Big Plans, Tiny Homes: Can Biz Brains Solve Homelessness?

To counter mounting public despair, fatigue, and frustration over the seeming intractability of homelessness, movers and shakers with DignityMoves — a statewide nonprofit made up of entrepreneurs working in conjunction with the County of Santa Barbara — held their second grand unveiling gala in one month for a new village of 33 tiny homes slated to house people experiencing homelessness on what’s now a parking lot on the 1000 block of Santa Barbara Street. 

On hand Sunday for this event was a prototype of one of the custom-designed, custom-made tiny homes. By any reckoning, it’s a far cry from the glorified toolsheds many earlier tiny-home models have been. Efforts were made to fit into Santa Barbara’s s demanding architectural standards; an archway will span the entrance to the site, and the homes themselves will offer terra-cotta roofs. The aim, explained DignityMoves founder Elizabeth Funk, was to find a solution that was quick to build, cost-effective, temporary, well-run, moveable, and replicable elsewhere.

Funk is an impact investor from the Bay Area who got her start with Yahoo; she lives in a neighborhood where the sale price of homes is north of $2 million, yet she has a homeless person living in a tent across the street from her house. As an entrepreneur, Funk said, she hoped to bring a business mind and fresh set of eyes — perhaps even naïveté, she said — to a problem that appears to be getting worse, not better. She primed herself by holding 300 Zoom interviews with people already working the field.