Tiny Houses In Silicon Valley Are A Step Towards Helping Its Homelessness Crisis

A charitable organization in Silicon Valley has created a tiny-house community to help house people in need of housing in the area.

The project, called “Casitas de Esperanza,” was organized by Amigos de Guadalupe and is a part of a larger project in Santa Clara County, California, announced in 2020 that has a goal of ending homelessness by 2025.

“Solving this crisis is one of the great moral challenges facing us. It will require tremendous effort, new partnerships and even bolder strategies — and it will require the entire community to be a part of the solution,” a news release for the project said.

Silicon Valley is estimated to have about 10,000 people who are homeless, while California is estimated to have approximately 161,548 homeless people.

The tiny-house community holds 25 homes that have been built where the old San Jose City Hall once was. About 62 people, including 40 children, are being temporality housed there. Casitas de Esperanza allows families to stay for up to 120 days or until they find permanent housing.

Alexandria Urrea, a mother who is living in the community, told NBC News that, “Before here, we were living in our car. So that wasn’t going to work out at all. So, if they didn’t call us, then we wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”

The median home price in Santa Clara County is around $1.5 million, according to Zillow. This has led many people who are employed to be left with no option but to be homeless due to rent prices also being too high for many people who are working full time.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez said during a news conference in November that, “If you’re working a full-time job, and you’re making $15 an hour, but the house you’re living in is $2,400, there is no way to bridge that gap. So, one of the things that we’ve seen with homelessness in our community is that we have a lot of people who are working who are homeless.”