Browsing by Author "Brown, Emily"

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    Meeting the Housing Needs of Redmond, Oregon Suggestions for Providing Affordable Housing
    (2016) Brown, Emily; Stuckmayer, Ethan; Thomas, Ren
    The Affordable Housing Plan included an assessment of the existing housing options in Redmond, as well as goals, objectives, and strategies that could be used to encourage the preservation and creation of affordable housing. Although Redmond’s Affordable Housing Plan is comprehensive and fairly detailed, it was drafted before the housing market crash and resulting 2008- 2010 recession, and is now relatively out of date. To serve as an update to the Affordable Housing Plan and to identify affordable housing policies, the City of Redmond collaborated with students and faculty of the University of Oregon’s Housing Policy class to research the city’s housing climate as part of the Sustainable City Year Program. The class, taught by Dr. Ren Thomas, was tasked with identifying barriers to affordable housing within Redmond and the surrounding area, as well as suggesting policy changes to address these barriers. Students in this class split into two groups to approach this project: Group 1 conducted outreach to stakeholders in the form of interviews to gain a qualitative understanding of affordable housing within Redmond and Group 2 performed an analysis of current and potential best practice housing related policies.
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    Overcoming the Barriers to Micro-Housing: Tiny Houses, Big Potential
    (Department of Planning, Public Policy & Management, University of Oregon, 2016) Brown, Emily
    Micro-housing refers to residential units that are smaller than traditionally-sized units. These can be complete units that include bathrooms and kitchens, or units that share communal space and amenities. This research looks at two forms of micro-housing: individual tiny homes and micro-villages. It contributes to a growing body of resources that help people live in tiny houses by consolidating a list of challenges and identifying strategies that allow people to overcome these barriers. The tiny house movement advocates for downsizing from traditionally-sized homes to smaller houses. Advocates speak of the potential to simplify one’s life, decrease one’s environmental impact, save money, and live independently. To some, the tiny house movement is seen as extending from the Back-to-the-Earth movement of the 1970s, and others trace it back to Thoreau and his emphasis on living simply and deliberately. Although some cities are working to accommodate these nonconventional housing options, significant barriers still prohibit people from living in a tiny house.Micro-villages are intentional tiny home communities that represent the merging of the tiny house movement with the tent city movement. These communities are emerging as one solution to providing permanent and transitional housing to people experiencing homelessness. Micro-villages often feature up to 30 tiny homes and shared communal space. They can range in legality from sanctioned, publicly-funded communities to unsanctioned, informal gatherings of shelter. Micro-villages featured in this research include Quixote Village (Olympia, WA), Second Wind Cottages (Ithaca, NY), Dignity Village (Portland, OR), Occupy Madison (Madison, WI) and Opportunity Village Eugene (Eugene, OR). The main barriers to micro-villages are often social opposition, NIMBYism and a lack of political will from local government. Many micro-villages are also challenged by a lack of funding, difficulty finding a location and zoning. Much of this can be related to a pervasive stigma associated with homelessness and affordable housing. Keys to the success of micro-villages have been collaboration with local governments, coalition building, diversifying funding, early community outreach and strong community agreements within the villages. What can communities do? To best support micro-villages, communities can combat the stigma of homelessness by changing the local dialogue around homelessness. We can do this by educating ourselves and each other about the complexity and true causes of homelessness. Sharing stories of success also makes it clear that the positive outcomes of micro-villages outweigh the negative. Overall, the two biggest barriers to tiny homes are building codes and zoning ordinances that treat them as illegal or illegitimate types of housing. This illegality complicates accessing insurance and financing, finding a place to park, and getting a home repaired. One factor that contributes to the ease of living in a tiny house is the policy framework in a particular community. Many tiny house residents had more success in areas where governments were willing to accommodate smaller dwelling units in their codes and ordinances. What can governments do? The rapid increase in the number of proposed microvillages indicates growing community support that needs to be matched by the political will of local governments. Local governments can accommodate tiny homes and micro-villages by: Decrease minimum area requirements for dwelling units (can be as low as 70 sf); Add flexibility to zoning requirements to encourage innovative housing solutions; Allow tiny houses on foundations outright; Permit micro-villages as multi-family developments; Help groups starting a micro-village find land, access funding and overcome opposition; and Treat tiny houses and micro-villages as a part of the solution to the affordable housing and homelessness crises. Implementation of Madison Park, a proposed micro-village in Walla Walla, WA, is stagnated only by community opposition. http://www.wwallianceforthehomeless.com/