SAN DIEGO, Calif. (KGTV) — A village of tiny bright-colored homes has been built at a church in El Cajon to help house women and children experiencing homelessness.
“These cabins...they’re small. They're really like a bedroom in the community. But they make a difference,” Rolland Slade said.
Slade is the lead pastor at Meridian Southern Baptist Church.
“They’ll make a difference for the six ladies who are here currently and their families and the ones who will follow," he said as he gave ABC 10News a tour of the six emergency sleeping cabins built on church property.
“It’s been pretty emotional. One of the mothers that’s here…when we opened the door of the cabin, and she saw it for the first time, she began to cry and couldn’t really speak,” he said.
He says that the mother had been sleeping in her car with her kids.
“For them to actually have beds to sleep in, she was just overwhelmed,” he said.
Slade says it costs less than $10,000 to build one of these homes. The project was made possible by the San Diego-based organization Amikas. Volunteers helped with construction.
The city of El Cajon pitched in an additional $25,000 for site improvements and helped with the permitting process.
“We have to keep trying different things,” said Steve Goble, Deputy Mayor, City of El Cajon. “There’s not one solution that works for everyone.”
Goble says it’s a model the city is planning on bringing to 12 other spots in El Cajon.
“We hope we can get as many people as we can to come to look at this project. This is so scalable to any other community in all of California,” he said.
Goble added that Pastor Slade had been selected as El Cajon’s ‘Impact Person of the Year’ for his continued work.
Each woman living inside the village works with a case manager with the ultimate goal of being employed and transitioning to permanent housing.
“Homelessness is a condition of living. It’s not who they are,” said Pastor Slade.
