Tiny houses provide a home for those struggling with housing instability
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A year ago, Angelina Constable was facing housing instability and moving from place to place. These days, she lives in a tiny home, one of three at the Prince of Peace Church in Roseville.
In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers passed legislation authorizing religious institutions to provide permanent housing to chronically homeless or extremely low-income people.
To date, two Twin Cities area churches — St. Paul’s Mosaic Christian Community and Roseville’s Prince of Peace — have built nine tiny homes in what are called sacred settlements. Church of the Open Door in Maple Grove has announced plans to build 12 tiny homes, and the church said about nine have been built or are under construction.
On June 14, Constable will celebrate one year in her micro unit. Her journey includes a successful career as an administrator in the medical field until 2017 when she was no longer employed.
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“I won’t tell you what I call it, but it was a series of a few events that kind of just catapulted me off the off the charts of being anywhere near stable,” she said. “And then I fell into a bad situation.” She left it at that.
Constable said she always had “very nice homes and very nice clothes and very nice things.” The loss of that life was a struggle.
“And bumped me down a few notches, because … my expectation of I was just gonna have what I want when I wanted it, and I didn't anymore,” she said. “And that was really hard.”
Over a year ago, a friend gave her a number to call for help. Eventually, after many weeks, Constable called. That connection started many conversations with the nonprofit Settled and the Prince of Peace church.
Settled has partnered with local churches such as Prince of Peace and Church of the Open Door to help them establish these sacred settlements, or tiny home subdivisions.
The tiny homes must be less than 400 square feet in size, according to the legislation. The homes don’t have running water, but the law requires residents have access to water and electric utilities.
The residents walk over to the church building to collect water to bring it back to the unit. They take showers downstairs. The group has access to the church 24 hours a day.
“Not having running water is hard, and getting water in your home is hard because it’s physically tough,” Constable said. “That’s really hard to get used to.”
About 30 to 40 percent of the units are to be occupied by what the legislation calls “designated volunteers” or as the churches call them, “intentional neighbors.”
These are people who have not experienced homelessness but have been approved by the religious institution to live in the sacred settlement with the formerly homeless.
They can help out like a neighbor, explained Michael Stetzler, a member of the Prince of Peace sacred settlement stewardship team. A neighbor might need to borrow something or just need to talk, he said.
“The intentional neighbor is not there to monitor what is going on with the neighbors, or to enforce anything but simply to be a good neighbor,” he said.
The idea of neighbors is much needed for a strong community, he said.
“The notion is that we all need stable relationships in our lives. And people coming out of chronic homelessness, a lot of their relationships get fractured all the time,” Stetzler said. “That’s the common denominator in chronic homelessness is a catastrophic loss of relationship.”
James and Mischa Beary with their daughter Avia are intentional neighbors living in a 360-square-foot home.
The high ceiling in the sun-lit space stands out when the front door opens.
“You’re facing a very long day bed couch, which, like, you could sleep on if you want to, but it’ll fit all of us on it,” he said. The three sleep upstairs in the loft area.
Beary points to the wood-paneled wall where the family stores — or rather hangs — their musical instruments: an encased violin, multiple guitars and a lyre, similar to a small harp, he said. An electric piano is located on the lower portion of the wall.
“We all just tinker with music in general,” Beary said.
The legislation allowing these sacred settlements was not without opposition. A group of neighbors, who call themselves Settlement Maple Grove, brought up concerns about the proposed homes. According to their website, they oppose “the establishment of unregulated permanent Sacred Settlement” in their area.
The group said their unanswered concerns include potential impacts on infrastructure and long-term community harmony. Residents such as Dick Humphrey addressed the issue in February to the Maple Grove City Council.
“There’s homeowners in your community that’s not pleased about this, and the issue is, church did not alert any of the homeowners this was going to happen,” Humphrey said. “They bypassed you because the law that, they went directly to the state.”
Settlement Maple Grove did not respond to requests for comment.
David Brickey, lead pastor at the Church of the Open Door, said church representatives have met with residents opposing the plan. They’ve also met with members of the Maple Grove City Council and the mayor, he added. He called one of their last meetings “really cordial, really, really good.”
“Our goal is to work with and find ways to collaborate with we are operating within our legal rights, so everything we’re doing is within our rights,” he said. “But we actually do want this to be a collaborative effort.”
Brickey said the church and neighbors have agreed to work together on a “Good Neighbor Agreement.”
But the church wants to be careful of how many hoops they put in front of incoming residents, he added.
“They’re not homeless people moving in,” Brickey said. “They’re people moving into homes, so we want to treat them with the dignity as adult neighbors moving into homes and not treat them like children.”
Church of the Open Door is in the design phase of the sacred settlement, the pastor said. The team is designing policies around the establishment of the settlement. The church is also working with a volunteer architect who is coming up with plans on what the land could look like and how the units can “really fit in with lifestyle of the church family,” he said.
None of the units are on the church campus except for the one unoccupied home sponsored by Open Door. Volunteer carpenters and tradespeople will outfit it so that people can tour it before the sacred settlement.
That way, they can understand “what it’s about,” Brickey said.
Each home will be custom made, he said. “That’s part of the dignity of this, is these aren’t just cookie cutter, just like cheaply put together homes. These are high quality.”
There are plans to build a shower area and include laundry units in the church building, he said.
“The piece I’m most excited about is the large communal space … there’ll be a full community kitchen with big barn tables and just beautiful community living room for the neighborhood to hang out in and to be able to cook together,” Brickey said.
Many people who are chronically homeless oftentimes experience catastrophic loss and lack a support network such as family relationships and a church community.
“They’re in a cycle that they can’t escape,” he said. “This helps not just provide a housing solution, but it helps tether them into that kind of supportive community.”
Another important aspect: permanency. Brickey said many housing options are temporary when people are homeless. These tiny houses give people stability and a home to put down roots.
Correction (June 6, 2025): An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Mischa Beary's name. The story has been updated.
