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Tiny House in My Backyard

Tiny Houses on Wheels are Legal in Richmond, California!

Take this survey!

Image of THIMBY volunteer with an angle grinder
THIMBY designed and is building a tiny house that is ecologically sustainable.

Tiny House in My Backyard (THIMBY) is a project of Sustainable Housing at California (SHAC), an interdisciplinary group of students at the University of California, Berkeley. Construction is underway—right now, the THIMBY team is building a 240 square foot tiny house on wheels. They are looking for a City of Richmond homeowner to host this THIMBY house in their backyard upon its completion later this year.

The City of Richmond, California, recently renewed an ordinance (No. 07-21 N.S.) creating a pilot project allowing tiny houses on wheels to serve as accessory dwelling units (ADUs). These units will help alleviate the shortage of affordable housing available to low- and middle-income households, as well as working, formerly homeless individuals and small families in search of permanent housing. THIMBY partnered with nonprofits Tentmakers, Inc. and Care Association to complete construction of a “park model” tiny house on wheels and is seeking homeowners who may be interested in hosting the dwelling in their yard.

You can help!

Rendering of THIMBY 3.0 project

You can provide a corner of your yard to help a family have a roof over their heads.  Help create a new kind of affordable housing and join us as the first homeowner to catalyze this movement in Richmond!

Interested in having a tiny house in your yard? Take the survey here:

https://forms.gle/sZWqBRLyL65vktgp6

THIMBY 3.0 build day
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Minimum Wage Can’t Keep Up with Increasing Rents

I wanted to get down to brass tacks and review the state of the affordable housing situation in California and the broader US – in numbers. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has published its 2022 edition of Out-of-Reach, its annual report documenting the gap between renters’ wages and the income needed to rent at fair-market rates, and I wanted to share some important findings.

As you might expect, the numbers are not improving. From the beginning of 2021 to the beginning of 2022, rents increased by 15% nationwide, or $179. This increase is 4.5 times higher than any yearly increase in the last four years. Unfortunately, the minimum wage is not keeping up. A worker earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 must work 3.5 full-time jobs to afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the national average fair-market rate while saving 70% of their income for other necessities. In California, a worker earning the minimum wage of $15 must work 2.6 full-time jobs to afford a 2-bedroom rental home and 2.1 full-time jobs to afford a 1-bedroom rental home at California fair-market rates. This means that even a couple working full-time at minimum wage cannot afford a 1-bedroom rental home! Here in San Francisco, a full-time worker must work four full-time jobs (160 hours a week!) to afford a 2-bedroom in the city. The American dream is sounding more like an American fantasy.

How much of the working population can actually afford a 2-bedroom apartment at fair-market-rate in their city? It turns out that more than 40% of all workers in the US, excluding farm workers, work in industries that don’t pay enough to afford a one-bedroom apartment in their own city. 40% of our nation’s working population can’t afford a 1-bedroom apartment! And 60% can’t afford a 2-bedroom apartment.

A significant driver of the recent rent increases has been the surge in demand during the pandemic. Around 870k individuals entered the rental market during the pandemic, contributing to a very low 5.8% vacancy rate. Many of these newcomers were higher-income individuals who could afford to pay more than fair-market-rate for a rental unit but could not compete in the home-buying market. As a result, landlords drove up prices, knowing that many would-be renters would be willing to pay while pricing out low-income workers.

Another contributor to high rents has been the increased number of purchases of rental developments by investors. Investors purchased more than 80K homes in the last quarter of 2021 – the highest number of purchases for any quarter seen since 2000. When corporate investors take over rental property, it is common practice for them to increase rents, especially in units where rents were initially low. Corporate investors are also extremely quick to file evictions when households miss the monthly payment.

The supply of affordable housing needs to increase. Cities can accomplish this by building additional units allocated to affordable housing and ensuring that existing affordable housing remains attainable by lower-income workers. As supply and demand for expensive rental units trend upward, the lower-income face fewer housing options. And the ones who can hang on to housing often have little to no savings to make the rent in times of sudden financial hardship. So many renters are just one paycheck from homelessness. We need to establish rental assistance programs for those who need emergency assistance to save them from speedy evictions.

And let’s not forget that losing your home is a terrifying experience. Eviction causes intense mental anguish for the victims and their children. It is heartbreaking to realize that working one, two, three, or even four full-time jobs at minimum wage here in the Bay Area is not enough to spare you from that experience.

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Gentrification as a Threat to Cultural Diversity in San Francisco

Within its 47 square miles, San Francisco is home to numerous thriving ethnic groups and cultural districts. While these neighborhoods host global tourists who come to enjoy the foods, arts, and culture, they have also persisted through generations as living, breathing communities where residents can feel at home with groups they identify with. For example, my friend’s parents lived and raised their family in Chinatown for 50 years and still can’t speak English. Before I became an advocate for affordable housing, San Francisco’s cultural diversity and the topic of gentrification were separate topics in my mind – I didn’t believe one had anything to do with the other.

The lack of affordable housing and the city’s prioritization of profit over people is erasing these communities. The irony is that while the cities rake in huge profits from tourism in these neighborhoods, they don’t provide support for these groups to survive. For example, tourists from all over the world come to enjoy the architecture, art, and cuisine of Japantown and spend money at Japanese-centric businesses, all while the city allocates its shopping districts for new Chipotles, Gaps, and Sephoras. How can Japantown make it if the city’s planners and policy-makers choose businesses that maximize profit rather than preserve the spirit of the residents? Also, these neighborhoods need more affordable housing so that families can move in and sustain the community over the long term. Instead, city planners and policy-makers allocate new housing developments for market-rate luxury units that the average family cannot afford. According to a recent report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an individual needs to earn four times the minimum wage to be able to house their family in a two-bedroom market-rate apartment in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s city planners, officials, and policy-makers must understand that their decisions to prioritize profit over people are cannibalizing the city. They cannot keep boasting of San Francisco’s rich diversity, inviting the world to enjoy Chinatown’s New Year’s Parade or the annual Pride Festival while making decisions that essentially erase the communities behind them.

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Affordable Housing Sitting Empty?

Given the high rates of homelessness on the streets and the urgent calls for more affordable housing, I was surprised to see the recent news in the San Francisco Chronicle that San Francisco has 305 below-market-rate apartments sitting empty despite having ~20K applicants for those spaces. Affordable housing is available, so why isn’t it being occupied?!

However, we should start by mentioning that the overall San Francisco rental market HAS become more affordable. Rents have come down ~12% since pre-pandemic times, meaning that more individuals who were previously shut out of the rental market can now get housing. However, that doesn’t change the situation for the individuals who still cannot afford the rents. Such individuals need to rely on programs like San Francisco’s below-market-rate housing program to attain housing for their families.

San Francisco requires housing developers to reserve between 15-21% of units at below-market-rate (BMR) for individuals and families earning less than 55% of the area median income. This program is a lifeline for many low-income families and is a model for cities around the Bay Area, but getting occupants into these units is inefficient and getting worse in the current rental market. In the past, the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) reviewed around five applications before they filled a unit. Now, they review ~31 applications per vacancy as more people drop out of the program to get a better deal elsewhere. It is good news that more applicants can now rent elsewhere but highlights the gross inefficiencies in the review process as the MOHCD wastes time looking at out-of-date applications. A possible solution may be to enforce a penalty for applicants who don’t notify the MOHCD that they have dropped out of the pool, such as prohibiting them from re-applying for the next one or two years.

Reviewing 31 applications instead of the typical five makes an already-long review process six times longer. The review procedure for a BMR unit is much more involved and time-consuming than a simple rental application. The MOHCD office needs to verify the income of every occupant in the new unit to ascertain that they meet the income criteria. The long wait time is not just a burden for the new renters having to wait for housing but also for the building owners who may need the rental income to pay off debts.

Our inability to promptly fill all available BMR units highlights another obstacle in our quest for affordable housing – a slow-moving bureaucracy. In fact, the MOHCD has been compared to PG&E as one of the most inefficient organizations to work with. It is unfortunate that so many units are sitting empty while thousands of families are in such need. Unless the MOHCD figures out how to streamline the process to get families into these affordable units, it just looks like they don’t care.

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Inflation: Another Roadblock to Affordable Housing

In recent months, we have seen significant job gains in the Bay Area and unemployment falling to a low 3.4%, comparable to pre-pandemic days. But just as we were looking forward to financial relief for those who lost their jobs and livelihoods during the pandemic, we face another roadblock to affordable housing – inflation.

Inflation has reached 8%, a 40-year high. Inflation cuts into earnings for all workers but has dire consequences for low and middle-income earners. A family that could barely pay for food and housing may no longer be able to meet its basic needs and is thrown back into poverty. Those who don’t have the luxury to work at home may find that the increasing gas prices have left less for food and housing. But inflation is not just about higher gas prices or going to the store and finding that your milk and bananas are a couple of dollars more than you expected – inflation also makes things a lot worse for those seeking affordable housing.

We have heard of the stories of skyrocketing home prices during the pandemic, especially in places like Tampa, Florida, and Austin, Texas, which saw yearly appreciation of 43% and 40%, respectively. Though rising interest rates have reduced the numbers of those seeking homes, sellers still don’t have many incentives to lower prices because one house still receives many offers due to lack of supply. The scarcity of housing also drives up the rental costs, with rents increasing nationally by 15.2% on average. 48 out of 50 states saw overall rental increases, with increases as high as 35% in Austin, Texas, and 39% in Portland, Oregon. These increases would be acceptable if incomes grew at the same rate, but lower-income workers’ paychecks have not even remotely kept pace. As a result, affordable housing has become even more out-of-reach. A popular option for thrifty home buyers had been to purchase a fixer-upper, a cheaper home that needs work. But even this is becoming a less attractive choice as inflation increases costs for materials, and supply chain issues make materials challenging to attain.

The solution to the housing plight is and has always been to increase the supply of affordable housing. As we have explored in a previous post, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) has assigned Bay Area cities the task of building 441,000 new homes and apartments between 2023-2031. Chances are slim they will be able to meet this goal, with a quarter of the cities protesting their quotas for various reasons. Such an enormous task will naturally receive opposition; there is limited space for the many who need affordable housing in the Bay Area. But the mandate is an essential step toward something we have waited a long time for – action.

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To California’s Public Officials Re: Affordable Housing

Dear California Public Officials,

I am writing to encourage you to promote opening up more locations in the state where Tiny Homes are approved. I am an active senior/still-working artist in Oakland who is going to need a new place to live in the near future. I am currently living in the house of a wonderful, elderly landlady, who may decide/need to move to easier housing at any time. To be honest, after this space is no longer available, there is no way I could afford to stay in my neighborhood and keep all the resources that I have come to know. I have applied to several subsidized senior apartments, but know that actually getting a place can require a long wait, if they manifest at all.

I could afford to acquire a simple live-in studio on wheels, or a trailer, but do not know where I would be able to park. Especially with the amount of homelessness and now complications from COVID-19, I don’t understand why Tiny Homes are not seen as a potential solution for so many people who are struggling and suffering.

I know the limitations for ADU’s are opening up, but this does not help the person who does not own the property, as they are mostly required to have a foundation, rather than be on a trailer.

Please do what you can in this regard, and let me know who I should speak to locally in the Oakland/Berkeley area. Thank you for all you are doing to keep California safe during this tragic time.

Sincerely,
Judith Schonebaum
Oakland, California

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The Care For Us Website

Care Association is developing an affordable housing technology solution, a platform to enable homeowners with vacant rooms or units to offer housing to lower-income tenants who tell their stories on the CareForUs.us site. We have found that many homeowners wish to help those in need of affordable housing yet don’t know where to find tenants who are suitable for them.

The Care For Us site will also enable donors to search for, choose, and give goods and services to individuals and charities in need. Goods provided through the program are items that assist individuals in achieving a U.S. standard of living or quality of life and nonprofits in procuring supplies and equipment for their charitable operations. Services may be educational, legal, financial, or health-related. Beneficiaries are verified by Care Association as “in need” based on financial criteria and knowledge of individuals and organizations.

When I first started this nonprofit, I was providing nonprofits with equipment and supplies. I was also providing pro bono emotional regulation care. The website idea came after talking with people about their hesitance getting rid of things that are meaningful to them. Knowing who benefits from donations gets lost when donating to thrift stores. How can we find recipients who would appreciate them? Others mentioned their desire to help people, but didn’t have a way to help without committing to a program. Care For Us would enable pro bono services directly to people in need. But I realized that lack of affordable housing is probably the cause of most low-income stress. If the Care For Us site can connect donors to beneficiaries, why not connect landlords to prospective tenants?

The Care For Us Demo

Today, the Care For Us demonstration website is under construction. We need a demo in order to raise funds, and to show that the Care For Us site will work. Results will enable us to effectively apply for grants. For this demo, I wanted at least five participants who needed affordable housing to be “users” and beneficiaries of the site. I put together an online form where prospective beneficiaries could upload photos and write their stories. I learned that few people are willing to allow someone else to choose housing for them, and that those who struggle with low income do not want to broadcast their needs. Our society looks down on people with low income, leading to shame and embarrassment. Only one out of ten people invited to become participants of the demo completed the form.

The demo site is meant to be a working prototype. So far, the participant who completed our form has a live page hosted at careforus.us. We have been reaching out to landlords and property managers and will soon place an ad to find the participant’s family a home.

Volunteers Are the Heart of Care Association

While we wait for more people to sign up for our demo, there is a lot of work to do. I have been building the demo site by typing out the html markup. It’s not super pretty, but it functions. One volunteer is working on our technology infrastructure with Salesforce at its center. Another volunteer has written an article to boost marketing. Soon we will look for a web architect to plan construction of the launch site. Since we were unable to raise enough funds to hire an engineer, I will be coordinating site construction with volunteers. We had an original beta launch date of January 2019, but it will be much later than that. I am also a volunteer, enabled by loved ones to carry on with this venture. This means 100% of funds received will go toward operations and housing assistance. Currently, we have a GoFundMe campaign to raise a security deposit to help our participant find a home.

Six months ago, when someone told me that nonprofits take a long time to make accomplishments, I thought that I would be the exception and be able to launch our project expeditiously. Now humbled with a fourth revision to our business plan, I still have hope to make this world a better place for some.

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Humble Beginnings for a Grand Plan

Building a business is difficult, but building a nonprofit has its own unique challenges.  For starters, nonprofits like ours don’t have anything to offer in return for revenue except a sense of goodwill.  Many nonprofits rely on donations to complete their missions.

To make things more difficult, our project is based on technology — the WWW.  The site needs to provide an easy-to-use interface, to be safe with its data secure, and to connect to secure third-party software for income verification.  And it needs to look good. Building a site that accomplishes what we want, provides the security its users need, and functions in a way that benefits and doesn’t frustrate is no small feat.  To accomplish this successfully, we need money, and a lot of it.  Unfortunately, relying on volunteers is neither efficient nor effective for a technology product that is not about technology.  The computer platform Ubuntu was built by volunteers but for computer purposes.

On September 1, we began fundraising so that we can hire developers to build the site.  We found a table for free on Craigslist and covered it with an old sheet with Sharpie-colored words, “Make Affordable Housing Happen Now.”  Since we are starting from nothing, we had to start somewhere.  At least a picture of our table gave us something interesting to post on our Instagram account (@careforus.us).

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Beginning Care Association

When this project first started, it was just me with an idea: create a networking site where people who needed things for a better quality of life could connect with people who had something to give.  Care For Us went on the drawing board.  Unfortunately, someone else in California had the name, another nonprofit that serves children with autism.  As opposed to supporting a silo of people who had differences from others, I wanted to create a nonprofit that could involve anyone in the United States.  With Bruce Wolfe as Treasurer and Cedric Bertelli as Secretary, and with the help of Larry Ross, CPA, we formed Care Association and applied for 501(c)(3) status, but kept the Care For Us name for the project.

When our status letter arrived in the mail, it came as a surprise having been months after the window of time in which the IRS said they would inform us of our status. By then, I had started graduate school thinking the project would never happen unless I funded it myself.  I needed to make money if I were to fund it, and there weren’t any jobs out there that interested me enough.  Someone at the Internal Revenue Service believed in what we want to do… or we just completed Form 1023 correctly, thanks to Mr. Ross.

More than a year after applying, our business plan is written, the organization’s website is up, and wireframes are in process.  Most important, our focus has changed to affordable housing.  While writing the business plan and looking for feedback, I realized that exchanging goods and services wasn’t on the forefront of people’s minds.  But many people, perhaps most in the San Francisco Bay Area have been struggling with the lack of affordable housing.  Even people with money that can afford the high prices are unhappy with the costs.

As with any business, building a nonprofit takes a lot of work.  But unlike for-profit businesses, we rely on donations to help us get started.  Having a business plan and applying for a loan isn’t really an option right now.  Our first project is the Care For Us site, and it won’t be providing revenues right away if at all.  Not only are we not for profit, we are also tech-related.  We don’t have a program with active volunteers going out and meeting people’s needs, but we do have a plan and a vision.  That vision includes bringing the nonprofit world to the frontier of technology.