The very nature of homelessness makes it difficult to get an accurate count, but it looks like, on any given night, more than half a million Americans are homeless.
Many factors can lead a person into homelessness, including lack of available and affordable housing, mental illness, addiction, and simple poverty.
To compound the problem, the entire housing industry (building, selling, and renting homes) is not designed to provide people with shelter, but rather, to earn profit. The fact that a person who needs a home can’t afford one is irrelevant. There will always be another customer who can afford to pay more.
And for those who can't afford to buy, rent is a lifelong drain that prevents any chance to achieve housing security or to create generational wealth.
That's fine. That's the American Way. But this "survival of the strongest " approach leaves half a million people living on the street every night. I think there's a better way.
Mike’s Club Housing Inc is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit company in McAlester, Oklahoma that plans to manufacture, and sell, modular micro homes. And we plan to make sure that absolutely everyone who needs one can get one.
A modular micro home starts as a stand-alone single room dwelling, about the size of an average-sized bedroom, just like the tiny houses found in many large cities across the United States. It sleeps one or two people, with a fold down bed, a toilet and shower, a sink, and basic cooking space. A person, or a couple, could live securely, although a little cramped, in this one-room home.
For most people though, a traditional tiny house is not intended, or suitable, to be a long-term dwelling. In fact, most tiny house programs are designed to offer only short-term lodging, as a "bridge" to permanent housing. But in most cases, that permanent housing doesn’t exist. There is no system for moving those people into a proper house. Traditional tiny house programs do not have a "next step" solution. But we do.
Instead of using our micro homes as temporary housing, we plan to simply grow them, over time, into proper full sized homes.
"Modular" means that the resident would start with a single room-module and then, later, connect a second module to it to make a two-room home. In time, the resident can add more modules to form a complete multi-room home. A home that would not be out of place in any residential neighborhood.
We initially plan to make our micro homes available to the truly homeless, through a process of referral from local agencies. Later, we will open to those who are inadequately homed, and finally to anyone who wants to purchase a home.
They will be sold at nonprofit price (the amount it actually costs to manufacture the unit), under a flexible payment plan that absolutely anyone can afford. No one will fall through the cracks. We estimate the total price for a single room module, paid over approximately 5 years, will be roughly $5,000. We also intend to accept Housing Choice vouchers (otherwise known as Section 8 vouchers).[1]
We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but we have a pretty good idea how this will unfold for the average resident:
At any point in the process, if the resident is financially able, he or she can purchase a second room module, to be connected to the first, under the same $100 per month payment plan.
A resident could choose to live comfortably, securely, and permanently in a single module for life. He or she would own the home, and the lot it sits on, without risk of eviction. But our plan actually give a homeless or underhomed person a realistic, affordable path to owning a proper, multi-room house, in a residential neighborhood, in a timeframe similar to traditional home purchase schedules (25-30 years to pay off a 5-6 room house). Home ownership creates security and a foundation for creating generational wealth for the resident and his or her descendants.
The description above is simplified, and many details remain to be considered. We are essentially working with an idea at this point, which we still have to develop into a plan, and then turn that plan into action. But we intend to push through and make this happen as fast as possible. We believe that, by treating housing as a service rather than as a profit generating business, we can dramatically improve the lives of many, many people who currently have no hope of escaping homelessness.
This project will take a significant amount of money to get started. We have strategies that we believe will eventually make it self-sustainable, but we need help to begin moving from idea to reality.
Section 8 housing vouchers are provided by the federal government to assist very low income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford adequate housing. These vouchers subsidize, or in some cases cover entirely, the cost of renting or buying a home.
But many landlords resist renting to tenants who pay with the vouchers, for a variety of reasons. We believe our program will eliminate those concerns.
In addition, under our program, the vouchers will be used to purchase, rather than rent, a home. We believe this is a much more cost-effective use of taxpayer money, and will provide residents with a level of housing security not possible with traditional rental assistance.