The sheds stand 10 feet apart in rows facing walkways that pierce the site from end to end. Residents aren’t allowed to cook-instead, they’re served three meals a day. The bathrooms and laundry room are shared. Each shed has two beds, shelving, and an air conditioning unit. Once we found a place to hide from the sun in the shadow of one of the sheds, Craft began the tour with a reassurance: “Do you folks know what makes all of this work? It’s this gate right here,” he said, pointing at the only gate along the perimeter fence, “and these cameras up here,” he said, boasting about the surveillance cameras mounted on the floodlights along the site’s main axis.Įach shed is 64 square feet (just under 6 m2), enclosed by fiberglass reinforced plastic panels on an aluminum frame, manufactured in Seattle by Pallet Shelter. Our guide at the open house was the founder and CEO of HOTV, Ken Craft. The stated purpose of the sheds was temporary housing for 224 tenants transitioning out of houselessness. We were at the open house of a new “Tiny Home Village” in the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood of Highland Park, funded and built in the summer of 2021 by the City of Los Angeles and operated by Christian nonprofit Hope of the Valley (HOTV). Over the top of the fence, we could see a hornet’s nest hanging from one of the trees closest to the camp. Directly to our east was a freeway, and to our west was a park, little-used due to noise and pollution. We stood among 117 prefabricated sheds that had been installed on the site, each smaller than a 70-square foot ( 6.5 m 2 ) prison cell-the minimum recommended by the American Correctional Association. On a long weekend in October of 2021, I gathered with a small group of people on the hot asphalt of a former access road surrounded by an 8-foot tall fence.
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