Domes Put a Roof of Hope Over Homeless : Housing: Urban igloos are a departure from traditional shelters.
Eight years after homeless activist Ted Hayes began proselytizing that geodesic domes were an ideal way to house his fellow street people, he and 23 others on Friday moved into a small village of the urban igloos.
The group, 18 men and six women, settled into a cluster of pristine white fiberglass domes set up on a former parking lot on a dead-end street in Downtown Los Angeles.
In what is believed to be the first project of its kind in the country, the formerly homeless residents will run the one-acre community, called Genesis I.
“Whether it succeeds or fails, we made what was considered impossible possible,” said a jubilant Hayes, who usually was ignored, and sometimes derided, when he pushed for such a community over the years--even when he set up his own dome in a corner of the city’s first urban campground in 1987.
“People thought he was crazy,” one homeless advocate recalled.
But, on Friday, homeless experts applauded his effort to provide street people with an outdoor, camp-like setting, which a recent study found many prefer to the traditional shelters or missions. Funded in large part with a $250,000 grant from Arco, Genesis I is intended to connect the residents with various services to help them make the transition into mainstream society.
With estimates of the homeless population climbing to 15% a year in Los Angeles, corporate sponsors said it was time to depart from traditional approaches.
“Anytime you want change, you have to begin with something unusual,” said Carlton Norris, community affairs manager for the Los Angeles-based oil company. “This is an experiment.”
A total of 18 domes were set up at the end of Golden Avenue, by the 8th Street off-ramp of the Harbor Freeway. Several of the 24 residents had been living in a nearby encampment of the sort seen around most urban areas these days; remainders of their makeshift shacks, blue tarps and shopping carts still sat on the street.
The homeless helped clear the lot and build the $6,500 domes. Someone tacked up a mailbox with their address on it, 847 Golden Ave. The village dog, Coco, got his own pint-size blue igloo.
A small patch of greenery in the middle of the village--with grass, a flower bed and trees--was dubbed “Little Arco Plaza,” and pathways between domes got names such as “Westside View” or “Justice Way.”
Each of the 20-foot-wide residential domes has a closet and is furnished with donated beds, dressers and chairs. Other domes are used as the office, laundry room, kitchen, bathrooms and showers.
Inhabitants of the village, dressed in new white jumpsuits, watched from the sidelines as the opening ceremonies drew a throng of politicians, representatives of 30 businesses and agencies that have made donations, and entertainer Casey Kassem.
Just before the speeches started, Hayes surrounded himself with the other residents and volunteers of Justiceville/Homeless, U.S.A., the group he founded.
“We did this together, you and me!” called out Hayes, dressed in his trademark suit of white pants and T-shirt, a colorful African-styled headband over his shoulder-length dreadlocks. “From here on, it’s going to be you and me.”
The tall, gaunt 42-year-old, a former preacher, broke out into a chant of “Justice, Justice, Justice” and the residents joined in, with right fists raised in the air and broad smiles on their faces.
Alma Smith, 46, said the domes provide a chance for her to get back on her feet and maybe find a way to move back to Shreveport, La. “I’ve been out here (on the street) for more than a year without lots of help,” she said, wearing rose-colored, heart-shaped glasses to celebrate the day.
“This will be something different,” said Debra Edwards, 33, who had lived for eight months in the nearby street encampment.
Everyone living at the village will have daily chores, and a members’ council will decide village policy and discipline--including grounds for expulsion. Basically, the rules are loose, with no one told with whom they may share their domes or when they must turn off the lights. But drugs are prohibited.
A sense of autonomy is key, Hayes said, calling the lack of it a reason “the existing social service system doesn’t work.”
Homeless people, Hayes said, cannot build a sense of responsibility or self-esteem in rigidly controlled shelters filled with strangers. “You need a sense of community, of belonging, before you have hope and then learn how to live among other people,” he said.
Hayes had been touting such a credo since 1985, the year he formed a homeless camp on Skid Row called Justiceville. When former Mayor Tom Bradley set up a 12-acre “urban campground” in the summer of 1987 to get 2,600 homeless people off city sidewalks, Hayes put a small, cardboard geodesic dome in one corner of it.
He tried to buttonhole politicians or anyone else with his ideas. He’d stride the campgrounds or the halls of Civic Center like a latter-day Moses, his homeless followers trailing behind.
After the camp closed, Hayes set up another on Venice Beach, but a storm destroyed his dome. He continued to seek sponsors and attention, however, and even ran for mayor this year, collecting 1% of the vote.
Finally, he connected with Arco executives and real estate investor David Adams. They provided the money and organizational means and enough credibility to enable Hayes to get permits for his village pushed through city departments in just three weeks. The lot was leased for $2,500 a month.
Adams was an unlikely convert for Hayes. They met after the businessman hired guards to move a street encampment away from a building he owned in the Mid-Wilshire area.
But Adams said he felt guilty afterward and realized, “Kicking them off just means they’ll go somewhere else.”
Hayes’ idea of setting up inexpensive dome villages, which could be torn down and moved as needed, made sense to Adams. He had built low-income housing, but considered the $180,000 average cost of building two-bedroom apartments too expensive.
“This is cost-effective,” Adams said of the domes.
USC professor Jennifer Wolch, co-author of a recent book on homelessness titled “Malign Neglect,” said she knows of no other sanctioned community “structured and run by the homeless.”
But the dome village should be viewed only as “a first step toward real housing,” she said, adding, “The danger would be if the public or politicians see this as a cheap solution to housing.”
“This is a new and different idea, not the answer but part of an answer,” agreed Andy Raubeson, director of the SRO Housing Corp., which provides low-income housing on Skid Row.
Other experts, like Maxene Johnston, president of the Weingart Center, which provides housing and other services on Skid Row, said the success of the domed village will depend on how well it is managed.
“It’s more than the physical structure,” Johnston said. “It’s time, financial and human resources that will determine if this works and can be replicated.”
Ongoing financing for the dome village is still undetermined, an Arco spokesman said. Adams has launched a drive for donations. Initially, residents are not being asked to pay rent, but they may be asked to contribute a small share of their income once they find jobs.
Hayes chose the residents by giving first priority to the 17 already living in the adjacent encampment, 13 of whom joined. Many of the others were former residents of his Justiceville camp.
A waiting list has already been started and has six names, according to Eri Burns, a woman who was homeless for nearly two years and is now the office manager of Genesis I.
Hayes hopes that if the community is successful, other dome villages will be built in areas where homeless people are concentrated. He is undaunted by the city’s ill-fated 1987 attempt to buy and place 102 trailers in different areas as transitional housing for the homeless. Community groups objected to having them in their neighborhoods, and most of the trailers stayed in storage.
“This is an ending,” Hayes said of his eight-year quest, “but also a beginning. The difficult days are ahead.”
