TINY HOUSE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Tiny House Community Development

Tiny House collaborates with groups and individuals to provide food, housing, safe space, education, job readiness and more. We work with GTCC, Goodwill, area high schools, etc to provide needed resources and training for those experiencing homelessness, hunger and marginalized lives. We also partner with an environmental group to collect, process and sell densified Styrofoam to divert it from our local landfill and to receive the profits from this to further their mission of helping those in our community who are in need.

THCD, Tiny House Community Development, is well known in the community for the many ways it helps those in need with the help of volunteers as well as helping the environment. This year's accomplishments are: The JM Green Tiny House community was completed with all 10 affordable homes providing a safe place to live with a garden area and covered bus stop. The local communities have embraced and made the THCD STyrofoam recycling program a huge success. Several churches and businesses have collection trailers in their parking lots that are used as drop off sites for the foam. All collected styrofoam is densified into ingots and sold. The net proceeds are used for the Workforce Development program that teaches the homeless carpentry skills that they use to make chicken coops, garden sheds, garden boxes and birdhouses that are for sale/ Scott Jones has been instrumental in in helping other NC cities start their own styrofoam collection programs and has helped set their densifiers. Scott recently spoke at the Resource Recycling conference in Orlando about the THCD recycling program in Guilford County. THCD was 1 of 2 nonprofits from the US being recognized for their successful recycling program.

THCD, along with Goodwill, teaches a free 8 week NCCER Construction class to anyone. The course teaches basic safety, construction math, how to use hand and power tools, etc. This year 4 classes have been held with 32 students enrolled, 18 students completed the course and 12 students were hired. Several companies that THCD partners with for hiring are B&G Multi Families, Baker Roofing, and Aatco Builders Group. Future classes will include plumbing and electrical. Carpentry students from several high schools are building tiny houses for the homeless to be used in the future Tiny House communities. The electrical students are wiring the houses. Peak Adventures Ministries students worked through the summer building the first modern Tiny House.

The Hope Center and THCD office opened in March of 2023.The center serves as a cooling and heating area for the homeless where, Monday-Friday, they can get a continental breakfast, charge their phones and speak with case managers about various resources available to them.With the help of volunteers from the area churches and colleges, a hot breakfast is served every Saturday morning to an average of 65 people. Mercy Showers has been onsite to provide showers and clean clothes and several barbers have volunteered free haircuts.

Many organizations have collaborated to help move THCD forward in their success. The all veteran Team Rubicon, InterVarsity student volunteer group, area Faith organizations and Home Depot employees have volunteered this year to help build on the Freeman Mill Road tiny house community as well as building walls for our Smith Street community. Sherwin Williams donated paint brushes, and Always Forward Roofing donated shingles for the construction education program.