City of Guelph exploring tiny home community concept

The City of Guelph is exploring the idea of building a tiny home community for its unhoused population.

The County of Wellington oversees housing concerns in Guelph but the mayor said he wants to explore the idea of building a tiny home community similar to the ones in Kitchener and Waterloo, to give unhoused residents a safer place of their own.

"We've taken my idea and council has sent it to them to consider within a housing symposium that's going to be coming up in the next couple of months," Cam Guthrie, Mayor of Guelph said.

Guthrie got the idea after the City of Peterborough did something similar and wanted to see if it could work for his community. He recently toured a company in Cambridge that builds the homes and believes it could help.

Guthrie said there was about 10 encampments in the City of Guelph last year, but now that number has grown to about 20 encampments and he's trying to find a way to help.

"People these days have to choose between paying rent or paying for groceries. At some point it gets overwhelming that they end up in the streets because they don't have any supports. So it's definitely growing," said Laura Moreno, a support worker at Royal City Mission.

No location has been selected but Guthrie said both private and non-profit faith based groups have offered to help.

“It's not like it has to go on public property from the municipality point of view. There could be a way of partnering with others to make it happen,” said Guthrie.

On Wednesday, Guelph Police responded to a fire at an encampment near the city border. No one was hurt, but Guthrie said a centralized community for the unhoused could keep resources from having to spread out.

A fire at an encampment in Guelph on Oct. 18. (Submitted)

“It's not just the fact of me looking through this lens of helping the homeless, of course. But I'm looking at this through better integration of services for these people and probably better in regard of finances as well,” Guthrie said.

Those who work with the unhoused community say it’s something that might work.

"I think it's a great idea! I think there's a lot of potential of people out there that can actually live on their own and actually grow," Moreno said.

“I don't know if it's too late for our city to get it because there's so many homeless people now,” Joyce Linseman said.

Linseman lived on the streets of Guelph for a summer and has since found subsidized housing, but said she worries about being unhoused again.

“I could see it as being something that would help tremendously because low income housing is so hard to come by,” she said.

Linseman added that she feels the tiny home idea would help people focus on themselves, without worrying where they'll sleep every night.

In the meantime, Guthrie said while this idea is explored, the unhoused community needs help now and is encouraging residents to donate to non-profits and charities. He is also asking landlords with any open space to try and help out.