Well – the roll out of this didn’t go as planned – but here we are and this is what I know! The last week has been a whirlwind!
FIND MORE/BETTER INFO AT OCCUPYMADISONINC.COM
The blog posts at Occupy Madison have the best and most recent information. You may be interested in any and all of the following:
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Assembling our first conestoga hut (includes time lapse video)
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It takes a community to build a village! (Includes info on donations, volunteering)
PRESS COVERAGE
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Occupy Madison plans to build tiny house village for homeless on Wiggies Bar property – State Journal (Monday, October 5th)
- Madison nonprofit wants expansion of tiny houses to help homeless – WKOW (Tuesday, October 6th)
THE SHORT STORY!
In August Occupy Madison put in a proposal to build 100 tiny (current houses at 304 N 3rd ST) and “tinier” houses (Conestoga huts). Our proposal had one major flaw, no planned place to put them.
Less than a month ago, when we figured out what our issue were with the grant, we started looking for property. Our timeline went kind of like this:
- Wednesday, September 23 – Look at the property, check zoning, comp plan, OMSAP
- Saturday, September 26 – Email county to see if there was a funding possibility with COVID funds (need to be spent by end of year)
- Sunday, September 27th – Occupy Madison membership meeting, agreed to put in an offer
- Monday, September 28th – We put in the offer (contingent on zoning and financing)
- Tuesday, September 29th – Had a meeting with city set up to discuss our plans (Phase 2 at 304 N 3rd St and failed grants we wrote in August) with Community Development and Zoning (tinier houses)
- Wednesday, September 30th – Offer accepted.
- Thursday & Friday, October 1 & 2 – work with alders and supervisors to figure out possibility of zoning and funding passing
- Saturday, October 3rd – Notify Neighborhood
- Monday, October 5th – State Journal Article
One we talked to the city staff and county board supervisors and felt like we might have a plan that could work, we notified the neighborhood. It was all over Next Door and then it was in the paper!
We had hoped for a few more days to get some more details in order, but . . . that didn’t happen.
We worked quickly to get some estimates from our construction company (Bachmann Construction and their subs – Hill, Harker, Pertzborn) and our architect drew up some quick concept plans.
Occupy Madison agreed to front the costs of one tiny home so we could build it and have the city inspect it and so we could determine what modifications might be necessary. We did that over the weekend.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Plan A from the discussions with staff and elected officials on October 1 & 2 was:
- October 15th – County considers CARES Act funding resolution to fund $450,000 of the $867,000 project
- October 20th – City considers temporary zoning option while we go through the full planned development process to rezone.
- Close by end of October and start using the property for tinier homes and doing renovations to get people into the fully renovated project by Christmas. Build houses outside before the snow hits.
Plan B as of today:
- City zoning delayed for Alder Abbas to hold a neighborhood meeting October 28th? (not confirmed)
- County funding delayed to November 5th – County considers some sort of funding package that may include CARES Act funding, other funding or the county wants to own the land and lease it back to us for $1
- November 17th – City considers temporary zoning option while we go through the full planned process to rezone.
- Close end of November – forced to rent property to build houses, probably can’t use CARES Act money that needs to be spent by the end of the year, Occupy loses all its sweat equity to the county owning the property and doesn’t benefit from increased equity due to improvements. The property will be fully renovated by Valentines Day? Not our preferred option.
Plan C:
- In the works, hopefully landing between plan A and B! Work in progress, to be determined! The main thing is to get people into the houses as quickly as possible. It will likely require us raising more money than the $158,000 we hoped to raise of the next year or two. So yeah, donate if you can! The sooner we have cash, the sooner we can start building more houses ($1700-2000) before its too unbearable to work outside and the more options we have to rent space and to finance the project.
