Erie County seeks agency partner to revive stalled tiny homes project

Erie County is looking for an outside agency to take the lead on its stalled 25-unit tiny homes project, a move that could finally turn the long-delayed site near the Erie County Prison into real housing for people experiencing homelessness. County Executive Christina Vogel’s administration is now weighing whether a provider that already works with unhoused residents could operate the village, or even take it over, instead of leaving the project stuck in county hands.

The homes were first planned for the 400 block of East 16th Street, next to the Community Resilience Center and near Wallace Street, as part of a county effort called A Pathway Home. The plan, announced on January 21, 2025, called for 25 tiny homes funded with American Rescue Plan dollars. Fifteen units were designed for two people each, while 10 were planned as two-story homes for small families. County officials said in May 2025 that the exterior shells and interior frames had been completed and were being moved to the site, but the project quickly became mired in a zoning and permitting fight between the county and the City of Erie.

By January 2026, Vogel said the final plans had gone to permitting at the city and at Building Inspection Underwriters, and she said the goal was to have the homes finished and ready for move-in by next winter. That timeline has now slipped enough that county leaders are considering a different path, one that could salvage the 25-unit asset faster by putting it in the hands of an agency with direct experience in supportive housing and case management.

That matters in Erie because the county’s homelessness system already runs through a broader network of providers and funding streams. Erie County’s Coordinated Entry system can be reached at 814-SHELTER, and the Department of Human Services serves as the collaborative applicant for the HUD Continuum of Care program and the HMIS lead. The county also says it uses HUD money, Pennsylvania Department of Human Services homeless-assistance funding, and SAMHSA’s PATH program to support homeless and housing services. The Erie County Home Team, formed in 1997, remains the region’s lead collaborative effort on homelessness.

Erie already has one working tiny-home model to point to. Community Shelter Services operates the Kiwanis Family Village, a nine-unit tiny home setup for families and individuals that provides temporary emergency housing, meals, and caseworker services through coordinated entry. That existing system shows how much a tiny-home project depends on operations, staffing, and service delivery, not just the units themselves. For Erie County, the new outreach may be the difference between a housing resource that finally opens and another stalled project that never gets beyond the shell stage.