Baltimore organizations are giving unhoused families a chance to find a place to live through an unexpected source: tiny homes.
According to the Baltimore Business Journal, Enterprise Community Partners is working on developing between 600 and 800 affordable housing units in and around the Greater Baltimore area in an effort to revitalize the community and help people find a way out of being unhoused.
But Enterprise isn't the only group working on the project. Another group has built a dozen tiny homes in Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood, selling them for $25,000 apiece to families looking to get off the streets.
Developer Christian Wilson said he met with a funder interested in building another 50 tiny homes for a development in the Park Heights area.
"In these houses will live families," Wilson said. "Families that never had the opportunity to own their own home."
Tiny homes are an effective and affordable way to help fight the housing crisis in many major American cities. They are exponentially more affordable than full-sized homes, as well as being more energy-efficient.
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They have been used to help people displaced by natural disasters like hurricanes. A European project is utilizing 3D printing to try to reduce the environmental impact of construction, which could have a profound impact on the U.S. housing market. And a California startup has been offering tiny smart homes as a way to help people live affordably off the grid.
In this case, Wilson and the other developers hope to continue to fight the housing crisis in Baltimore, and they know that having safe, stable housing can make a major difference.
"We see it every day at our site in Oliver," Wilson said. "The children are active. Those that are school age are going to school. We don't want to lose a whole generation of children."
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He hopes to expand his program to utilize storage containers as potential housing, as well.
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