Less than two months after a tiny homes village opened next to the train tracks at the Van Nuys Amtrak/Metrolink Station, another site has opened in Sun Valley, providing interim shelter for more than 200 people experiencing homelessness.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new village, called Olinda Tiny Homes, was held on Monday, Aug. 10. Similar to the previous site, this one is located in the parking lot of the Metrolink Station in Sun Valley.
The village contains 123 units with 208 beds and comes with built-in restrooms, two community rooms and a dog park. Hope the Mission, a nonprofit that serves the unhoused population, will be in charge of the site. Those who will reside here will work their way toward permanent housing.
People will start moving in on Monday, Aug. 17. To allow people to adjust to their new home and to prevent too many intakes in one day, only 25 people will move in each day until the village reaches capacity.
This is the 36th unhoused shelter location for Hope the Mission and the fourth village the nonprofit has opened in four months.
“The thing I love about these tiny homes, like so many other tiny homes sites, [is that] this is where people get a new beginning,” said Ken Craft, CEO of Hope the Mission. “To someone who’s been living on the street, somebody who has not had safety and security, this might as well be their own home.”
Joining Kraft for the ceremony were Hope the Mission President Rowan Vansleve, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Imelda Padilla. Bass said that this latest site is part of a larger plan to build more than 500 tiny homes across LA.
“Leveraging tiny homes as interim housing is a key part of our strategy to reduce the cost of Inside Safe and move away from housing homeless Angelenos in motels as we work to expedite the building of permanent housing across LA,” Bass said in a statement. “With hundreds of tiny homes now online and hundreds more under construction, we’ll continue implementing innovative, cost-effective solutions to expand our ability to bring people in off the street.”
“These tiny homes represent more than shelter; they represent dignity, stability and a real first step toward permanent housing for our unhoused neighbors here in Sun Valley,” Padilla said in a statement.
But not everyone in the community is enthusiastic about the opening of a new tiny homes village. Last year, The Climate Corps Initiative (TCCI), a nonprofit organization for environmental justice, organized a rally with local residents to demand the project be stopped.
Mihran Kalaydjian, vice president of TCCI, previously told the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol that the project was going to “paralyze the character” of Sun Valley, and will bring a surge of people with serious mental health issues and increase littering, theft, burglaries and vandalism.
He claimed Padilla never did any community outreach to inform them of the plans, nor did she attempt to get feedback from residents.
“The completion of the tiny homes project at the Sun Valley Metrolink Station does not erase the serious concerns residents raised from the beginning,” Kalaydjian said. “For months, community members spoke out, attended meetings and warned that this location was the wrong place for such a project, and residents raised legitimate questions about public safety, neighborhood impacts, transportation, sanitation and whether the surrounding community would ultimately be left dealing with consequences it never agreed to shoulder.”
Although the village is completed, Kalaydjian said the Sun Valley community will not stop calling for transparency and accountability from city officials when it comes to matters of security, sanitation, property maintenance and neighborhood conditions.
He added that they will be calling for a town hall meeting with elected officials, law enforcement, city departments and service providers so the community can get answers on who is responsible for security, how the surrounding area will be monitored and who will be made accountable if these promises are not kept.
“The community is very angry, and there will be more rallies coming because they are demanding a responsible government,” Kalaydjian said. “They deserve to be heard, and they deserve accountability.”