Des Moines tiny home village offers $300 rent and free healthcare

$300 a month gets more than a roof in Des Moines’ newest tiny-home push. Joppa’s planned village is built for chronically homeless residents, and the pitch is unusually concrete: private homes, a community hub, a gym and free healthcare services for eligible residents.

The village is planned for 21 acres in east Des Moines near the former Chesterfield Community Center and Chesterfield School on Maury Street. Joppa says the site will hold 54 tiny homes, an increase from an earlier 50-home plan, with units ranging from about 192 to 384 square feet. Each home is designed with a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette, putting the project squarely in the tiny-house world rather than the traditional shelter model.

The support piece is what makes this project stand out. The vacant 1880s school building on the property is being converted into a community hub with a gym, chapel and free healthcare services, turning the village into a bundled housing-and-services campus instead of a simple row of small cabins. Joppa says rents will start at $300 per month and rise to $700 for some units, a structure that gives the village a wider affordability range while still keeping the lowest-cost homes within reach of people with almost no margin.

Joppa says the development is privately funded and will cost taxpayers nothing. The group also projects the village will save the city nearly $3 million a year with its first 50 residents, a claim that pushes the project beyond compassion alone and into municipal economics. The Des Moines City Council approved the project on Oct. 20, 2025, and a city permit later cleared the former school building to serve as the anchor for the village.

The idea has been years in the making. Joppa says it began studying and visiting tiny-home villages in 2014, and the Des Moines Register awarded its original plans a Rose in April 2016. Joppa also says it is an official replicator of Community First! Village in Austin, Texas, a long-running community that houses nearly 400 formerly homeless people.

That is the real shift in Des Moines: not just more tiny homes, but a resident package that ties rent to health care, fitness and community space. If Joppa can deliver the village as planned, the model could look less like an emergency response and more like a replicable affordability blueprint.