It can take as long as seven years to get approval to build new housing in San Francisco, and years more to actually build it. But last January, only two months after a new nonprofit focused on homelessness launched, it started construction on a community of tiny cabins on a former parking lot in the middle of the city. After another two months, the first 30 rooms were done, followed by 40 more, now home to dozens of people who used to live on the street.
The nonprofit, DignityMoves, aims to prove that it’s possible to build well-designed interim shelters affordably and quickly. It’s already built several additional communities in other California cities, which include support services and access to computers and other resources for residents. Seventeen more are now in development or planning across the country.
“We started with the assumption that whatever [society is] doing isn’t working, because we keep spending more money and the problem keeps getting worse,” says Elizabeth Funk, the founder and CEO of DignityMoves, who started the project with a large group of other business leaders during the pandemic. (Funk was an early employee at Yahoo who also now leads an impact investing fund.)
San Francisco, like many other cities, has prioritized adding new permanent affordable housing with extra support for people who’ve experienced homelessness. But each unit is expensive to build; a single affordable apartment in San Francisco can cost as much as $1.2 million. The parking lot project, while obviously not permanent housing, cost around $32,000 per unit.
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