2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land - 18

developments
developments
that. But as local emergency
declarations become more
common because of homelessness,
regulations may
change to pilot bold ideas at
speed.
Urban Land: What do you
see as the role of ULI and
the commercial real estate
industry in addressing homelessness?
And why do you
think ULI is particularly well
positioned to champion this
cause?
Located outside Raleigh,
North Carolina, Trinity
Hollow is a new travel
trailer community by APG
Companies. At buildout the
site will offer 30 travel trailers,
4 single-family homes,
and shared amenities with
supportive services.
Urban Land Institute brings
together a great wealth of
knowledge-government
officials, city planners, civil
engineers, developers, bankers,
and lawyers-to look at
urban problems. Homelessness
has now become a
core issue in so many cities,
and these leaders have deep
experience in the challenges
posed by this issue, as well
as in finding creative solutions.
ULI has published case
studies that show it can cost
up to $1 million dollars in
California to build a unit of
housing for the homeless in
the conventional way. With
[ULI's Homeless to Housed
Initiative], we are studying
cost-effective and rapidly
deployable solutions to housing
for those experiencing
homelessness. This includes
quick-build, temporary, onestory
buildings and other
innovative structures.
UL: You are collaborating
with the Lotus Campaign on
a report about one of these
one-story solutions: singleaxle
travel trailers. Share how
this project began and has
evolved.
I attended a presentation by
former ULI President Randy
Rowe about the sharing
economy-Uber and VRBO,
for example-when I started
thinking: How can we apply
the sharing economy to the
issue of homelessness? Why
don't we form a nonprofit
that is a VRBO-type model,
but it matches people that
have extra space in their
house with homeless people?
Hosts would offer housing in
exchange for household or
business support, such as pet
care, janitorial work, gardening,
property maintenance,
housekeeping, or caretaking.
A national nonprofit dedicated
to addressing homelessness
could be formed
to offer this opportunity to
a subset of its clients who
have passed background
checks and are deemed to
be low risk for a community
placement
I asked Phil Payne of the
Lotus Campaign to explore
the feasibility of this concept.
When the Campaign
began to reach out to individuals
with a survey on the
idea, they found that very
few people were comfortable
with the idea of having
a homeless person in their
residence, even those who
were deemed to be low
risk-estimated to be about
10 percent of the homeless
population, or 60,000
people. I began to think
about other viable [ways] to
create efficient, affordable
options for communities to
address homelessness-particularly
with this same 10
percent of the population
deemed low risk. While at
Burning Man and staying
in a travel trailer, I realized
these travel trailers could be
a solution.
UL: How could single-axle
travel trailers be a good
homelessness solution?
Each travel trailer comes
with a queen-sized bedroom
... a queen bed, a kitchen,
and a dinette, a living area
with TV, and a bathroom. It
even has extra room for a
double bunk bed, if you have
kids. You can buy a brandnew
travel trailer for less
than $40,000. In addition,
they're truly portable, easily
connected to electricity, and
have their own sewage and
water storage. They can be
serviced with a [portabletoilet]
truck for sewage and
a water truck for water. This
is the lowest-cost housing
available, and it's the easiest
housing solution to provide
and to take care of.
UL: How would you pilot this?
We'd [like to build] prototype
villages designed with
100 individual housing units,
18
URBAN LAND
SPRING 202 4
APG C OMP ANIES
2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land

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