Tiny homes in Sacramento couple’s backyard help homeless families get back on their feet

Former preschool teacher Robin Moore had a roof over her head during the COVID-19 pandemic, a cozy two-bedroom she shares with her husband James Moore in North Sacramento, but she could not make herself comfortable.

She volunteered for years with Family Promise of Sacramento , answering phone calls from homeless families seeking shelter , taking down information needed to determine their eligibility for assistance and helping to feed them.

For about two decades, Family Promise has partnered with several dozen local churches around the region to house families on a rotating basis. Church members would come together and prepare meals for them as well.

That all shut down because of COVID-19, first as a result of stay-at-home orders and later because neither Family Promise nor churches wanted to expose senior volunteers to a virus that had proven quite deadly for people ages 65 and older.

Family Promise started using hotels to house the families, Moore said, but those rooms were expensive and lacked the warmth that comes when one neighbor goes out of their way to help another.

Moore felt strongly that God was giving her “an assignment,” she said. About three years ago, that conviction led her to do something that surprised her husband and daughter but that provided Family Promise with emergency shelter to temporarily house families.

During her volunteer work, she met a woman who had tiny homes for sale. Moore bought four over time, using funds designated for family savings. Their home sat on a deep lot, so Moore decided to give up about half of their backyard for the additional housing.

“My husband said, ‘Well, if God told her to do it, I won’t get in the way,’” Moore said.

Then, she began sharing what she’d done with like-minded people who wanted to see displaced families find shelter: The person who sold her the tiny homes chose to forgo a portion of the payment. An engineer volunteered to set up electricity for all the homes and plumbing for one that has a communal kitchen and bathrooms. After a number of meetings, construction specialists installed the homes and the city approved permitting. Volunteers donated furnishings, decorations and toys.

While Moore maintained ownership of the property and the homes, she established a nonprofit called WEforce of California to run the tiny home community as an emergency shelter. They call it Safe Harbor.

“I won’t advocate for myself as much as I will advocate for others,” Moore said.

Marsha Spell, executive director of Family Promise of Sacramento, said she has sent 37 families to the Safe Harbor community. Each of the three tiny homes is rented for $1,500 a month, she said, compared with the $2,500 to $3,000 a month for a hotel. On average, she said, families stay about 90 days.

“We still case-manage them,” Spell said. “We monitor how they’re spending their extra money to give them a chance to save up enough money to have their first and last month’s deposit (for apartments). We also give them $100 a week that they can use for food or gas.”

Tiny homes house more families for less money

On average, the nonprofit spends about $7,500 on each family, and it helps 20-25 families a year. Church congregations and individuals provide the funds that Family Promise uses, Spell said, and the organization is hoping to replicate Moore’s success, negotiating to use two tiny homes in midtown Sacramento.

“Robin and I speak daily. We’re both very compassionate people, wanting to see that we’re making a difference,” Spell said. “Robin calls me if a family has a situation or I call her, and it’s just a wonderful partnership. It’s like one big family making this work.”

When families leave, Moore said, she tries to keep in contact and invites them back for special events at Safe Harbor because a lot of people don’t have parents or other family to see on holidays or at weekend barbecues.

Moore, 61, greets families when they arrive and provides them with potential resources when they hit walls, she said, and church and business groups have supplied funding for renovations, furnishings, home decor, meals, free labor, toys and other needs.

Aubree Petersen Sevilla recalled Moore coming out to greet her, her husband Oscar Sevilla and their young daughter almost a year ago when they arrived at Safe Harbor on a cold winter day. She helped them get moved into a tiny home where they stayed for three months.

Petersen Sevilla said she and her husband had bounced from one hotel to another for about two months after discovering that no shelter would take their whole family.

Her husband would have to stay at one shelter, she said, and she and her daughter would have to go to another one. That wasn’t something they were willing to do, Petersen Sevilla said, so they planned to live out of their car.

Their one shot to keep a roof over their head and stay together was Family Promise, Petersen Sevilla said, so before they went for their interview, she sent up a desperate prayer that they would get shelter.

“We had about $30 to our name, and we had no idea what we were going to do if we didn’t get accepted into this program,” Petersen Sevilla said. “I remember driving over to do the interview with Family Promise, and looking back at my 6-year-old daughter in our car, and all of our stuff piled up next to her, all of our clothes and our toiletries, she was kind of smooshed in the middle, and I just felt so disassociated.”

The family had moved to Sacramento because Sevilla had found a job here. He had been operating a small business in Los Angeles, Petersen Sevilla said, but he suffered setbacks during the pandemic.

As he worked a part-time job and tried to rebuild his online sales, they exhausted the little savings they had, Petersen Sevilla said, and they no longer could afford the rent on their downtown Los Angeles loft. The couple lined up an apartment in the Sacramento region, she said, but it fell through when the landlord asked them for an additional deposit of $1,500.

They didn’t have it, she said, but they came here anyway because Sevilla had the job.

When Petersen Sevilla found out that Family Promise would help her family, she said, she was overjoyed. She recalled being so excited when she saw the tiny home and communal kitchen and baths.

Later that same day, though, a feeling of impending doom gripped Petersen Sevilla, she said, and she was afraid that she would lose it all.

“It really took me some time to adjust to the fact that we were in a program such as Safe Harbor,” she said, “and it really did take a couple weeks for me to put my guard down and breathe and accept everything and the blessing that had just come into our life.”

She and her husband finally had a fixed address that they could use to register their daughter for school, she said, and Moore already had fought to get a bus stop at the Safe Harbor gate, something that federal law dictates school districts provide to homeless families in shelters.

Free shelter allows homeless couples to save up money

The couple were able to squirrel away money because they didn’t have to pay rent, Petersen Sevilla said, and they have since moved into transitional housing and are continuing to save in hopes of being selected by Habitat for Humanity to build their own home.

“We were able to take that time to map out what our next plan was going to be for our family and what we needed to do,” Petersen Sevilla said. “It was just such a relief that we were all able to stay together. It just almost felt like divine intervention.”

Family Promise case managers help families improve their credit scores and find housing, Spell said. The nonprofit has assisted about 410 families in the last 20 years, Spell said, and since she joined 15 years ago, 28 families have purchased homes.

The need has skyrocketed, Spell said: When she arrived, 35 families a month would call for shelter assistance, but nowadays, roughly 35 families call each day. A January count of Sacramento’s homeless population showed that 17% of 6,615 unhoused residents lived in households with minor children.

Like the Petersen Sevillas, many newly homeless families do not realize that most shelters won’t allow them to stay together, Spell said, and single mothers with boys ages 15 and up find out that their sons can’t stay with them.

“We keep the entire family together,” Spell said, even if it means renting adjoining hotel rooms for a large brood. “It makes them stronger and gives them much more hope than splitting the family up.”

When booking hotels, Spell said, she looks for locations where families can feel safe going out for a walk with their children. Moore has rented a vacant lot adjacent to her home in North Sacramento where families can go to grill, children can run around, parents can pick fruit and vegetables from the garden or residents can just sit and decompress.

When Petersen Sevilla moved on from Safe Harbor, Moore surprised her by asking her if she wanted employment. Petersen Sevilla had always offered to help with cleaning and other chores while she was there, Moore said, so it seemed natural to hire her.

Moore assured Petersen Sevilla that she could work around her daughter’s school schedule. Her little girl occasionally has amused herself in the children’s play area while her mom works.

Although church congregations take on some chores at Safe Harbor, Petersen Sevilla ensures that the communal kitchen and bathrooms get a deep clean regularly, and she cleans and freshens up the tiny homes before new tenants take up temporary residence. She also helped coordinate events such as Easter egg hunts, Mother’s Day celebrations and financial education seminars.

The WEforce-Family Promise partnership intrigued directors from other Family Promise affiliates who came to the Sacramento area for a regional meeting, Spell said, and they asked to visit the Safe Harbor community.

Every Family Promise runs its temporary emergency shelter program differently, Spell said. Some have set up travel trailers because they’re less expensive and self-contained. Some have acquired fourplexes, apartment buildings or other multifamily dwellings. Some house families at hotels, and some have returned to using a network of rotating churches. Some use a combination of methods for shelter.

By teaming with Family Promise, WEforce gains a partner that runs background checks on potential residents and regularly requires clients to undergo drug testing, Spell said. This is a measure of protection that people don’t get, Spell said, when they make a couch or spare room available to a homeless person.

The tiny homes in Moore’s backyard have two bunk beds for kids, a large bed in a loft for parents, a television, furniture and an HVAC unit. Outside the homes, a free little library is stocked with books and a covered picnic table and benches allow families to dine al fresco.

When a power outage early this year left Moore and many of her neighbors in the dark, she said, she looked out her back window and saw lights on in the tiny homes. They operate on a hybrid solar power system.

Moore said she hasn’t recouped all of the money she spent to build and maintain the tiny home community because she didn’t found WEforce until after the largest investments were made and she didn’t think to get receipts for everything she purchased.

Yet she doesn’t give much thought to reimbursements, she said. Rather, her thoughts these days are on how Safe Harbor could shelter another family. If she gave up 10 more square feet of her backyard, she said, she probably could add another tiny house.