Check out the inside of latest generation of temporary tiny homes at SLO tour
San Luis Obispo’s downtown played host to an exhibition for tiny homes on a cool and rainy Wednesday — but thankfully, the exhibit had shelter space to spare.
Pallet, a tiny home kit manufacturer based in Seattle, set up two of their units on Higuera Street, inviting passerby to tour the cabins and learn more about transitional housing.
Pallet community development manager Elizabeth Rugg said the company was was taking the units on a month-long tour from Sacramento to San Diego, stopping in cities along the way with significant need for more shelter options because of high numbers of unsheltered homelessness.
Rugg said the tour was meant to showcase the company’s new “S2 Sleeper Shelter Line” units, which were selected by the state of California through the state’s request for proposals process for emergency sleeping cabins.
The S2 units are the “culmination” of a new design intended to be more efficient and offer more amenities to inhabitants than the previous generation of units, Rugg said.
“We have a number of communities across the state of California, and we went in and got some more feedback from service providers, as well as guests, municipalities and our own workforce,” Rugg said, asking “What what do we love about the first design? What were some things that needs to be changed? What was missing?”
The S2 units use new material and insulated wall ceiling panels and double-paned windows to improve energy efficiency, while adding a small air conditioner and heating unit.
Pallet units have been in service in San Luis Obispo County since December 2022, when the company completed work on the 20 tiny homes included in the 5Cities Homeless Coalition’s Grover Beach Cabins for Change project.
The Cabins for Change units were intended to put roofs with low barriers to entry over the heads of program participants who were homeless or at risk of homelessness for 90 to 180 days.
Participants could use the the cabins as a transitional space while they worked to stabilize their housing situation, work with case management and get back on their feet.
Rugg emphasized the S2 units were not intended for long-term habitation, and were a temporary solution, rather than permanent, fixed structures such as the Cabins for Change units.
“We can assemble these in an hour to an hour and a half and take it down same amount of time,” Rugg told The Tribune. “You can easily lift it with a forklift as well as you dismantle it put the panels on the pallet that it came with and then put it back into storage, so there’s a lot of flexibility.”
The units’ easy deployment process and ability to be run from a generator makes them a good candidate for emergency response to displacement, Rugg said.
The two S2 units Rugg and a handful of other Pallet employees showed off included a 70 square-foot, one-bedroom cabin and 120 square-foot unit with ensuite bathroom, complete with a shower and toilet.
This differs from the permanent Cabins for Change units, which use shared restroom facilities, in compliance with California’s guidelines for temporary units put in place during the design phase for the S2 units.
The interior of these units can be freely rearranged to the residents’ preference, and promises privacy through the use of heavier doors.
Units are projected to have a 15 to 20 year lifespan, according to Pallet’s website.
In total, the Washington-based company has installed more than 4,000 cabins in more than 120 shelter villages, with 34 communities in California alone, according to Pallet’s website.
Already, the Pallet team has had plenty of practice redeploying the units, already departing for Ventura on Thursday, Rugg said.
“We’re hoping in ‘24 to be partnering with cities and municipalities and churches to increase shelter, because as we know, we’re in a crisis and the the percentage of people who are currently unsheltered homelessness across the state has gone up,” Rugg told The Tribune.
