Tucson nonprofit builds 10 micro-homes to quickly shelter unhoused residents

The Homing Project started assembling 10 micro-homes on Tucson’s Northside, turning a small parcel into a fast-moving response to homelessness rather than a long-range concept. The land is being provided by the Southern Arizona Land Trust, and the village is being set up with community bathrooms, showers and a shared kitchen so residents have the basics that are often missing on the street.

The homes are built for speed as much as shelter. The nonprofit says the units can be put in place in about an hour and moved to other locations around Pima County if needed, giving the project a flexibility that traditional housing construction rarely offers. The first residents are expected to be referred by Catholic Community Services, and The Homing Project says the village is meant for people ages 18 to 25, adults over 50 and survivors of domestic violence.

The organization says residents will stay until permanent housing is found, which it estimates at about two years. The site will also include 24-hour security and ban drugs, firearms and alcohol. An on-site social worker is expected to help residents connect with education, job training and the kind of financial support needed to move toward self-sufficiency. Board member Joan Hall said the site will also link people to social services, job training and addiction counseling as part of the transition to permanent housing.

Volunteer Arnie Adler said the project is meant to be a starting point, not an endpoint: “We need to start providing affordable housing, and this is a start.” That framing matters in a county where the need is still measured in thousands, not dozens. The Pima County Board of Supervisors has said the county still needs more than 6,000 affordable housing units, even as it has approved $20,984,361 in gap funding for 28 affordable-housing projects since July 1, 2022, supporting 1,857 units preserved or developed.

The Northside village also builds on earlier work by The Homing Project. In March 2024, the group had secured almost an acre near Stone and Glenn and was planning 15 houses at the time, with 64-square-foot units that could go up in about 25 minutes. The nonprofit now says it has support from partners including Pallet and points to more than 28 mini-villages built in California as proof that the model can scale. If this Tucson site works, more villages are already part of the plan.