Tiny homes, big dreams: How some activists are reimagining shelter for the homeless

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/06/ [login to see] /tiny-homes-big-dreams-how-some-activists-are-reimagining-shelter-for-the-homeles
Tucked inside a residential neighborhood in Madison, Wis., and surrounded by a wooden fence and greenery, are nine little houses. With multicolored siding and roofs, they look like people-sized birdhouses. And they fit right in.

So does Gene Cox, 48. He hasn't been homeless in more than seven years. That's the point of this little development.

"This is the longest time I've stayed in one place," said Cox, nursing coffee and a cigarette outside his tiny home after working second shift as a benefits administrator. "I'm very nomadic. I've moved around Wisconsin a lot over the last 22 years."

After Cox got divorced in 2009, he bounced around rentals before living in his van for a year. He tried a local men's shelter. He lasted only two nights.

Then in 2014, he heard about this community being planned by Occupy Madison, a spinoff of the national movement against income inequality. Cox started helping with gardening, one of his passions. A few months later, he moved into one of its 99-square-foot houses (echoing the "99%" of the population that Occupy aimed to represent).