The effort to create a South Kitsap tiny home village is likely coming to an end

After six years, a project to build a tiny home village in South Kitsap appears to be ending without housing a single person, organizers say.

Now the project's leaders are focused on liquidating each of the tiny homes or using them as storage sheds. Roland Arper, vice president of Project Share, an organization working on the project, said there's little hope that the effort could be revived.

“Realistically, I don’t see it. At this point, I think it’s pretty much a dead-in-the-water project.”

Kitsap County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido was a champion of the tiny home village throughout the effort, which launched in 2016. She led several efforts to find a location.

When contacted last Friday, Garrido expressed surprise that the tiny homes were being liquidated, adding that she thought that they could be added to the Pacific Building project, a homeless shelter that will open soon on Mile Hill in Port Orchard. On Wednesday, Garrido again told the Kitsap Sun that tiny homes are scheduled to be located at the Pacific Building.

Three of the churches that are storing the tiny homes, however, think that any significant use of the structures there is unlikely.

"It is a pipedream," said Ken Farmen, pastor of Grace Bible Church. According to a representative from First Lutheran Community Church, the two tiny homes that the church owns could not be used as living spaces: "They've already been repurposed." And both Grace Bible Church and the Port Orchard Church of Christ already have plans to sell their tiny homes to various nonprofit organizations.

Tim Blair, the pastor of Ekklesia Church in Port Orchard, said that the county had made assurances to the neighborhood that the Pacific Building would only be used as a shelter, not as a tiny home village site.

"I do not believe that they're going to be used there..." Blair said. "I know that Charlotte would like them to be up there."

Location always contentious in the community

The central problem that Kitsap County ran up against again and again was the lack of a site for the tiny homes. Sites failed due to lack of access to transportation and utilities, ill-suited topography, or proximity to businesses. Many residents did not want the village in their neighborhood.

The last publicity push in August 2022 resulted in a verbal agreement to use an old school building in Gorst owned by Everett Church. The project managers asked for a two-year lease with one-year options and an option to purchase. The church wanted to preserve its flexibility by only offering a one-year lease, which led to the deal falling apart.

“It was just an uphill battle, and we just had too many hills to overcome,” said Arper.

According to Arper, it might have made a difference if Kitsap County had declared a housing emergency and said, “We’re just going to use county or city property and just put these things in.”

The tiny homes are being stored by New Hope Church, First Lutheran Church, Ekklesia Church and Grace Bible Church. Two will be donated to the Kitsap Rescue Mission as storage sheds for the Pacific Building Shelter in Port Orchard. One will be donated as a storage shed to the Bluebills, a volunteer group of retired Boeing engineers who specialize in free repairs for people in need. The rest will be sold off or kept by the churches.

The tiny home village saga began in 2016 when a homelessness workshop attended by more than 120 Kitsap leaders led to the creation of the Homes for All Leadership Group. At the time, it said that it “hopes to pilot a tiny cottage village in South Kitsap in 2018.”

The Kitsap Sun first wrote about the project in May 2017, when volunteers built the first three tiny homes. Community and faith-based groups pledged to build eight of the 12 tiny homes for what would be the first of four villages in Kitsap County. At the time, Blair estimated that it would only cost between $50,000 and $60,000 to launch the village.

That July, however, residents argued against the project when Garrido presented a potential site to city officials. A tiny home prototype placed on a half-acre of county-owned land on Taylor Street in Port Orchard had been subjected to angry sticky notes from community members.

At the time, one resident addressed the council, saying, “I hope we will be empathetic to the homeless, but it’s in our neighborhood. Is it in your neighborhood? And your neighborhood? And your neighborhood? Is it across the street from your house?”

That September, the Suquamish Tribe launched the first tiny home project in Kitsap County with six tiny shelters. Each shelter has electricity and heat. Each person would be connected to social services with the tribe’s offices, which were located just across the street. Today, the tribe has expanded to two tiny home villages.

That November, as part of a Kitsap Sun series on homelessness, Garrido said she anticipated a tiny home village on Bethel Road in Port Orchard by early 2018.

In June 2018, Garrido presented the Port Orchard Church of Christ location to a packed city council meeting of over 250 people with mixed views on the project. According to Kitsap Sun reporting at the time, “shouting and jeers erupted almost from the start.”

One man walked out, saying, “I came here to voice my opinion not to be brainwashed by you. I don’t want these people in my neighborhood. They’re already living in the woods all around me.”

Obstacles from support services to a pandemic

By December, the project faced more challenges: the Kitsap Rescue Mission, which was supposed to provide case management, backed out of the project. Kitsap Community Resources, who had agreed to screen and place applicants, was also reevaluating its role. Both organizations were going through internal turmoil after the departure of their executive directors.

By February 2020, the county had still not found management services to replace the Rescue Mission, which delayed permitting at the church. In the meantime, Kitsap officials planned to put the shelters at Camp Calvinwood. “It’s going to happen,” said Garrido. Then a month later, the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Two years later, as a final effort to find a site, Project Share, one of the organizations working on the project, announced that 60 days from May 17, the tiny homes would be sold off. The plan worked: By August, a promising new site had been found far from neighbors with nearby utilities. “Everything seems to be progressing more in the last 30 days than we’ve had in the last three years,” said Arper at the time.

However, by December, the project had stalled out. Arper wrote a letter published in the Sun, “No Christmas miracle for people in need of shelter,” which highlighted the lack of a daytime shelter to house people during the freezing days.

As a side note, he wrote, “A South Kitsap tiny home village remains a dream.”

Editor's note: The story has been updated to reflect the correct church that Tim Blair works for.

Reporter Phillip Chin is a student intern in the Kitsap Sun's newsroom, supported by donations to the Kitsap Sun Journalism Fund. To contribute, search for the Journalism Fund's page at the Kitsap Community Foundation website.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Tiny home village project in South Kitsap has likely ended