When Keith Valiquette became homeless in Madison, Wisconsin a few years ago, he turned to men’s homeless shelter in the city for a place to stay. But he didn’t thrive in over-crowded shelter system.
“It’s subsistence and that’s about it,” is how he describes it.
The 64-year-old Valiquette wanted more than just a bunk to sleep on. He craved community, and found it with a motley group of people camped out in an old parking lot a few blocks from the state Capitol.
Calling themselves Occupy Madison, the group had formed in solidarity with protests on Wall Street, hoping to draw attention to the cause of economic justice. They quickly found themselves immersed in a local version of that: homelessness.
Three years later, the local Occupy is taking on a radical experiment to try to solve that problem, or at least make a dent in it. The group, made up of homeless people and their supporters, are taking on the role of developer. On May 29, Occupy Madison closed on a quarter-acre lot that had long been an auto-repair shop.
The group plans to convert the building into a workshop, constructing tiny homes for the homeless. The group would then park up to nine of the homes — with 98-square-feet of space, most people would call them trailers or campers — on the site. They also have plans to grow produce and make craft items in the workshop, which it can sell.
Valiquette’s home is nearly complete and will be one of the first ones parked on the site. He’s owned bigger homes, but he’s proudest of this tiny house, which he sees as part of something bigger.
“One of the most enticing things for me is we’re a community,” he says. “It’s community involvement with people from all walks of society. It’s the community aspect [that] means a lot to me — having friends and sharing goals.”
He knows that people, not just in Madison, but also around the country will be watching to see how it works out. This utopian dream of helping the homeless create their own self-sustaining community has captured national and international attention, as people in other cities watch to see how it unfolds. Valiquette is undaunted by the attention.
“I love a challenge,” he says.
“I don’t fear the unknown. I never look at any adversity that comes at me with trepidation. I look at this as an opportunity, but I hope this inspires others.”
Birth of a movement
Occupy Madison formed in October 2011 along with the Occupy Wall Street protest that was underway in Manhattan. The initial members were concerned with economic justice and set up a camp in Madison, Wisconsin, a liberal college town, and the state’s capital, with about quarter of a million people. Many were college students eager to spark a grassroots revolution of sorts.
The group began camping out in various locations around town, trying to draw attention to financial inequality, when they were confronted by an immediate, local form of it: homelessness.
Noah Phillips remembers the mood at the time.
“We wanted to be all radical and edgy and sleep outside, but there were already these people sleeping outside,” he says. “There was this discomfort among some people that we were crashing other people’s space.”
Some early members drifted away, but those who remained embraced the homeless community and helped them organize. On an abandoned parking lot just a few blocks from the Capitol building, the group created and maintained a shantytown. Using volunteer labor, the group built hoop houses, set up a wood-burning stove, provided food and rented a Porta Potty.
It was a grassroots effort at housing people that didn’t use any government aid. But even in this lefty college town, the group ruffled some feathers. When the group’s protest permit ran out, the city refused to let them continue staying there. The parking lot was slated for redevelopment for an upscale apartment project. The group dispersed, some moving to public campgrounds while others went back to living on the street.
But the idea of having a permanent, self-sustaining community endured. In early 2013, Occupy Madison rented a workshop in an industrial part of town and began to construct tiny homes mostly out of salvaged materials like pallets.
Bruce Wallbaum, an Occupy board member who is not homeless, says the tiny houses cost about $4,500 to build. Most of the wood comes from pallets, but the group does buy some materials. The big cost items are the trailer frames, wheels and heaters. Progress has been slower than anticipated — the group has so far built about three homes. A local high school shop class is working on a fourth.
Some civic groups and unions have offered to help build the tiny homes, but Occupy wants the people who will be living in them to be involved in the construction.
“We’re not about giving away houses,” says Wallbaum. “That’s not the model.”
To qualify for a house, members have to put in hours of sweat equity. To get on the list for a home, people have to be active members of Occupy and put in 32 hours of work for the collective. Then the person has to put in at least 500 hours of work on his or her home, in order to live there.
Valiquette has so far spent about 400 hours on his own home and estimates that about 26 different people have pitched in, for a combined 1,000 hours of labor.
While the houses will technically always be property of Occupy Madison, when a member hits the 500-hour mark, he or she takes possession of it and can live there.
“Unless you break the code of conduct, you can never lose it,” says Wallbaum, adding that he doesn’t think 500 hours is all that much. “But we didn’t want someone to come in, do 500 hours of work, get a house, drive it away and sell it on the street. We were trying to find a way to prevent that.”
Creating a community
The houses don’t cost a lot to build, but finding a place to put them proved more challenging. City ordinance doesn’t allow long-term camping. The houses can be parked on the street, but must be moved every 48 hours, creating a hassle and instability for their occupants.
Starting last year, the group began looking for vacant land to buy and develop as an eco-village of tiny houses. The idea was inspired by similar villages created in the Northwest: Dignity Village in Portland, Quixote Village in Olympia and Opportunity Village in Eugene. Members from Occupy Madison visited all three last year for pointers on how to make it happen.
Earlier this year, the group found a quarter-acre lot for sale in a working class neighborhood. The lot housed an auto-repair shop that was moving. The building seemed ideal to convert into a tiny-house factory and there is enough land around it to park several tiny-houses and plant gardens.
Not everybody was thrilled about the project — several neighbors lobbied against it, complaining that the development would be more like a trailer park and worried the tiny houses wouldn’t be built to the same standards as full-sized homes. But in May, Madison’s Common Council approved the project, with numerous conditions. The group closed on the property a week ago, with a $110,000 mortgage.
Occupy Madison has to do a lot of work before anybody can live on the site: bathrooms must be renovated and a wooden fence installed around the property. But plenty of people — some from as far away as Australia — have also offered to help.
Others want advice for how they can create similar villages in their own cities. “We’ve been contacted by so many people from around the country,” Wallbaum says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten an email that says ‘Tell us how to do it here.’”
It’s a request he doesn’t quite know how to answer, since the project is very much a work in progress. But in keeping with the spirit of the national Occupy movement, the Madison group intends to make all its plans and designs available for free on its website.
“Anything we do, we’ll provide to anybody that wants it for free,” Wallbaum says. “There’s been hundreds of people who have asked us for the plans. They could people who are homeless or just want to build one for a vacation home.”
A model for the future?
Valiquette had a career as an accountant before helping his son run an auto repair shop. But when his son was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the business folded. Valiquette lost his income and soon lost his apartment.
He’s always loved building things, so working in the tiny home workshop came naturally. But it’s the sense of community he’s found most thrilling.
He sees the tiny houses as a possibility — and not just for homeless people.
“I see this as entry level housing for future generations,” he says.
“No one, even coming out of college, is in the market right now to buy a home. We’re a rental society today. To bring back homeownership, this is one of the few paths back to it. As your family grows, you’re going to outgrow something like this, but if I were a young person starting out, I’d be totally for this.”
Not everybody thinks the Occupy Madison village is likely to become a model for homeless services. Madison Councilman Larry Palm, whose district the village is located in, supported the project. He hopes it succeeds but doubts that the experiment can be duplicated, especially in urban environments where zoning laws require high density. But he also says that many homeless people probably won’t like communal living.
“If you look at some of the homeless people, some of their scenarios is they don’t’ want to be in a community,” he says. “That’s one of the reasons they’re unemployed and homeless.”
But Valiquette envisions other groups — churches, fraternities and non-profits — starting their own tiny house communities, around Madison and beyond.
“I’m hoping we’re the spark to make this an acceptable path for people to gain housing,” he says. “There’s got to be a way that you, on your own, can achieve housing without assistance. This is one avenue with very little or no money, you can get into housing. We can’t just keep building these condos and half million houses — who the hell has the money for them?”
Joe Tarr is a reporter at Isthmus, the alt-weekly in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s also worked in Knoxville, Anchorage and Phnom Penh, and written a book about Patti Smith.
