Tiny homes could be Richmond’s newest strategy to fight homelessness

A gated community of tiny homes earmarked for chronically homeless people could be headed to Richmond.

On Tuesday, the city Planning Commission gave its support to a proposal to sell about 3 acres of city-owned, vacant land on the Northside to Eden Village of Richmond for $100 for the purpose of developing the community. City Council is scheduled to consider the proposed sale Monday. 

While Council will still need to approve the sale and the actual plans will have to acquire a special use permit before any work can begin, the vote represents the first major step toward the realization of a dream that local woman Cathy Ritter has had since at least 2021. 

“I was helping with two homeless organizations and got to the point where I felt like even though we are sustaining people that are homeless, we need to do something to actually solve the problem,” Ritter, a Midlothian resident, told the Planning Commission. 

Ritter’s nonprofit is a local offshoot of the larger Eden Village organization, a group founded by David and Linda Brown in Springfield, Missouri in 2016. The first Eden Village built by the Browns had 32 tiny homes for the chronically homeless, and it became the model for other communities that would be developed in other cities, including Wilmington, North Carolina; Kansas City, Kansas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, where 400 people applied for residency in 63 homes before they were even built. 

All Eden Village communities follow the same blueprint. They are gated, with a fingerprint entry to control who can and cannot enter. While the number of residences vary, they are composed of one-bedroom, one-bath tiny homes, each furnished and fronted with a porch. Residents pay $350 per month for rent and utilities. Sites have a community center and provide services to residents like counseling and assistance getting medical or other resources. 

“We don’t just put the people in a home. We wrap them with support,” said Ritter. 

Plans for Eden Village of Richmond have been in the works for several years, and this March, the group submitted an offer to purchase the roughly 3 acres of land the city owns at 1501 Fendall Avenue, as well as a small part of the adjoining 1601 Fendall. Once used as a landfill and heliport, the parcels now sit vacant and were included on the city’s most recent list of surplus properties that officials hope to see developed into multifamily affordable housing. The 1501 Fendall property is currently valued at $299,000. 

Steve Harms, a senior policy adviser for the city, said officials see Eden Village as fitting well with Richmond’s affordable housing goals, as well as its efforts to stem rising homelessness.

The conveyance of the land “is only the first step of many to make this project a reality,” he said. 

The Richmond proposal would put about 30 tiny homes, each measuring roughly 400 square feet, on the Fendall Avenue parcel. Harms said the Planning Department has been exploring the possibility of earmarking an additional 12 slightly larger homes for families making up to 80% of the area median income on an adjoining site. 

While no binding sales agreement has been drawn up yet, Harms said Mayor Danny Avula’s administration intends to include a number of safeguards in a final proposal that would ensure that the property would revert back to city ownership if Eden Village doesn’t meet targets. Additionally, he emphasized that as the project moves forward, it will require a special use permit that will have to undergo review by both the Planning Commission and City Council.

Harms said the administration plans to interconnect the permit and the sale agreement so that “it will not sell unless you get an SUP, and you can’t get an SUP unless it sells.” 

Approving the conveyance now, however, will allow Eden Village to apply for two grants from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta and the Mary Morton Parsons Foundation. 

Ritter’s offer letter estimates that once the land is secured, development will cost roughly $5.2 million. The organization currently has $120,000 on hand, which it intends to put toward improvements and any down payment that might be required for loans. 

“In addition, we have the support of at least one local contractor that has indicated a willingness to provide initial infrastructure-related services at a reduced cost and the experience of other Eden Villages around the country has indicated that once land is obtained, there is increased community support in the form of both donations and volunteer efforts,” Ritter wrote. 

Harms told the Planning Commission that if the city did convey the land to Eden Village, it would have no further obligations for any site preparation or development. 

“Those would all be incurred by the developer, who would take possession of the property as is,” he said. 

Contact Reporter Sarah Vogelsong at svogelsong@richmonder.org