Proposed micro home community ‘Envisions’ a solution to homelessness
By David Pierini staff reporter
To solve the crisis of homelessness, Freddy Toran believes the solution is offered in the well-known proverb, It takes a village …
Toran, a team of people who once lived on the street and more than a dozen non-profit organizations and funders, want to build that village, possibly in the 4100 block of Fremont Avenue North.
Freddy Toran, left, an Envision leader, and Rochelle Washington, project manager, stand outside a demonstration model of a possible micro home design for Envision Community. Photo by David Pierini
Envision Community wants to purchase four vacant lots on Fremont to construct micro homes and a common house for 16-24 people. Envision leaders last month held two virtual meetings for the neighborhood around the lots to educate residents on the proposal and receive feedback.
“Back in the day, we used to say it takes a village to raise a child,” said Toran, who was once homeless. “We see ourselves as part of that village. This is not a shelter. This is a philosophy on how to live.”
Freddy Toran stands in the middle of a micro home demo unit.
The tiny home movement has caught the interest of homeless crisis groups across the country who have erected tiny homes as a way to shelter people. Other non-profit groups, including one in St. Paul, has funded construction of tiny homes in response to the growing homeless encampments across the Twin Cities.
The Envision Community proposal seeks to offer more than a roof overhead. The non-profit expects residents in the village to self-govern with help from contributing organizations that will provide services in the community house to address addiction, debt, mental health and other circumstances that stand in the way of secure and permanent housing.
U-shaped groupings of micro homes, around 325 square feet each, will orbit a community house. The occupants will be an intentional mix of people who have experienced degrees of homelessness and housing insecurity as well as some who merely want to reduce their carbon footprint.
“The roof over your head is only a piece of it,” said Rochelle Washington, the Envision Community Project Manager. She works for Tasks Unlimited, which will be the community's fiscal agencies. “Just because you come off the street doesn’t mean the struggle is over. You get your housing and every day, you get cleaned up, go to the common house, have breakfast with your community and then you get help doing whatever you need to be successful. You can see your therapist, you can get job training, whatever you need to feel your best self.”
The help Washington refers to is already behind the project. Funders and service contributors include foundations, non-profit organizations, architects, healthcare providers and churches, including Elim Church in Northeast, where a demonstration model of two micro home units reside in the parking lot.
It’s the village that Toran speaks of to end homelessness. And it is one solution designed by the very people who have experienced the struggle.
“To us, separate organizations and services make you go from here to there and nobody’s connecting and communicating the whole path a person needs when they’re struggling,” he said. “With Envision, everything is right here.”
The Envision Community project formed when Street Voices of Change, a homeless advocacy group, began consulting with Hennepin Healthcare, which sought to address medical costs of homeless people.
Toran said people suffering homelessness aren’t able to recover from illness or injury if they return to the streets.
In November of 2019, Envision Community lobbied the Minneapolis City Council to amend the zoning code to include cluster developments. It already has the money to purchase land, but it will have to raise $2.5 million to build a 24-unit development and funding to operate as a two-year demonstration project.