreds of volunteers helped build the Dream Center built the tiny houses in 2016.

The homes in Daily Bread Ministries' tiny house community would cost an estimated $15,000 each to build with volunteer labor, Patal said.

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