By James Matthews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Little Blue Cabins may be a means to help alleviate the housing crunch in Highlands East.
Kevin Taylor, the chairperson of the Little Blue Cabins (LBC) board of directors, said the whole idea is to walk beside somebody toward a fresh start from homelessness.
He told township council March 12 that nearby Hastings County has adopted LBC as its model for transitional housing.
And other townships are considering the same, he said.
“The more support we get from surrounding communities for this project, the better,” Taylor said.
He said LBC isn’t a collection of little tin sheds that are expected to house the homeless.
“There is still a very dire need for 24/7 emergency housing within the Bancroft community, which does include your municipality,” he said. “I know several people from your municipality that are suffering homelessness.”
LBC is a transitional measure, he said, that would take people from an emergency shelter through an input process toward a fresh start in life.
It’s more than just the individual or family, though.
“There will be 20 people all on the road to a fresh start in life,” Taylor said. “That means that they would also help govern the facility in the respect that the residents will help generate the rules and the consequences for others living there with them.”
That will be guided through the group’s board of directors and a house advisory committee.
“To make sure this is all done properly,” he said.
At its core, LBC is a long-term health care facility that will be nestled in the woods with a community building and 20 small individual cabins people can consider to be their home, he said.
“We don’t know how long the transition time takes to when each individual can be able to handle having a job and paying rent and what have you,” Taylor said.
Walking beside somebody toward a fresh start means social service and mental health professionals will visit the facility for assistance.
“What’ll happen is it’ll become a community of 20 people all on the same mission, to just have a totally fresh start, to not repeat the cycle, to not end up back downtown again,” Taylor said.
He even spoke about people volunteering to train the transitional residents with a trade.
“Just to show them that they have worth and that there’s a potential for them to actually have a job in the future,” he said.
Life skills training will also be a component in the effort to help people get back on their feet.
“We all know that many folks require just the basic life skills training,” Taylor said. “And that can take some time if people have been living a life on the street for any length of time. Their whole view of normality is different than ours.”
So you walk with those folks, he said.
And that’s kind of the LBC intent: To walk with people toward different life circumstances.
“This involves you,” he said of municipal participation. “I’m not coming to ask you for anything. Just support.”
Councillor Angela Lewis said the conception is for 20 people per LBC community.
“So what happens when 30 or 40 more people come into the community that are unhoused?” she said. “Where do they go?”
He said that, based on research into the experiences of other tiny cabin communities, anything more than 25 cabins “is going to be trouble.”
Having 25 cabins is where the LBC setup maxes out, he said.
“We have to keep in mind that there is an intake process,” Taylor said. “And people have to be willing to have a changed life.
“There already is 50 or 60 unhoused people in our community. So that already exists.”
It’s a transitional option, he said, and some people might not be in the LBC community very long.
“We can’t fix it all,” Taylor said. “My biggest dream is that there will be more than one Little Blue Cabins community. I believe we’re going to build this so well and run it so well that it will be rubber stamped.”
