City Tells Tiny Home Builders To Cease And Desist

oh come on - private land, nice units. Clean. No fire hazards and far better than tents and far less costly than Elicker's $10 million plus Homeless Hotel. Is it too much to ask that this just be left alone? Should they have gone through the process? Sure. But they didn't. To do so will take months and lots of money. Is it necessary? No.

Tiny homes can be part of the answer to the city’s homelessness and housing affordability problems. But these are sheds, not homes. They do not come anywhere near complying with the State Building Code or the city’s zoning ordinance. The city can amend the latter, but not the former.

We’re in the middle of a housing crisis and THIS is the city’s response? Acting like it’s zoning-board-paperwork crisis instead?

It’s exasperating that the city would prioritize slow bureaucracy over homes. And it’s utterly inhumane that the city is trying to evict people without giving them any alternative housing. Where are they supposed to go? Whose life is improved by destroying these neighbors’ homes?

An utter failure of leadership, not to mention incredibly cruel.

When residents resort to “self help” and don’t comply with applicable codes and requirements, they should expect to get a cease and desist order. They are putting the lives of the people they’re claiming to help at risk. They are not helping. They are making a statement.

They are also doing a huge disservice to the existing/established homeless service organizations who are currently trying to get approvals (through legitimate process) for novel housing arrangements to transition people from the street directly to non-congregate housing.

Zoning regulations protect Home values with some consistency and predictability annd that’s important because home equity represents one of the largest assets of the average American household.

Building code supports life safety for occupant, neighbors and others like firefighters.

Neither of these is a trivial matter as stated by many commentators.

This isn't about compassion or lack of it — it's about following the law and real safety for those looking for shelter and safety for the neighbors.

Can somebody ask the mayor if they have concrete plans to replicate this model and cost structure to other sites? This private solution is basically embarrassing the bloated city bureaucracy.

This case is Exhibit 1 that zoning is the biggest cause of our housing inflation and housing crisis

The city is not providing enough shelter to house all its homeless, nor does it have enough housing that people can afford and neither is the state or our country doing enough to make sure people have a place to live.
The zoning codes in the city are outdated and don’t match the reality of the needs of renters in the housing market.
And the structures are not permanent structures, they are tiny houses, similar to sheds or small camper vans, and not nearly as nice as an RV or trailer homes, but far better and safer than a tent.
If the city dismantles this ingenious solution to shelter our unhoused with something far better than a tent or a train station bench or a doorway, and does not provide a sufficient alternate solution to shelter everyone who needs it, then they are complicit in whatever injuries or deaths occur to those who they force out of the only shelter that these folks could find or make for themselves, other than few hours overnight stay in a congregate shelter where they can’t live with their pets, their partners, their families, where they have to leave every morning and wander around on the streets until evening when they can return to a cot in a crowded room, and they have nowhere to secure their belongings.
Until the city provides sufficient housing (not a few overnight hours every night for a couple of months in a congregate shelter with no place for pets or partners or privacy or security for storing belongings,) they should allow these temporary tiny houses to fill the need anywhere that a homeowner allows it or on public lands not being used for any other use.

I truly celebrate what you are doing, Mr. Colville. But if you don’t follow established law and the city knowingly allows it, then precedent will be set and nothing would preventing my neighbor from building a VRBO Pallet motel in his backyard.

Please, sir, if your neighbors are supportive then you should be able to get the variance and relief you need. If you don’t do this right, the city will have to tear it down. And, at that moment, as you stand next to your new neighbors and friends—watching their homes and hopes and homes be destroyed (again)— the city won’t be the bad guy. It will be you for knowingly flaunting the law.

We, the residents of Peck St., find it notable that the mayor is out front and vocal with objections to the option of special zoning of new building construction for the homeless, but has been mute on the daily excessive noise violations of excessive barking from 100+ dogs emanating from Paw Haven’s dogs boarding facility; barking that penetrates through the homes and to the front sidewalks of the residents on Peck St. A blatant violation of the city’s noise ordinance backed by evidentiary evidence of not one, but two, professional sound studies conducted by expert acousticians. The right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of our residents doesn’t seem to apply to black and brown communities in this city, especially when the perpetrators are wealthy business owners.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to both Mark Colville and Luz Catarineau for addressing the homelessness problem in this city, and we are sincerely grateful for your courage and commitment in providing new homes to our city’s homeless residents. Please let us know how we can help you.

My recollection of the recent ordinance allowing an ADU in a backyard is that the owner of the property must live on the property- either in the main house or the ADU and that hardly any have been built. Why not drop the owner-occupy requirement? Then 2 spaces would be rentable. I can’t imagine how the City will approve 6 tiny homes in one residential backyard given the various zoning and health requirements. I am sure the Mayor does not want to be the one seen tearing them down- especially before the election, but what choice will he have. If a variance is granted for this large number of tiny houses just because it’s a good cause and to avoid bad publicity, it will be a free for all for anyone wanting to do anything with their property

I'm not a housing legal expert, but given what was written in the article, this doesn't seem like rocket science. Unless the city has a better, quicker, safer, and affordable solution to the homelessness problem, the city should...

Hurray for Mark Colville! The opening sentence of the letter from Laura Brown makes me laugh. "I hope this message finds you well" is so insincere. Then Laura Brown mentions "shared concern for the city health and well-being of the city's most vulnerable residents" but does not mention the people living in this "encampment" and where they can live. Hang in there Mark!

Colville looks like a hero, and Elicker, a villain.

Lets look at what we have here, a beautifully designed lowest cost clean option that I have seen as a solution to this seeming intractable problem and most importantly no neighbors are complaining so these must be good people and the whole neighborhood is supporting them. One organization I belong to is talking over $100,000 for just one unit, “ridiculous” nothing more than a grab of political dollars. Now our mayor yells “tear it down” with all of the prefacing lies he told some of these same people over on the boulevard. (do this and all will be ok) well as we all know that did not work out.
Why does he not do this very same thing over on the Boulevard after all it was a housing site during WW11- Yes thats right! Look that up. Us old people know there where at least 30 BIG quonset huts housing soldiers and their families in the 40s, 50s & early 60s, right there along the West River starting at the Boulevard and Orange Ave. and they where all painted (you know the color) Hex code #4B5320 known world wide as Army Green. Mark & luz you are a credit to your Creator, fellow men and women, this City and State and I pray you will prevail.

Part 2 – And by the way it does not matter if it is a pallet home or a shed or lean-to or cardboard box or anything else for these folks it is their home and for them it is safe! Leave them alone.

@ NHI - Can we please stop referring to these heated huts/shelters as “tiny homes” or “tiny houses”.

You are inadvertently confusing people, as a structure without plumbing and a kitchen is not a house!

There is no $20,000/unit “tiny home” to be had in America. These huts are better than nothing, and god bless Mark Colville. They just aren’t homes in any real sense of the word.

Ben, we agree on this issue. We also agree that the process should be changed to facilitate the construction of housing, e.g., making site plan review less cumbersome.

johnnyc, the owner-occupancy provision is in the ADU ordinance because of widely held fears of gentrification and an animus towards the mega-landlords. I understand the politics of this decision, and why the mega-landlords are not loved. But as you note, the current ordinance is not producing housing. It is highly unlikely to do so in the future. I have suggested that the Board of Alders amend the ordinance to allow non-occupant owners to build ADUs. But they could so only if they (1) charged rents below the Fair Market Rent used in the Section 8 program and (2) accept Section 8 for these apartments. These apartments would be affordable for moderate income tenants, and those low-income tenants on Section 8.

Heather, while no structure lasts forever, these are not tents. As the article notes, they have foundations. Because the sheds are used for housing, rather than storage, they are subject to the State Building Code.

ToeKnee, I spoke with Laura after this article came out. She genuinely wants to promote affordable housing. She also knows that she has to comply with the law.

Many commentators do not grasp that these sheds violate the State Building Code as well as zoning. Even if they were legal under zoning, they would clearly be illegal under the State Building Code. The city has no power to change the Code. And the state-mandated process for changing the Code is harder than changing state statutes.

Were we expecting a pragmatic solution from the government? Not me. However, I do believe that it's situations like this, and solutions like this, that have the best chance of teaching the government a little pragmatism. The only problem is that the government conforms to the whims of the squeakiest wheels. So, even if they've become pragmatic, before you know it they revert to blindly pacifying whoever they need to pacify to stay in office. And that's not done with pragmatism in mind. What they should do in this situation, in my opinion, is find a way to implement this kind of ingenuity in a way that provides a more comprehensive solution. There would probably be more of a widespread amount of support for that. But they're going to have to get creative. Very creative.

Heather, the sheds are certainly better than tents. And I am a proponent of tiny homes and worked with City Plan staff to incorporate them in the zoning ordinance. But these are not tiny homes - they don’t have plumbing or toilets.

Mark Colville is a veteran of civil disobedience, and it shows here. He has constructed a project that addresses every principled objection (eg. neighborhood support, safety, sanitary conditions) except the letter of "the law."

"The law" is comically mismatched with the housing needs of today. It is dampening the economic growth of the middle class, driving a homelessness crisis, and deepening increasing segregation.

In the alternate history in which Colville follows "the law," this project is (at least) four times as expensive, takes (at least) four times as long, and most likely results in just a fourth of the housing being provided. If we're being honest, in that timeline this project never happens.

While I respect the expertise of some in this comment section invoking "the law," I would ask them whether they really think our current framework just needs a little bit of tinkering. If you agree with me that the current framework is ineffective to the point of injustice, why not celebrate a bit of civil disobedience to get us back on track?

In a world in which there is adequate housing, I would join in the quibbling about Colville's actions, but we do not live in that world.

This is an expected and reasonable response from the city. Housing rules and regulations apply equally throughout the city, and there are many good reasons for this. If the city grants a zoning exception and then one of these residents freezes to death in their shed "house" this Winter, is the city now liable for that death since they didn't enforce rules around minimum home insulation and heating? There is also the fact that all of these residents are using a single shared bathroom in the nearby house? I'm well aware of the difficulty involved in finding affordable housing, and I do think it is the city's responsibility to find housing for these people, I just don't think this well-meaning but ill-advised vigilante solution is very sustainable.

Hey mattbaume- if you have trouble looking in the mirror, why don’t you open your home to some of these people? There are rules and regulations people need to obey. Give me a break.

Mattbaume, zoning history is more complicated than your 9:34 comment indicates. When New York passed the nation’s zoning law more than a century ago, the city was 95% white. Zoning was an aspect of the Progressive Movement. Some of its motivations were entirely legitimate. For example, side yard requirements were designed to prevent fire from spreading from one building to another. (My pre-zoning wood frame house is 8 feet away from my neighbor’s.)

Zoning has clearly also had racist motivations and effects. But its principal impact today is class rather than race. For example, zoning does not restrict well-off families, regardless of race, from moving to toney suburbs. The population of Woodbridge, which has been sued for exclusionary zoning, is about 25% non-white. But low- or moderate-income families, regardless of race, would find it difficult to find affordable housing there. I suspect Woodbridge would welcome an African-American attorney who wanted to move there. A person who worked at Walmart, of any race, probably not so much

There is still substantial racism in housing markets. For example, the valuation of homes varies substantially based on the owner’s race. But that operates independently of zoning.

I understand why this letter was sent, and also why Colville isn't waiting to go through the process -- because his "constituents" are people who need help now.

For perspective, I've sent 4 parklet applications in to the city in the past 4 years, and the bureaucracy required for this TINIEST of projects is nothing short of crushing. My fastest approval time was 40 days, and there's always a flurry of back-and-forth messaging about supposedly missing requirements -- despite the fact that nothing about the program or my application has changed from last year. (This may have something to do with the fact that the written application process doesn't match the actual application...) One year I just got tired of waiting and built the thing; a few months later I got a notification that the app was finally approved.

So I can't disagree with someone doing the same but for better reasons!

In my experience, the fire marshals have always been the reasonable people in the room. They use good judgment when the code allows it, focus on what's unsafe, and give specific actionable steps to remedy the problem. (This article describes a great case in point.) Planning & Zoning folks know what they're doing, but are heavily constricted by code. Building has a lot of discretion (primarily around occupancy / use types), but they're a hot mess and alternately don't know the code or wield it like a cudgel against anything new or different. Unfortunately, Building seems to have final say and administrative responsibility over most new things.

It appears to be just fine to stuff seven bedrooms for Yale students into a 1500 square foot house on one tenth of an acre on Dwight Street and convert a backyard garage into two bedrooms. All you need is a lawyer who once served on the BZA. Nepotism works.

@ElmUrbanist: you wrote: "I'm not saying that the law isn't important, I'm saying that it does not override every other consideration."...and I agree.
The NHI commentariat sitting in their comfortable homes with central heating, running water, a bathroom and other amenities that are standard have not been displaced from their jobs and/or homes and had to survive in shelters, tent communities or in a cardboard box so they can focus on legalities rather than the crisis that officials have left to fester for decades.
The City's 1985 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness was never implemented.
How long must the needy and vulnerable wait for permanent shelter?
How many costly and temporary forms of housing will be set up to give the impression of doing something while actually avoiding permanent solutions that work for the people in need?
The Colvilles and their donors have found a solution that is not ideal, but which restores a home and community to people who have lost both.
Civil disobedience is a well respected tool to use when moral wrongs hide behind legalities.
I'm ready to stand with the Colvilles and the Rosette Community residents because our officials won't.
A line has been drawn in the sand.
It's time to show up and be counted.

“You’ll have to get permission from the people who live here because the land is no longer mine,” Colville recalled telling them.

So who LEGALLY owns this property, and who will be sued and held responsible when one of these homeless individuals accidentally starts a fire and burns to death inside one of these huts?

Obviously there has to be a sanitation issue.
Not to mention these so called activists were so in favor of Covid mandates . This is nothing more than squatters. There are reasons for there being so many homeless people. Open borders , drugs, alcohol , mental illness, etc .
American cities political based policies are destroying themselves. They need to take more action than zoning. Zoning is a start . However there could be temp variance until a better solution can be found.
Idt squatters cabins is it.

response to an issue such as this depends upon your answer to one questions: If you believe that big government is the answer to all of our problems, then this project cannot move forward without more oversight, inspection, review, and additional taxing. If however, you believe that big government is the source of most of our domestic problems, then you see this as people trying to provide a cost effective solution to a big problem who are being shut down by big brother because this isn't part of the 'plan'. The added bonus is that our government policies are driving more homelessness whether by taxing away our middle class or encouraging personal behavior that leads to personal crisis.

Something like this project could ask for a boatload of zoning relief and would likely pass if it had neighborhood support. Then, through some process, ask for building code relief too at the state level. There is a process. There is a path if you have some guidance.

This idea to “just build it because theressome crisis” is what’s troubling. Activism outside of the established procedures leads to complete chaos. Anyone can declare a “crisis” and do whatever they want.

This could be legal. And it could be done in 6 months.

4sq, I once worked in a World War II Quonset Hut. I can tell you we had plumbing in the building, which these sheds don’t. (I’m old, not ancient. The building was part of the Manhattan Project and used for decades afterwards by the Department of Energy.)

LookOut, I agree that the zoning ordinance is seriously outdated and that this contributes to the lack of affordable housing. But state requirements that housing have indoor plumbing is not big government run amok.

Ben, I agree that the zoning issues are fixable. I thinking a variance from the ADU requirements might work. The State Building Code is another issue. It falls in the jurisdiction of the Public Safety Committee, which I never staffed. But I am familiar with the process of amending it. Slightly easier than amending the state constitution. Only slightly. The stakeholders are adamantly opposed to authorizing local codes, so any changes would apply statewide.

If the State Building Code is the biggest barrier to the Rosette Community homes, then the Governor should declare a state of emergency and immediately authorize approval of all housing to provide emergency shelter and direct all local agencies to facilitate that Order.
Or he could call the Legislature into emergency session to pass a law enabling the creation of emergency housing zones with modified requirements, such as Port a Potties in lieu of standard plumbing.
What's missing here folks is the Will to support solutions.
If you were living under a bridge, what would you want your government to do?
Instead we get PR events to support the further consolidation of power.
Vote NO.

Hi Kevin,
I never said there where no amenities there just that housing was there and some of those quonset huts where back to back or end facing and some free standing just like these pallet homes. Now with the homeless there the city could have let them stay and installed port-a potties just like they do for events on the Green some times for weeks at a time. As I think about this I wonder if the old sewer lines are still there and the water lines at least from the connection from the street and maybe facing on both roads.
These folks have no trouble getting food and water and the whole neighborhood supports them, Rosette St. and all the neighbors around there you are a credit to our Creator, God bless all of you! Note that the City has no better idea than this and is slow to act even for small increments of housing. Most of the warming centers are run by church groups and the city gives a small commitment of funds only during cold weather and usually for only half a day, and Columbus House is a well run charity. These pallet homes are the best housing these folks have had in a long time. The city has spent millions and millions (Days Inn) for something not much better so lets monitor the condition of these properties every year I seriously doubt Days Inn will win judging from what I read in the NHI about public housing here on a very frequent basis. I urge all of us to stand for whats right until something better comes along.

@LucaD: Gov. Lamont has declared homelessness a public health emergency. You can read about it in this link to the Yale Daily News. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/10/31/city-demands-non-profit-remove-tiny-homes-constructed-for-unhoused-people/
So is it a public health emergency deserving of an immediate delivery of services and solutions or is it just more empty political rhetoric.

Perhaps residents will send cease & desist letters to the City Plan Dept for making us solve the problems that they are failing to address.

@LucaD.
The real question is NOT whether it is legal, but is it moral?
Mark Colville has cited international law for his legal authority.
Remember, "separate, but equal" was "legal" until it wasn't.