To address Seattle’s homelessness crisis, Utah architecture firm builds tiny home

Jeff Tuft, an associate at Architectural Nexus in Salt Lake City, shows off the 125-square-foot tiny home the company built for a Seattle-based project aimed at ending homelessness on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. The home will be delivered to Seattle in the next few days. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — As public officials in Washington address Seattle’s overwhelming homelessness crisis and private companies like Amazon swoop in to build more shelters, Utah-based Architectural Nexus is offering its own small contribution.

After months of construction, Architectural Nexus employees — ranging from receptionists to architects — completed a 125-square-foot home to house a person or small family experiencing homelessness in Seattle.

Housing security advocates, environmental groups and public leaders were invited to view the newly built tiny home at the company’s Salt Lake City office last week before its sendoff to Washington.

Under the firm’s philanthropic program, Nexus Builds, employees volunteered their time to construct the tiny home. Jeff Tuft, an associate at Architectural Nexus, said each year, the company provides up to 16 hours of paid leave for its employees to work on a service project. Tuft said about 120 employees worked on the home during the seven-month time frame.

“We have skill sets as architects. We can make a greater impact in people’s lives,” Tuft said.

The project is in partnership with The BLOCK Project, which aims to end homelessness by placing a tiny home in the backyard of one single-family residential lot of every residentially zoned block in Seattle.

The homewas expected to be ready for move-in by Saturday, according to Cheryl McMurtry, an associate at Architectural Nexus’ Sacramento office.

“Some of our staff wants to move in here,” McMurtry said as she stood inside the tiny home near its large triple-pane windows.

The home, also classified as an accessory dwelling unit, will be placed in a host family’s property. It features a bed, drop-down dinner table or desk, toilet, shower, small kitchen area and a storage closet. Tuft said building materials for the home cost about $45,000.

Over the summer, the Seattle City Council passed legislation that would simplify and streamline the permitting process to allow homeowners to build accessory dwellings units in single-family residential lots.

But the company isn’t just providing a shelter, according to Tuft.

“I think more than just providing shelter, it provides social connections for people,” he said.

After a person or small family experiencing homelessness moves into the home, Tuft said, they are encouraged to connect with the host family and create a social network within the neighborhood.

Additionally, the tiny home is certified though the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge, a green building certification program, that requires buildings to produce energy efficiently and collect and treat all water on site. Tuft said each home is self-sufficient through its solar panels, graywater system and composting toilet.

“It will produce more energy than it uses,” he said.

Last year, Salt Lake City Council approved an ordinance allowing permits for accessory dwelling units.

In July, Salt Lake City’s planning division released a guide to accessory dwelling units for homeowners interested in building a unit on a lot with a single-family home. Building code requirements include that the property owner or owner’s family member live in the main home or dwelling, and must adhere to zoning and utility requirements and fire codes.

“Accessory dwelling units are part of a range of housing types that can help increase the housing supply with minimal impacts to the scale of an existing neighborhood,” according to the guide. “This makes accessory dwelling units a good option to help provide more housing in parts of the city where other types of housing may be too tall, too wide, or too bulky with the surrounding structures.”

Benefits of adding accessory dwelling units include an increase in property value, receiving income from renting the unit and adding more housing stock to the city.

As Salt Lake City residents also face an affordable housing shortage, Tuft said he hopes the firm partners with a local organization to housing issues here. He said the tour acted as “an opportunity to generate some more interest.”

The firm plans to build and donate another tiny home next year — potentially in partnership with an organization that works with correctional facilities and government entities to successfully reintegrate past offenders to the community.

Tuft also called on other firms and builders to match their efforts and level of sustainability.

“The real point of this program is not business related, it is that one more person currently experiencing homelessness will have a house by the end of the year, and another city block in Seattle will receive a massive infusion of connection and social equity,” Architectural Nexus President Kenner Kingston said in a statement.

Aside from the sense of accomplishment that follows after completing a service project, Tuft believes the project has made the firm’s architects and employees better at their job by doing the work of contractors. He said the firm’s employees have learned new skills like how to source materials and about the construction process.

“We can become better architects,” he said.

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