SLO County tiny home village takes big step forward at Board of Supervisors meeting
San Luis Obispo County’s efforts to establish a tiny home village moved one step closer to becoming a reality at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
In a 4-1 vote, the Board of Supervisors voted to reallocate around $587,000 from a Salvation Army-led rapid rehousing program to the proposed Oklahoma Avenue Tiny Home Village project.
The Salvation Army program was unable to proceed due to staffing issues, SLO County Homeless Services Division manager Joe Dzvonik told the board, and the money has a use-it-or-lose-it deadline.
“That money needs to be expended by Jan. 31 of next year, or it will be recouped by (the California Department of Housing and Community Development),” Dzvonik said. “We saw that as an opportunity to reallocate that money to purchase the tiny home modular units as written in this board item.”
Dzvonik said the plan to build tiny homes near the Oklahoma Avenue Safe Parking Site has “not gone smoothly” so far, and the project is currently on pause due to environmental issues the county is still investigating.
County Administrative Officer Wade Horton said it could still be “at least a couple of months” until regulatory agencies clear the Oklahoma Avenue site for use as a tiny home project.
The good news is, Dzvonik said, the county can use the money before the Jan. 31, 2023, deadline, even if the site has not been officially selected.
“At this point, I am prepared to purchase these modular units from the vendor that we indicated, with the agreement that the vendor will not actually even manufacture or deliver those for some time until we have a location settled,” Dzvonik said. “The backup plan could be (that) if the location at Oklahoma (Avenue) doesn’t work, we have a few other locations we could consider.”
District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, who voted to approve the funding, said the delays in building Grover Beach’s pallet home shelters this year showed the importance of keeping their options on a location flexible.
“I think that it’s important to get lined up with our suppliers on these (homes), and, knowing that while the Oklahoma location may not pan out, we have other locations identified that we’re just still looking at,” Ortiz-Legg said.
District 1 Supervisor John Peschong, who also voted to approve the reallocation of funding, said he had some concerns with Oklahoma Avenue as a location for the village, citing drug use — specifically, four overdoses from fentanyl at the parking site — as a problem for expanding services in the area.
District 5 Supervisor Debbie Arnold, the only “no” vote on the proposal, said the proposal wasn’t well-defined enough to get her vote, calling it “premature.”
Because of that lack of information on the project’s implementation, Arnold said she had concerns about how the site would be run, and what the county’s liability for the site would look like.
She said she was opposed to the idea of “accepting grants and almost just identifying the project before we really work through the planning.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
