What are microhouses? City of Olympia plans to swap tents for DIY structures
Joel Nunn pulls back a green tarp that serves as his front door. A red SUV is parked on a dirt patch outside, and inside the tarp is wooden flooring he laid himself, a bicycle, building tools, and other flourishes that speak to his background as a carpenter.
Around a tarp corner, there’s a 7-foot-by-7-foot wooden shed that’s been painted white.
It’s not much to look at, but for Nunn, it’s significant.
“You can come in here and fold your clothes and put them on the table, stay dry, you know. Your tent is always damp and moist,” Nunn said. “There’s a lot of pluses to having this thing.”
Nunn’s informal home is one of numerous hand-built living structures at the wooded settlement along Olympia’s Wheeler Road known as Nickerson, which is home to about a dozen people. And it is among the first in dozens of the structures that will soon provide more shelter to Olympia’s unsheltered.
An innovative volunteer
Nunn’s wooden shed was a donation. It was built by Jeff Loyer, a member of The United Churches of Olympia, a nearby congregation whose members have supported the Nickerson residents since 2018.
The white sheds, which Loyer calls “microhouses,” are incredibly basic – “bare minimum sheds built from 2x4s and plywood,” in Loyer’s words – but living in one is a step up from a tent. That’s the idea that motivated Loyer to start building them in his backyard earlier this year.
Loyer is a retired computer engineer who got involved in working with people who are homeless through United Churches and the FAITH Alliance, a network of local churches dedicated to creating more tiny homes and other emergency shelters. Loyer also was involved with supporting Camp Quixote and helped to build some of the tiny homes at Westminster Presbyterian Church.
When COVID-19 hit, Loyer threw himself into building a chicken coop in his backyard. As summer turned to fall and the weather got colder, it spurred him to consider applying his engineering skills toward creating shelter for the many people he’d met who are currently sleeping in tents.
Loyer is transparent that the structures are not meant to be permanent in any way, and they’re not on par with tiny homes such as the ones at Plum Street and Westminster Presbyterian.
“They are much less sophisticated (and cheaper) than tiny houses, which are semi-permanent residences, usually including power and insulation,” Loyer wrote in an email to The Olympian.
Simple advantages
One of the most important things they do is keep out rats, which have plagued both wooded encampments and the city’s downtown mitigation site. They also provide a sense of security that tents lack.
“The best part about these houses is that we can put our stuff inside and lock the door,” said Ailene Pierce, who also lives at Nickerson and got Loyer’s first microhouse.
Nunn uses the microhouse as a bedroom within the larger ad-hoc structure. He’s also built shelving and has a propane-powered space heater inside, where he sleeps on a sofa. Open flames are one of the major safety risks posed by encampments, so the United Churches purchases propane heaters, which are delivered by volunteers with Just Housing Olympia.
It’s a good example of the many “survival services” that United Churches and Just Housing have helped make happen for the community here, including harm-reduction interventions such as facilitating trash collection and water deliveries.
Recently, this work has led the city of Olympia to step up services. Earlier this year, the city installed a water spigot, port-a-potties, a dumpster, and a hand-washing station.
And now Loyer’s microhouse project will be scaled up as well. The city has secured over $110,000 in funding to produce at least 50 microhouses for the mitigation site.
It’s another example of the city piggybacking off of DIY intervention by a community group after it’s viewed as successful.
“We anticipate it will make an immediate positive impact on the daily lives of those sheltered at the site,” said Gabe Ash, program director for Catholic Community Services, which operates the mitigation site.
Tye Gundel, a co-founder of Just Housing, has been working with Loyer and United Churches to distribute the microhouses at Nickerson. She’s glad to see the city’s investment, but as with the port-a-potties, is conscious that they only scratch the surface of providing much-needed services.
“There is a part of us that always is like this reality check — you know, is this really a milestone worth celebrating,” Gundel said. “It doesn’t mean that these things aren’t great. Microhouses make a difference in people’s lives. But it does say a lot about where we are when we have to fight so hard just to get these very basic rights for people.”
Anatomy of a Microhouse
So far Loyer and United Churches volunteers have built eight microhouses for residents at the Nickerson settlement.
The microhouses are built with plywood and lag screws, six prefabricated panels that can be taken apart and put back together again on site in a matter of hours with some basic power tools.
Loyer was able to produce each one for about $500 – putting it in the price range of some of the roomier tents on sale at REI. The cost of building materials fluctuates significantly, so Loyer estimates at current prices they’d cost closer to $700 each.
Assistant City Manager Keith Stahley estimates it will cost $160,000 to produce at least 50 microhouses.
The city has secured $60,000 in funding from the county, as well as a $50,000 donation from Providence Health System Washington. The Port of Olympia has agreed to provide warehouse space for construction, and Hardel, a Chehalis-based plywood company, has offered 200 sheets of free plywood and another 460 at cost.
According to Stahley, the YouthBuild program will produce eight units, and the rest will likely be built by volunteers. He added that he’s hoping the city can also pay mitigation site residents to build some of the microhouses, too.
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