Construction of 40 tiny homes in St. Thomas, Ont. to start this week

'Tiny Hope' groundbreaking in St. Thomas The groundbreaking for Project Tiny Hope kicked off Monday in St. Thomas, which plans to build 40 new homes. CTV's Brent Lale reports.

The in-ground servicing will start within days as Project Tiny Hope moves closer to fruition in St. Thomas, Ont.

YWCA St. Thomas-Elgin in partnership with Sanctuary Homes and Doug Tarry Homes is building 40 tiny homes on a former brownfield site in the city’s downtown.

“We are more than shovel ready, we are starting,” said Lindsay Rice, executive director of YWCA St. Thomas-Elgin. “Getting all the service lines underground, preparing all the underground work for our 40 tiny homes in our program house so that when we have to hit that ground running with our Doug Terry build, they're up and at it.”

All the major players in this project held a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony at the future site at 21 Kains St. Monday morning.

“This is historic,” said Rice. “Forty tiny homes of respect and dignity for individuals and families that are going to be accessible and affordable is very innovative strategy to solve our housing and homelessness crisis. We are thrilled to be having this new piece of property being developed for accessible and affordable housing.”

The property was purchased by Sanctuary Homes and cleared by Doug Tarry Homes.

“There's always a conversation about what's happening with our downtown and we just saw this as an opportunity to, if you will put our money where our mouth is,” said Doug Tarry, president of Doug Tarry Homes.

“We've been working on this project for three years at least and we knew that if we could get a brownfield site that we could turn and convert into something really viable, that it would help for the revitalization of our downtown,” he added.

Tarry said with the trail system coming right to the site, there is an opportunity to extend it, allowing residents of these homes to walk to anywhere they need.

St. Thomas’ mayor Joe Preston called today “historic,” and added, “We’re really seeing what all the different varieties of housing can look like here in a community.”

Preston shared that his council has been pushing for getting housing as fast as possible during his two terms as mayor.

“When we can get private organizations like Doug Terry limited and the YWCA and Sanctuary homes out in front of a project like this, we think this is the first of many, where we can continue to provide attainable housing in our community. Forty tiny homes, with close to 60 people living in it or more is incredible right in our downtown.”

Rice said she has heard of communities doing other housing projects, but doing 40 tiny homes in the downtown is unique to St. Thomas.

Tarry believes others will jump on board and you could see communities following their lead.

“We're also templating everything that we're doing,” said Tarry. “We're creating a kit out of it, so if any other developer or community-minded group wants to have a go at it, here is the kit, this is how we did it. Net Zero community, so Net Zero ready buildings. We're going to be hopefully, if we get the sponsor in the solar panels, adding that so really invested in sustainability as well which is fantastic for our community.”

The next step is waiting for the results of their funding application to the federal government through the Rapid Housing Initiative.

“We believe we'll hear middle to end of June and so once we hear from them, we are going to be furthering our project and getting these 40 tiny homes up and going within 18 months,” said Rice.