A tiny home village meant to house the chronically homeless, modeled after a renowned community in Austin, Texas, is coming to Utah’s capital city.
The Salt Lake City Council voted Tuesday to approve the project — a vote that came over a year after Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall proposed the village — after months of effort from officials with the village’s nonprofit operator, The Other Side Academy, and after weeks of public input.
It’s a major milestone for the proposed Other Side Village, clearing the way for the project to become a reality.
Salt Lake’s first tiny home village
Where will the village be located? It has been approved for a west-side, city-owned property located at 1850 W. Indiana Ave.
The first pilot phase of the project will start on an 8-acre parcel. If the pilot project is successful, it could eventually expand up to 40 acres with about 430 homes.
What will it look like? The first phase includes about 54 tiny homes for the homeless, plus six homes for staff and 25 more for AirBnB-style nightly rentals that members of the public could pay to stay in, meant to help generate revenue for the village.
It’s estimated the rentals, known as the Community Inn, could help cover about 10% of operating costs, according to city documents.
In addition to the tiny homes and rentals, the plans also include community buildings like a clinic, a bodega accessible to the public and a social enterprise building, which is meant to provide job opportunities for village residents. It includes a thrift store and a cookie bakery.
The project is modeled after Community First! Village in Texas, which the Deseret News visited in 2020 after Mendenhall first expressed support of attempting something similar in Utah. The village had to survive its fair share of controversy — to the extent that it was sited on the outskirts of Austin — before it became a reality. It has since become a nationally renowned community, visited by people across the country in search of homelessness solutions.
Alcohol free, drug free: The Other Side Village is also envisioned to be a sober community that offers on-site social services like substance abuse and mental health treatment as well as “coaches” to help people toward independence.
If a resident violates sobriety, Other Side Village officials say they wouldn’t automatically evict, “but they will be assisted in every way to regain their sobriety.” That could include drug and alcohol testing and outpatient support, or a requirement that they participate in residential treatment. They could also be invited to return to the “Welcome Neighborhood,” an area of the village reserved for new tenants. If they refuse a plan to return to sobriety, then they’ll be evicted, according to city documents.
Who will stay in the village? The village will focus on housing people who are considered chronically homeless, or those who have experienced homelessness for at least one year or repeatedly over several years and who are struggling with addiction, serious mental illness and or physical disabilities.
Tenants will be required to pay rent to stay in the income-restricted units. With a focus on “self-reliance,” Other Side Village officials have said their “coaches” will help tenants establish a source of income to pay rent, whether that’s employment, Social Security Disability Insurance or a rental voucher.
A rendering of The Other Side Village, a tiny home community planned for a property at 1850 W. Indiana Ave. in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City Council voted Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, to clear the way for the village, which will begin as a pilot project on an initial 8 acres with about 54 homes for the homeless, six for staff and 25 more for nightly rentals. It’s envisioned the village will eventually expand to up to 40 acres with about 430 homes.
What they’re saying: “Tiny homes are happening!” Mendenhall tweeted Tuesday night, after the council’s vote. “The Other Side Village, our city’s first tiny home community, will bring a new housing option for unhoused residents and create a supportive community for those who need it most.”
Joseph Grenny, founder and chairman of The Other Side Village’s board, called the vote an “expression of trust and hope from our community leaders, and our community.”
“We will be true to the trust,” he said. “In coming months and years, we pledge to our new neighbors that the neighborhood will be more vibrant, more prosperous, and even more beautiful because you have allowed us to come.”
How will it work? The Salt Lake City Council greenlighted the project with a 6-1 vote to approve the village’s rezoning and a separate, unanimous vote to approve an agreement with The Other Side Academy to lease the village’s property for $1 a year for 40 years.
As part of the agreement, The Other Side Village is bound to a set of performance metrics it must meet before the city could give permission to build future phases. The metrics include crime data, property values and success with keeping its chronically homeless residents housed.
If the village isn’t operated as promised, the city could terminate the lease.
How much will it cost? The village’s first phase alone comes with a hefty price tag estimated at nearly $13.8 million as of April 2022. That’s a cost of about $162,000 per unit, not including land costs, according to the city’s public benefit analysis. However, Other Side officials believe most of those costs will be covered through in-kind contributions and donations. Plus, the project received $4 million out of the $55 million the Utah Homelessness Council doled out to affordable housing projects.
Other Side Village officials say they plan to submit building permits as soon as possible, and they’re aiming to have the village’s first residents move in by the end of summer 2023, depending on how quickly those permits are approved. They also say they’ve already lined up builders and developers who are ready to get to work as soon as permits are approved.
Yes, but — west-side misgivings
The council vote didn’t come without heartburn from members representing Salt Lake City’s west side — a more racially and ethnically diverse area that has long been considered one that lacks opportunity, resources and privilege compared to the city’s downtown and east side.
Councilwoman Victoria Petro-Eschler and Councilman Alejandro Puy both voiced west-side frustrations that their communities are once again being asked to bear a burden rather than a gem.
Puy said the “trauma” of his community must be acknowledged, “the feeling that … not many good things come to the west side.”
“But we cannot stop at acknowledging it. We need to do everything in our power to mitigate not only the consequences, but also bring good things to the west side,” he said.
Petro-Eschler said west-side communities “carry every possible scar from developmental traumas a community can bear.”
“We have been redlined. We have been displaced. We have been unheard. And then we have been chastised for not wanting to return to the table,” she said, adding that feelings of “disillusionment and unimportance” have fed a cycle of voter disengagement and neglect from those in power.
However, Petro-Eschler said her confidence in The Other Side Academy is the one “bright spot for me in an otherwise torturous decision.” She said while she trusts the nonprofit, she also has “high expectations.”
“We want the rest of Salt Lake City and beyond to believe in and actively acknowledge the best of us. We don’t want to be a headline or an object of charity or seen as worthy of projects that are too risky for other areas,” she said, noting a city-owned parcel at the mouth of Emigration Canyon was considered when the project was first conceptualized.
A rendering of The Other Side Village, a tiny home community planned for a property at 1850 W. Indiana Ave. in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City Council voted Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, to clear the way for the village, which will begin as a pilot project on an initial 8 acres with about 54 homes for the homeless, six for staff and 25 more for nightly rentals. It’s envisioned the village will eventually expand to up to 40 acres with about 430 homes.
Petro-Eschler told The Other Side Village it will be welcomed into the neighborhood “if it shovels sidewalks and beautifies, as you have a history of doing. But more than that, you’re invited to be part of the team to do the hard work of destigmatizing our home.”
She said she believes the village “will not inhibit our west-side rising that is coming and that we deserve so heartily.” She said she is confident Other Side Academy is the right partner “to make something beautiful here.”
But she also pledged the village will be leveraged for more west-side investment.
Ultimately, both Puy and Petro-Eschler voted in favor of both the rezoning and lease agreement. The lone dissenting vote on the rezoning came from Councilman Darin Mano, who expressed misgivings that the rezone wasn’t limited to the initial 8-acre phase.
A rendering of The Other Side Village, a tiny home community planned for a property at 1850 W. Indiana Ave. in Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake City Council voted Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, to clear the way for the village, which will begin as a pilot project on an initial 8 acres with about 54 homes for the homeless, six for staff and 25 more for nightly rentals. It’s envisioned the village will eventually expand to up to 40 acres with about 430 homes.
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