Thinking Small: Salvation Army turning toward tiny homes for transitional housing in Barron County

The Salvation Army had big dreams for a former nursing home it had purchased in late summer 2021. Hopes ran high for renovating the structure into much-needed transitional housing before that winter, but construction issues bogged down the project and by last year reality set in: The building couldn`t be saved.

But a smaller structure on the property southwest of Barron has been renovated into housing and is now the temporary home of six to eight people.

Plus a bonus arrived on the Salvation Army`s doorstep: Two donated tiny homes, now waiting for occupants, symbolize the future as the Salvation Army pivots in its approach to housing.

Small proposal

Tiny homes are not new when it comes to proposed solutions to the area`s homeless and transitional housing crisis. Before COVID-19 struck in 2020, a couple had been built with plans to settle them in Barron County.

Made in a variety of materials, tiny homes, sometimes no larger than 400 square feet, started making appearances on the housing scene in the early 1990s. By 2019, they had come to the attention of Lori Zahrbock, then the executive director of Benjamin`s House Homeless Shelter in Rice Lake. After a visit to the tiny home community Hope Village in Chippewa Falls, she proposed placing a few on Heart Island near the shelter, said Jenny Jorgenson, a member of the steering committee of Community Connections to Prosperity...

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Ken Notes: I wish we could find some middle ground between Tiny and Unaffordable. I believe we could build some nice home between 100K and 200K that would be very nice in the 600 to 1,200 Square foot range. Of course for the developer there is little profit margin in these homes -- but they can be built. We are spending millions on a problem we can solve for far less by working together...