COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1516751
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches in Psychosocial and Mental HealthView all 9 articles
Tiny Homes -Big Movement: Building a Permanent and Affordable Housing Option for People with Severe Mental Illness
Provisionally accepted
Amy Blank Wilson1*
Melissa L Villodas2
Thava Mahadevan1,3Emily Bosman4Jamie Swaine1
John Gilmore1Lee Bowman5Alaina Money-Garman4- 1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
- 2George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States
- 3XDS Inc., Pittsboro, United States
- 4Garman Homes, Morrisville, United States
- 5Legion Company, Chapel Hill, United States
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Background: Ensuring an adequate supply of affordable housing is one of the most pressing public health challenges facing the United States. This challenge is particularly pressing for people with severe mental illnesses living on incomes 25% below the federal poverty level, placing them at increased risk of housing insecurity. Description: This paper presents a community case study of the Tiny Homes Village (THV) demonstration project. In this project a community partnership used tiny homes to create a new affordable housing option for people with severe mental illnesses. Results:The THV built 15 tiny homes through a public/private cross-sector partnership consisting of a private non-profit organization, a university, a community mental health center, and construction companies.All 15 homes have the same floor plan and were constructed at the same time using a Blitz Build model in 90 business days at a cost of approximately $50,000 per home. Each home is built on a permanent foundation, and includes 416 square feet of interior, heated space and five living spaces: a full bathroom, a bedroom, an open-concept kitchen and living room, and a covered front porch that provides an additional 96 square feet of unheated space. The tiny homes are located within a village that offers several amenities and a range of community-based services. This community case demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships to tackle some of our most complex and entrenched social problems while also providing a blueprint for how to expand the affordable housing options for people with severe mental illnesses.
Keywords: Housing, Community partnerships, severe mental illness, Affordable housing, Tiny homes, public mental health
Received: 24 Oct 2024; Accepted: 28 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wilson, Villodas, Mahadevan, Bosman, Swaine, Gilmore, Bowman and Money-Garman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Amy Blank Wilson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.