Pallet shelters set to open in Grover Beach. See inside the innovative homeless solution
An innovative shelter program two and a half years in the making is will welcome its first residents next week in Grover Beach — just in time for Christmas.
Cabins for Change, a 5Cities Homeless Coalition program aimed at providing emergency transitional housing units for homeless South County individuals, will open its doors to applicants on Dec. 23, Executive Director Janna Nichols said.
The campus features 20 cabins, two administrative structures and a dining structure — each one assembled from a pallet kit of six to eight panels provided by the Everett, Waghinton-based company Pallet.
The project, the first of its kind in San Luis Obispo County, is finally ready for occupancy after suffering a series of setbacks that pushed its opening date back from July, Nichols said.
“(We want to do ) whatever we can to help (our clients) cope with some of the trauma of being homeless, and potentially, trauma that has caused them to be homeless,” Nichols said. “Our goal is that this is a very healing environment, and we want it to be welcoming, and I think I think we’ve achieved that.”
How South County got its first shelter space
Nichols said the project got its start when she learned about a similar pallet shelter in Sacramento two and a half years ago and saw an opportunity to implement a similar program in the South County, which has no formal homeless shelter space outside of its warming center that operates in the winter.
Nichols and the 5Cities Homeless Coalition applied for funding in October 2020, with a use deadline of January 2022.
The organization received the funding allocation in the form of Emergency Solution Grants, but it wasn’t able to secure a spot to host the pallet shelters until the city of Grover Beach agreed to allow the site’s development on county land near the San Luis Obispo County Superior Court’s Grover Beach branch on Rockaway Avenue.
“We then went to Congressman (Salud Carbajal) and said, ‘Hey, what can you do to help us change this arbitrary spending deadline, because we now have the site, we now have the project, but we can’t meet this timeline?’” Nichols said. “He was able to work with (the Department of Housing and Urban Development), and in fact, they waived the that particular stipulation of the funding.”
With that deadline extended, and approval from District 3 Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg to build the shelters in her district, Nichols said, construction began in late March.
Each cabin takes about an hour to assemble, Nichols said, but installation of the electrical and heating units extended the set-up process. If not for a shipping delay in an electrical switch gear component, the project would have been completed in July, but after four shipping delays, Nichols said, the part will arrive next week, allowing the shelters to open before Christmas.
Individually, Nichols said each 100-square-foot cabin is relatively inexpensive at $15,000 a unit, but the installation costs raised the final total to around $2 million for the campus.
Each unit comes with two beds that fold down from the walls, but the cabins are intended as single-occupancy homes, unless the occupants are a couple, Nichols said.
While each unit is equipped with heating and cooling, none of the units feature kitchens or restrooms. The site instead offers community dining and showers to incentivize collaboration among residents.
“Sometimes (new clients) can be pretty reclusive, but if they have to come out and go to the bathroom and eat, there is a way to start working with them,” Nichols said.
Who will be housed at Cabins for Change?
When Cabins for Change opens its doors to its first group of clients, Nichols said she hopes it is the first of many to come.
The transitional housing is intended to provide a roof over the heads of the South County’s more vulnerable homeless individuals, including women, youth who will soon be eligible for housing, medically fragile people and the elderly.
Clients can stay for 90 to 180 days while working with case managers to get back on their feet and find housing, Nichols said.
“It’s a countywide campus, so anybody from the county could come, but we are prioritizing South County (residents),” Nichols said.
Nichols said she hopes this emergency shelter can provide routine and stability for clients who may not be used to shelters that can house them over consecutive nights.
“Lots of times, people have concern about randomness. For example, in some of the shelters you have a bed tonight, but you don’t have a bed tomorrow night,” Nichols said. “People will come and go, but the folks here are going to be living here.”
With three shifts of three 5Cities Homeless Coalition workers onsite 24 hours a day, Nichols said residents will be able to have a sense of security in their new homes. Like the Oklahoma Avenue Safe Parking Site, access will be restricted at night, when only residents will be able to enter the property.
As part of the goal of making the shelters more personable and welcoming, Nichols said each of the cabins is wrapped in a beach-themed photo donated by SLO County photographer Vivian Krug-Cotton and adorned with beach-themed names, like “Anchors Away.” Beachy art hangs on the walls.
“We’ve really tried to make it a very welcoming site, and I’m hopeful that that will make it more tranquil,” Nichols said.
If this campus proves to be successful, Nichols said more could be on the way in the future.
“We’ve have the cabins all reserved. We have 20 people that are anxious to come in, and we have a waiting list for folks wanting to come into the program,” Nichols said.
This story was originally published December 16, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
