Tiny Home Update: Common House

It’s been a minute since we gave you an update on Settled and the tiny home project, so here’s the latest! (If you need to get caught up on what this partnership is all about, you can do so here.)

Mosaic, the first Twin Cities church to say yes to a Sacred Settlement, is currently waiting on city approval to move the tiny homes built at Woodland to their property. Because this approach to caring for the chronically homeless is such an out-of-the-box idea, the city council must take into careful consideration all the possible ramifications. Some great news is that the city has approved a grading permit to prepare the land so the tiny homes can be moved in, but the rest of the process has taken a bit longer than expected. We’d appreciate your prayers for the city’s approval for the next phase.

Using funds from a generous donor, Mosaic has also renovated their church building to double as a common house. They’re moving ahead in faith that the Sacred Settlement will eventually happen! Once people move into their tiny homes, the common house will provide bathrooms with showers, laundry facilities, a kitchen and space for the community to gather.

You can learn more about the Mosaic Sacred Settlement on their website here, or on Settled’s website here.

Meanwhile, at Woodland, we’re still working through the process of renovating some of our unfinished space for use as a warehouse to store materials for tiny home construction. We, too, hit a few bumps in the road. First, across the state there is a construction backlog, and permit offices have been delayed in approving plans. Also, because of the rising costs of construction, we needed to modify our plans for the garage door we’ll use for access from the parking lot. But we’re still working on it! We had hoped to be further along by now, but are still committed to the project.

Also, over the last several months, we’ve been working on three more tiny homes that will be used as displays when the current ones are moved to Mosaic. We expect that they’ll be finished by the end of December! The costs for the homes have been donated by individuals and churches, and we’re helping to oversee the construction, which is happening with volunteers from Woodland and other congregations. Two are being built in our parking lot, and the third is coming together at another church and will be moved to our lot after it’s finished.

The book of James tells us that it’s easy enough to make plans about what we’re going to do today or the next, but we really have no way of knowing for sure what tomorrow will bring. What we can do is keep taking each next step as the way opens before us.

Thanks for being with us in each of the steps we’ve taken so far, and for your commitment to serving our neighbors who need homes.