Tiny shelters: Effective homelessness solution or ‘performative’?

Following an update last week on the province’s work to build several tiny emergency shelter villages to help lodge a growing population of unhoused Nova Scotians, questions are being raised about the effectiveness of such programs to combat homelessness.

Last fall, Nova Scotia purchased 200 of the shelters from a Washington-based company called Pallet that provides “rapidly deployable,” prefabricated, shed-sized structures that provide warm beds and access to services for people without a home.

The company will not ship their shelter units until a jurisdiction has satisfied Pallet’s “dignity standards,” including that sites must provide access to meals, transportation, safety and support services, and hygiene facilities and each site must have a dedicated service provider to provide case management and other services for the residents.

Founder and CEO Amy King says the design of the shelters and the model for their company standards have been informed by people who themselves have experienced homelessness, addictions and recovery and the justice system.

That’s why, for example, Pallet will only agree to set up its shelters within existing communities, so residents not only have access to amenities, they also can interact with other people.

It’s also the reason the units don’t have washrooms or kitchens, as this necessitates residents leaving the shelters. They are then more likely to interact with service providers who are required to be on site that can offer support and help residents navigate transitioning to more stable situations, King said.

‘Shared experience’

“There’s often an associated loss of relationships that’s really a driving force behind the experience of homelessness,” she said.

“(Those with) lived experience said, ‘Look, you need to put folks in a community setting where they have access to other people with a shared experience, so that they can work together to rehabilitate, and then they need those services… to really encourage and elicit that reengagement with society that exit from isolation.’”

After close to eight years in business, Pallet has built more than 120 shelter villages across the United States as well as a handful in Canada.

Most residents stay in the shelters for about three to six months before moving to other housing options, but each jurisdiction has its own models for how they run the facilities, King noted.

The longest-term resident to date has been living in a Pallet shelter for two years.

So far, King says 60 per cent or more of their shelter residents go on to find more permanent housing.

“We believe that’s a result of their ability to connect with services and build a safety net of support as they exit, which helps them succeed as they move on to permanent housing and have some services to lean into.”

Some positive outcomes

A number of cities in the U.S. that have implemented Pallet shelters have indeed reported some positive outcomes, although some of their figures appear to reflect lower numbers of residents who have transitioned to permanent housing.

For example, officials in Chico, Calif., and Vancouver, Wash., have spoken highly of the shelters as a tool to help significant swells of unhoused individuals in their respective cities. But in Chico, only a little more than five per cent of residents had moved on to permanent housing as of May 2023 while 39 per cent had done the same in Vancouver by the end of November, according to local media reports.

Nonetheless, officials in these cities and others in the U.S. have said the shelter villages have helped improve their communities, including lowering local crime rates.

But Carolyn Whitzman, a Canadian housing policy consultant and expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools project, says while the tiny shelters are better than leaving people to sleep in the streets in the winter, it’s not a permanent solution for the homelessness crisis.

Nova Scotia officials have faced criticism for delays in implementing its plans for Pallet shelter villages, but they explained last week the process is complex, as it involves meeting a number of zoning and permitting requirements.

Why not larger homes?

Whitzman says if governments are going to such lengths to build temporary, single-occupancy shelter units, why not use those same lands for larger, multi-storey buildings using similar prefab designs?

“If you’re going to the trouble of importing 200 shelters from Washington, you can also build actual permanent housing for not that much more money and not that much slower (construction time) that can actually be a permanent solution.”

Building temporary shelter villages is a “performative” measure by governments grappling with a rising crisis of unavailable and unaffordable housing, Whitzman said.

Officials may stress the shelters are meant to be transitional, but there are virtually no housing options for most of these individuals to transition to, she said.

“The housing doesn’t exist,” Whitzman said.

“It’s sort of putting off the problem of where are people going to live in the long term and Canada can’t put off that problem anymore.”