An abandoned office park in Sacramento will be the site of the first group of 1,200 tiny homes to be built in four cities to address California’s homelessness crisis, the governor’s office announced Wednesday after being criticized for the project experiencing multiple delays.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is under pressure to make good on his promise to show he’s tackling the issue. In March, the Democratic governor announced a plan to gift several California cities hundreds of tiny homes by the fall to create space to help clear homeless encampments that have sprung up across the state’s major cities. The $30 million project would create homes, some as small as 120 square feet (11 square meters), that can be assembled in 90 minutes and cost a fraction of what it takes to build permanent housing.
More than 171,000 homeless people live in California, making up about 30% of the nation’s homeless population. The state has spent roughly $30 billion in the last few years to help them, with mixed results.
Any time I see pictures of narrow SFHs placed so close to each other I have to ask, why they fuck can’t we just build row homes in this country? They save energy, space, and create much more living area in the same lot size. Properly designed row homes don’t even have issues with noise because they’re built with firewalls that are basically the same as outdoor walls between the homes.
I think for the same reason that people usually prefer single family homes (aka "detached) to shared wall condos. Very little of what you neighbor does will affect you in a single family home. Shared walls means neighbors household neglect (like a roof) can make you have problems. A neighbor that does nothing to keep their home pest free means you’re sharing walls (and roaches/mice) with your neighbor and very little you can do about the underlying problem.
Separated walls means your neighbor’s problems don’t become your problems.