DENVER — Denver has two tiny home villages that operate as an alternative to shelters for people without a home.
Each tiny home has heat and electricity, and residents share kitchen space and bathrooms within the village. They allow dogs and couples to stay together.
The first one, the Beloved Community Village, was built in the Globeville neighborhood at 44th Avenue and Pearl Street in 2017, and now it must move.
"Through zoning codes, tiny home villages are allowed to stay onsite up to four years, and so at this new location, we have a two-year lease with the possibility of extending two more years," said Dorothy Leyba, the tiny home village program director with the Colorado Village Collaborative.
The 19 tiny homes in Globeville will move to a vacant lot in the Clayton neighborhood at 4201 Monroe St., after city council approved the new agreement Monday night.
The lease begins on May 1.
"The logistics of the move has been very difficult and costly. We do have to have several weeks of residents being in another location while the relocation efforts are being done here," Leyba said.
Leyba said the new lot will be better because they have space to build five more tiny homes and a community garden. But the constant moving is tough.
"Ideally we would want permanent land so that we would not have to continue to move," she said.
The city currently leases them vacant lots for $10 a year.
Denver Department of Finance spokesperson Julie Smith said said they couldn't give them a lot, but they would be able to sell something for a nominal fee.
Smith said her department did a study in 2017 to evaluate all the vacant parcels of land in the city. At that time, she said they couldn't find a location for a tiny home village that would work permanently. But she said that's not to say they won't find one in the future.
Until then, every four years, the Colorado Collaborative will have to find new lots for their two tiny home villages.
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