Tiny Homes, our Podcast gets a new schedule, and our Sister Channel's Reporting
Our top social media post this week was about tiny homes at the Tiny Ten compound on Ryland Street now being resold for over $300,000 for about 700 square feet of living space. As one commenter pointed out that’s about $423 per square foot. These were initially marketed and hyped up by some local media as part of the affordability solution. In 2018, the website Curbed framed it more as a “tiny infill” solution to sprawl though. It had early warnings about the cost of such projects: “As it stands, the city doesn’t have any zoning code pertaining to small homes. However, fees—like sewer hookups—are cost-prohibitive for small houses since the rates are the same regardless of house size, making the profit margin tighter for those building them.” We also all remember granny pods being shot down, which we included in our own rundown of possible affordability solutions.
Apparently just a few years after buying their tiny abodes, some of the owners are trying to resell, amid astronomically rising home prices in Reno. Some readers were confused as to whether these were the bridge tiny homes, which are part of an entirely different project.
Readers have also advocated for so-called Conestoga homeless huts, which provide viable and durable shelter and have been available in Eugene and Boise, among several western cities. The cost of a hut is about $2,500, with the operating cost of a 20-shelter site estimated at $50,000 per year. COVID-19 money for the new Nevada Cares campus has been reported at about $17 million. Why not spend some of that on a few legal hut villages, complete with gardening and group areas, while having social workers check in to get people individualized solutions on a pathway to being rehoused?
Our sister channel, the Reynolds Sandbox, a more omnibus approach to student reporting produced this uplifting and eye opening video above on the difficult journeys of day laborers on Galletti Way. Reporters for the Sandbox, which like Our Town Reno is part of the Reynolds Media Lab, also investigated difficulties students are having in finding their own housing, and profiled a health worker going to encampments in Sparks.
Our podcast was recently featured as one of the 20 podcasts looking into homelessness, by the website Pretty Progressive. We decided to change our weekly release time from Thursday morning to Thursday evening as we noticed that’s when we are getting the most listeners. Our latest episode is about an urban geographer from Spain, studying the opening of the Nevada Cares Campus, who also happens to be a founder of Laundry to the People. There’s been varying dates given and repeatedly pushed back for the opening of the mega shelter, and the new start now appears to be this coming week. We went by this week and it seemed to still be a construction zone. People living along the river have told us they are getting police notices to leave where they are sleeping, and several have told us they are scrambling to find new hidden spots. Here’s the podcast with Alex Munoz where he also discusses these developments. You can also find our podcast by searching for “Our Town Reno” where you get your podcasts and delve into our archives of street reporting.