Plans for a tiny house community in Worcester have been announced.
The village will be located at 264 Stafford St, and will target the homeless in the area. It will have 21 tiny houses, each containing a bedroom, bathroom and combination kitchen and living room. Each unit will be about 480 square feet.
According to latest data from Central Mass Housing, there are 84 chronically homeless people in Worcester, which means this village will cut that number by a quarter. The developers plan to open the village in 2023.
The project is a partnership by Open Sky, Worcester East Side Community Development Corporation and a group of local real estate developers, organizations and agencies.
“It’s expanding the options for people,”Amy Arrell, a service director at Open Sky Community Services told wgbh.org, “because different things work for different people, depending on their trauma history, their need for privacy, their different experiences when they’ve been out on the streets.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has made the situation dire for the homeless community in Worcester. As of April 2020, half of them had tested positive for the virus.
Beneficiaries will be chosen among homeless applicants who don’t thrive in a group setting or temporary housing.
The village will have on-site housing specialists to help with the transition, as well as offering mental health and substance abuse treatment. A central building will house staff, and also serve as a community center offering monthly social activities
Based on someone’s income, subsidies will be available to cover the cost of rent.
The project has an estimated budget of $5 million, and is expected to break ground next spring or summer.
