6 Tiny Houses Built In Hill Backyard

Just under a dozen tents have been cleared from a backyard homeless encampment on Rosette Street to make space for six new ​“tiny homes,” the latest local experiment in providing emergency shelter to those most in need.

Those prefabricated houses, all under 100 square feet each, popped up this past weekend behind the Amistad Catholic Worker House at 203 Rosette St. 

That’s the Hill neighborhood home of anarchist activists Mark Colville and Luz Catarineau, who’ve offered meals and refuge at that location for decades in the tradition of the hospitality-focused Catholic Worker movement. 

Since the pandemic, the couple have turned their backyard into a neighborhood, responding to rocketing rents and homeless encampment clearings by inviting those without stable housing to camp out on their property. 

They’ve now taken that initiative a step further, moving all of those tents onto a nearby city-owned plot to create room for a string of theoretically safer, small-scale shelters, complete with beds, doors and windows that lock, heating and cooling, electrical outlets, smoke detectors and fire extinguishers (though the houses are already assembled, the utilities are not yet operational). 

“I don’t know what to think of it yet,” said Jason Marrone, a 42-year-old who has lived outside Amistad for the past few months after the state bulldozed an encampment by the Metro-North train tracks where he’d been sleeping. ​“I’ve just never seen this before – I’ve never seen people doing things for one another like this. I’ve never seen people go this far for homeless people.”

The tiny homes were sourced from Pallet, a for-profit company that has successfully sold the concept of prefab ​“shelter villages” to mitigate homelessness to over 100 communities across the states since 2017, and who helped assemble all the buildings over the course of this past Saturday morning.

The village outside Amistad includes four single homes, sized at 64 square feet each, and two doubles, which tout fold-up bunk beds and cover 100 square feet each.

Jacob Miller, a real estate broker and housing advocate who happens to also be Colville’s next door neighbor and son-in-law, said that the total tiny house project – including site prep, electric work, delivery, and equipment rental – cost $123,940, which amounts to $20,656,67 per unit. 

Over the past year, Colville, Catarineau, their backyard neighbors, and an extensive crew of volunteers managed to raise that money primarily through donations from individuals and organizations in nearby suburbs. For example, read here about a recent brunch at a church in Guilford that Colville said brought in nearly $50,000 to the cause. 

Read more about the undertaking on a new website launched for the ​“Rosette Neighborhood Village” here.

Colville’s idea behind the backyard encampment is to bring people who might be othered out neighborhoods because they can’t afford to rent back into community. He pointed to the city’s alder-approved plan to purchase the Days Inn hotel on Foxon Boulevard — which the Elicker administration plans to convert into 57 non-congregate shelter rooms for those without housing — as a means of isolating poor people.

“It moves people physically from the neighborhood and then spits them back into them,” he said. ​“We don’t have homeless people in the Hill anymore. We have economic refugees we are trying desperately as a neighborhood to house at our own expense, for the purpose of being human rights defenders rather than housing developers.”

He said he hopes the city sees Amistad’s efforts and opts to pursue tiny homes as a more dignified approach to supporting and reintegrating the many who might otherwise be outcast by society. He and Miller are working with the city right now to try to secure permits to keep the village in line with city regulations. That’s after City Plan Department Executive Director Laura Brown emailed Colville about having caught wind of the project, writing that ​“we are here to help ensure that your undertaking aligns with legal requirements and safeguards the interests of your community. We appreciate that this is a wicked problem that will take a lot of creative thinking and working together.” 

In a follow-up interview with the Independent Tuesday morning, Mayor Justin Elicker said that Colville’s group should not have moved ahead with building these tiny houses as is, and that the city plans to relay that message to Colville soon with the goal of finding a way to bring them into compliance with city law. ​“The city has met with some representatives from the group to answer questions and see if we can facilitate a legal pathway to have those structures,” the mayor said, ​“but unfortunately they moved ahead installing structures without zoning approval.” He said there is a ​“pathway” to try to make these tiny houses legal; but, he conceded, these structures are ​“atypical.”

“Obviously what we’re doing doesn’t fit into the traditional boxes associated with municipal building and zoning codes, especially zoning codes that were written in the thirties” Miller told the Independent. ​“But the city appears to want to work with us to find a path forward to get the project to a point where it can finally be formally approved.”

Read more here about a previous attempt by New Haveners to overhaul the city’s zoning code to allow for tiny homes as affordable living alternatives amid a housing stock shortage.

"We're Here To Be Neighbors"

During a Monday visit by this reporter to Amistad, residents and volunteers put up floral curtains in the windows of the tiny houses. Throughout the week, mattresses and welcome mats will be distributed as the first group of people officially move in and make their marks on the new homes.

Around 10 people are currently living at Amistad, a number that has swayed up and down as individuals displaced by government crackdowns on encampments have sought refuge at the site. Some have left Amistad since finding stable housing; others have been kicked out by the community for causing disturbances in the neighborhood, like selling drugs openly on the streets or throwing loud parties at night. 

Unlike homeless shelters, which typically enforce curfews and other regulations like bans against pets, Amistad only adopts rules on an as-needed basis to ensure that the neighbors allowing the backyard encampment aren’t put out by its existence. ​“We’re here to be neighbors,” Colville said. ​“So if the neighbors start complaining, we have to enforce the rules.” 

Right now, all residents have relocated their tents into the Rosette Street community garden, a city-owned chunk of land directly abutting Amistad’s backyard, located at 211 Rosette St. Part of that city-owned property is still set aside for community gardens, Colville said, while the other part — which he said was previously used an illegal dumping ground — is now home to tents as part of a neighbor-approved ​“human rights zone.” He said tenters started setting up on that publicly owned land in anticipation of an influx of residents after the state cleared the Lamberton bridge encampment.

Colville said he’s finishing interviewing residents to make final decisions about who should get a tiny house over a tent. He said he’s considering who has lived at Amistad the longest and contributed the most to the community while prioritizing people with disabilities for whom getting in and out of a tent is most treacherous.

Taking a tiny house does come with responsibilities. Those living in the homes are expected to perform a leadership role at Amistad, Colvile said, like providing regular meals for those who drop by Rosette to fill their stomachs and brainstorming ways to continue evolving the backyard to serve others, like establishing a warming center come winter. 

Colville said the idea holds that ​“if you wanna be in a tiny home, come be in this community and show us that you belong in one.” 

Suki Godek, who has lived at Amistad since the city dismantled the encampment where she was staying just off Ella Grasso Boulevard, said the tiny house project helped bond the broader neighborhood, not just the backyard tenants.

For two months prior to the installation of the homes, Godek said Rosette Street neighbors and other volunteers helped clear out the backyard, leveling the ground to lay foundations for the tiny houses.

“It’s been a little stressful but it was awesome because it brought all of us who hadn’t spent a lot of time with each other together.”

She said one of the best aspects of living at Amistad for the past six months — as opposed to sleeping in the woods or at a shelter — has been getting to know her neighbors. Her husband mows the grass of several, she said, and ​“there’s a lady a couple doors down who saves all her bottles for me.”

“That’s what’s different from being homeless on a park bench, where people just act like you’re not even there.”

“If we’re one of the lucky people that get a tiny home, I’ll be overjoyed,” she said.

Jason Marrone, who has camped out at Amistad only for a couple of months, said he’s more skeptical of the upcoming shelter. ​“It sounds like there’s a lot of strings attached,” he reflected. He worried the new homes might create more drama and political rifts within the backyard.

Marrone, who’s originally from Bridgeport, said that he spent two years sleeping on the ramp outside the APT Foundation, a methadone clinic on Congress Avenue, and across local encampments before finding his way to Amistad.

The ramp was heated to avoid ice build-up, he said, which allowed him to make it through months of freezing temperatures. However, Marrone said one day some cops uncovered his sleeping spot and instructed him to leave. 

Marrone said he likes Amistad because it’s largely protected from police interference. But the number of personalities involved in managing the backyard is overwhelming in its own way, he said, ​“and people talking shit all the time makes it feel like high school.”

“We’ll see,” he said about the newest housing endeavor. ​“I don’t know how it’s gonna work out.”

See below for more recent Independent articles about homelessness, activism, and attempts to find shelter.

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