Sixty days remain to find a location for a years-long effort to house homeless people in tiny homes in South Kitsap. The homes have been built but have been sitting unused, as a location for the houses has yet to be found. 

Construction on the homes began in 2017. Various groups and organizations helped to build them, and there are currently 12 tiny homes built, spread across South Kitsap. The project was spearheaded by a group called Homes for All, said Roland Arper, vice president of Project Share, another organization working on the project. 

COVID-19 threw a wrench in their plans, Arper said. County officials shifted their focus away from setting up a tiny home village and toward fighting the pandemic. Project leaders have been struggling to find locations for the homes since they’ve been built. They’ve looked at city and county properties, churches, and to the county parks department for a solution, but nothing has come to fruition. 

Camp Calvinwood was considered for the homes, as well as Church of Christ in Port Orchard. A county-owned half-acre on Taylor Street was also considered, but many neighbors were opposed to the project. For one reason or another, none of these sites worked out.

“We’re tired of seeing them sit there,” Arper said. “We want to have something done.”

The Project Share board working on the project decided that if no site is found in 60 days from May 17, the homes will be liquidated and the project deemed unfeasible at this time. 

Project Share is first offering the homes to the organizations that sponsored them. One church that donated may want to use their home as a garden shed if no location is found, Arper said. Whether they want to use the house or work with other groups to donate the portable building, it's up to them. 

“We’re not sure what’s going to happen to all the individual cabins,” Arper said. Some may go to a tiny home village in King County or Pierce County. 

“At this point we just want them to be used as their purpose intended,” said Tim Blair, president of Project Share. He said they’re holding out hope, but the clock is ticking. The building was the easy aspect, he said, but finding a location has proven to be difficult. 

“Hopefully in the future, there will be a location,” Blair said. “It’s a cheap way of helping to house people.”

The village would be available as a “high barrier” option for homeless people. Kitsap Rescue Mission or similar shelters would be considered “low barrier,” Arper explained. A person must be fairly well-functioning to take advantage of the tiny homes, he said. The goal is to get people out of their tents or cars and into a lockable secure building, off the streets and stabilized.  

Only one of the homes is completely finished on the inside, and the others have remaining interior work. It was originally envisioned to have about 16 homes in the tiny village. The homes are 8 feet by 12 feet and would likely be single occupancy. 

“It was a dream we had we thought was going to pan out but it's just become extremely tough finding a location that’s going to fit,” Arper said. “We’re still beating the bushes hoping we might find some site we can potentially put them at but we’ve been fighting this battle for a number of years and every time we think we’re close we find for just for some reason it isn't feasible.”