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A NEW tiny home community is opening this fall in California —— but will only accept a handful of people to live rent-free.
Goodwater Crossing’s four tiny homes are scheduled for completion in Redding within the next six months, according to project manager Katie Swartz.
The community of micro-shelters will be built on the west side of the St. James Lutheran Church property off Goodwater Avenue, according to local newspaper Redding Record Search.
The homes are designed to provide temporary housing for up to ten months to people who need help transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing.
Three of the homes are intended for individuals, while the fourth can be shared by a couple or parent and adult child, Swartz said.
The community can accept up to five tenants who are elderly or have physical disabilities, she added.
“We’re helping the people who are the most vulnerable,” Swartz said.
Locals with severe mental or physical disabilities will not be eligible for residency, Schwartz said, because “we’re not equipped for that.”
Redding Housing Authority will work with the city to choose the tenants, Housing Manager Scott Badger at the Redding Housing Department told local reporters.
MORE THAN A HOUSE
Goodwater Crossing offers tenants even more than stable housing and kinship with others.
Residents will also have access to a dedicated social services case manager from the St. James Lutheran Church to help take care of the necessary steps to secure permanent housing, including joining waitlists for subsidized options, Schwartz said.
The caseworker can also help tenants apply for a driver’s license or other ID, access Social Security benefits, or make accessibility arrangements.
Goodwater Crossing will be the third tiny home community in Redding, although the other transitional housing projects are unaffiliated with the church.
Although the new project was not initially welcomed by all of its neighbors, churchgoers have since become very positive about the community.
“We have had some people who said it’s a great idea, but I don’t want it in my backyard,” Swartz said.
But she said people “have come around to the idea” after learning who would live in the tiny homes.
“We have all these stereotypes and have all this fear” about people experiencing homelessness, she said.
We’re helping the people who are the most vulnerable
Katie Swartz
It takes experience for people to see that the tenants are often “disabled or elderly people with no place to go. They’ll see ‘these people are like me,’” she added.
SIX MORE MONTHS
The Goodwater Crossing project was born back in October 2021 but took almost two years to have enough funds to get started.
Construction began on the homes last summer and is already almost done.
“All we have to do is put in the (common) restroom facilities and temperature controls in the buildings. We have a common area with kitchen space left to construct and the fencing needs finishing,” Swartz said.
But don’t expect a grand opening debut until this autumn, she said.
MISSING MONEY
The project has cost over $200,000 to get going, with about half of the money coming from large grants and the rest from small donations.
The City of Redding provided a $50,000 grant and the Community Foundation of the North State gave another $40,000, in addition to $10,000 from Redding Rancheria.
Swartz said that she expects the project to cost about another $30,000 to complete construction and another $10,000 to furnish everything.
Several groups have contributed services and goods to the project, including NorCal Continuum of Care, United Way of Northern California, and Shasta Builders Exchange.
Students from California Heritage YouthBuild Academy helped construct the homes as well.
The tiny homes will give community to people who really need it during a difficult time in their lives, Schwartz said.
That’s “the thing that really grabbed me with this project,” she said.
“They’re on their own.”
