Temporary shelters for unhoused residents could be coming to Fayetteville

Cities across the country are turning to villages of tiny homes to house the homeless. In Austin, Texas, there are over 500 homes at Community First! Village. In Madison, Wisconsin, Occupy Madison Villages has 36 conestoga huts, an even smaller shelter than the standard tiny home.

Something similar could be coming to Fayetteville.

At the Thursday meeting of the City of Fayetteville’s Council on Homelessness and Mental Health Committee, members recommended that the city council discuss building a village of temporary shelters for the unhoused at its May 5 work session. 

“We have to do something,” said Brenda McNair, homelessness council member and city council member for District 7. “There are moms who are sleeping in cars with their children on a consistent basis.”

The shelters would be purchased from Pallet, a rapid-response shelter company based in Washington state. The company offers two shelter sizes: one measuring 70 square feet, meant to house one to two people, and another at 120 square feet for up to four people. A smaller occupancy version of the 120 square foot model features an en-suite, non-ADA accessible bathroom and can house one to two people. Each shelter lasts about 20 years.

The shelters come with overhead lights, a fire extinguisher, carbon monoxide and fire alarms, and outlets with USB ports. They also have heat and air conditioning, ADA-accessible doorways and emergency access windows. 

Each costs about $24,000, including shipping and assembly. However, in his presentation to the council, Benjamin MacKrell, Pallet’s East Coast territory sales manager, said this price could change because of tariffs issued by President Donald Trump this week. This price also doesn’t include the additional costs of hooking the shelters up to electricity and water, services Pallet doesn’t provide.

In addition to the shelters, Pallet sells laundry facility structures (not including washers and dryers), ADA and non-ADA compliant shower and bathroom facilities and community rooms. MacKrell said the most successful Pallet villages provide these services or easy access to them in the community.

While Pallet will help organizations establish the villages, the company isn’t involved once they’re up and running. Instead, it’s up to local governments, for-profit companies or nonprofit organizations to manage the communities.

“We’re here just to provide you with sort of the physical infrastructure,” MacKrell told the council.

McNair said several private and nonprofit groups have expressed interest in managing a Pallet or other tiny home site in Fayetteville.

Besides selecting a managing organization and receiving funding to pay for the Pallet village, the homelessness council would have to change the zoning of the village’s location. Kelly Strickland, assistant city manager, said the congregate living style of the Pallet villages isn’t allowed under any current city zoning.

Strickland also added that the city’s housing standards require a minimum of 270 square feet for a single occupant. McNair said preliminary conversations with the city’s Planning & Zoning Division indicated a possible exception for the Pallet shelters.

If approved, Fayetteville would become the second city in North Carolina to have a Pallet village. The first was in Greensboro with the city’s Doorway Project. The community has 30 of Pallet’s 70-square-foot shelters for people experiencing homelessness during the winter, from December through March.

The Doorway Project was the state’s first temporary shelter community and completed its second year of operation last month. 

In total, Pallet has 135 villages across North America. Like Greensboro’s, some are only used during summer or winter months when inclement weather is likely. Others only serve specific populations like unhoused veterans or women. MacKrell said it’s up to the managing organization to decide; Pallet only requires the communities to provide access to homelessness support services.

McNair and Malik Davis, another council member and the city council member for District 2, visited two in Tampa, Florida. One of them, Tampa Hope, is operated by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Saint Petersburg and has 99 shelters with plans to expand to 189 by mid-2025.

“It was calm and structured properly. Security was there. Everybody was living without any chaos. It was very clean,” McNair said. “You can tell that they followed the rules and regulations. They also were transitioning them [the homeless] out to work.”

MacKrell’s presentation highlighted others, like a 21-shelter Pallet village managed by the City of Redondo Beach in California that has helped 156 residents per year transition into more permanent housing since it opened in 2021. Baldwin Park, another California village, has 28 shelters and has helped 360 people reach more permanent housing.

Research from Pallet also shows the positive impact its villages have on public safety. Vancouver, Washington, saw a 29% decrease in police-initiated visits within a 500-foot radius of its village just a year after it opened. The same happened in Los Angeles, where crime committed by unhoused people within a quarter-mile radius of its 10 villages has dropped by an average of almost 25% since 2020.

“It is a model that has been proven. Nobody has to reinvent anything,” MacKrell said.

MacKrell’s Thursday presentation was the second time he presented Pallet and its impacts to the council. The first was last summer.

“Hopefully we can work this out,” McNair said. “If not, we will move on to something else, because we are in dire need.”

CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.