An abandoned office park in Sacramento will be the site of the first group of 1,200 tiny homes to be built in four cities to address California’s homelessness crisis, the governor’s office announced Wednesday after being criticized for the project experiencing multiple delays.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is under pressure to make good on his promise to show he’s tackling the issue. In March, the Democratic governor announced a plan to gift several California cities hundreds of tiny homes by the fall to create space to help clear homeless encampments that have sprung up across the state’s major cities. The $30 million project would create homes, some as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters), that can be assembled in 90 minutes and cost a fraction of what it takes to build permanent housing.

More than 171,000 homeless people live in California, making up about 30% of the nation’s homeless population. The state has spent roughly $30 billion in the last few years to help them, with mixed results.

  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The tiny homes can be put up and taken down quicker from the sounds of the article. Takes the better part of a year to build an apartment building, they can put each of these up in 90 minutes supposedly. Does make me worried for structural integrity but it’s not like California gets severe weather so should be fine.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Modern Hoovervilles. There is nothing new under the sun, etc. etc. But yes, this is the point, scale up housing quick, get homeless people housed now and try and get them stabilized and back into society.

      • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yea the hope is providing them any stability will help them back on their feet and on the path to living independently again

    • unceme@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think it was an engineering consideration, I suspect it was the only thing they could get past the NIMBYs