Second Wind Cottages, a community of formerly homeless men near Ithaca, New York. Reed - who says that, before becoming homeless, he worked as a chef at Cornell University - held a series of jobs even while homeless to fund his addiction. Dave Reed is one, and he says the community is helping him beat his alcoholism, which for years kept him from holding onto an apartment. The six houses that Guidi and his team of volunteers have constructed already have residents. Eventually, Guidi hopes to build 18 cottages for the homeless men with a community center, then begin work on a second village for homeless women. The homes sit on a hill behind Guidi’s autobody shop overlooking one of the area’s famous gorges. Through word of mouth and crowd-funding initiatives, Guidi was able to raise $150,000 from local businesses, church groups and strangers and gather a large group of volunteers to build the first six cottages, which he says cost between $12,000 to $15,000 each. So he turned to another solution: small, properly insulated houses. But he learned during a frigid Finger Lakes winter that the cost of keeping the trailers heated was unrealistic. (Photo: John Light/Moyers & Company)Guidi initially invited some men to come live in trailers on his property. Second Wind Cottages founder Carmen Guidi discusses the blueprints for the cottages he built. But when one Jungle resident with whom Guidi had become particularly close committed suicide, he felt he had to do more to help the Jungle residents whom local landlords had refused to house. “‘Where can I help, what can I do?’ And some people said, ‘Why don’t you go help feed the homeless in Ithaca.'”Īt first, he wasn’t even aware that Ithaca had a homeless population, but Guidi soon sought out and befriended the residents of a tent city called “ the Jungle.” He brought them food and batteries and helped them find jobs and housing. Second Wind’s story began a few years ago, when Guidi, an auto mechanic and devout Christian, returned from a trip building homes in Haiti hoping to help those who were living in poverty in his own community. Carmen Guidi is spearheading one such project in Newfield, New York, a 15-minute drive southeast from Ithaca, in a community called Second Wind Cottages. (Photo: John Light/Moyers & Company)“If you look at the total costs of a tiny house - $30,000 to $50,000 - and if you look at the financing options for that house, that turns into a monthly payment of maybe $300, $400, $500 dollars a month, which is certainly fairly affordable compared to what a lot of housing is going for in a lot of areas these days,” says Levy.īeyond DC, a number of communities are exploring the viability of tiny houses for the homeless. (Some of the houses that were part of the community are on wheels and are in the process of being relocated elsewhere, but Levy’s Minim House will stay put.) Even though the land on which they built and gardened was not zoned for residential living (and they could not actually live in the homes they built), Levy and Boneyard Studio’s co-founders hoped a model community would inspire others to take up micro-living, and start a discussion about new forms of affordable housing in DC.īrian Levy, the designer of Minim House, in his garden. Minim House was started as part of Boneyard Studios, a model tiny house community that existed on a small lot next to a graveyard in Washington, DC, from 2012 until August 2014. So having a small space automatically makes you more eco-friendly,” says Brian Levy, an expert in implementing sustainable energy who has worked with the Department of Energy and has built a model tiny home, called Minim House. “The size of your house probably has more to do with how eco-friendly the house is than anything, because you have to heat and cool that space and heating and cooling is what uses most of the energy. There’s even a show about them - Tiny House Nation - for those with access to the triple-digit television channels.īut the movement began as an effort by a small group of individuals to shrink their carbon footprint. There’s a company that builds and sells them. There are numerous blogs devoted to them. The growing popularity of very small houses among the environmentally-minded set is now being called a movement.
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