The “Mustard Seed Village” in Central Texas is a huge win for housing
Joseph Claypool and his wife Stephanie created Mustard Seed Village, a tiny home community with 28 two-bedroom, one-bath homes in Central Texas. After being told multiple times from multiple people and organizations that their tiny home idea would not work- people are lining up to move in.
“Growing up, my mom always told us that if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains,” Claypool says.
“We had a dream and a vision to give back to the community that gave to us.”
The six-month construction process took place in January of this year, with the homes completely leased by June.
The rent aps at $1,375 a month and includes community amenities such as an outdoor fire pit, laundry space, and a dog park.
At the center of the community is a girl’s group home, that was started by the Claypools. As part of their one-year program through the organization Teen Challenge, the girls get the opportunity to live in the tiny home community after high school.
“The fifth phase of the program is when they graduate from the girls’ home,” Claypool said.
“They don’t have credit history, they don’t have rental history, they don’t have—especially out of high school—a good paying job, so they need a place to live. So, we’ve also transitioned some of the young ladies into the tiny homes to give them a chance.”
“Hopefully we can help more people in the future with affordable housing … My vision is not for people to look at [Mustard Seed] as a house but as a home. I think a lot of times when we look at apartment complexes, people build them as high and as close together as they can so they can capitalize on every single dollar. Here, it wasn’t about that. It was about giving people space and having their own walls.”
The couple had pitched the idea of an affordable tiny home village to six different financial institutions, but many were not interested in the idea.
“It was kind of disheartening,” Claypool said.
“All of them said, ‘We really like your idea, it’s a good vision, but we just don’t see it working.’ So, I had to change directions.”
However, things took a major turn when the husband and wife duo met with Rene Flores, a loan officer for the company Amplify.
Flores resonated with Clarpool’s stance on affordable housing, so the funding of the Mustard Seed project made complete sense.
“We do as much as we can as a city, but I believe it’s very much [up to] private development to fill that gap. We rely on builders and developers to have an eye and a heart to do that,” Flores said.
“One of [Amplify’s] thoughts is that we can do something toward affordable housing. I don’t know that we think we can solve all of Central Texas’s issues, but if you can help one project at a time, that’s better than nothing.”
As of now, the tiny home village has gone farther than the two could have imagined.
With a long waitlist, they both hope to inspire other affordable housing communities in different areas.
“In a perfect world, every single person that needs an affordable, safe place to live, we could make that happen. Right now people are kind of growing roots out of their feet and they want to stay [at Mustard Seed],” Claypool said.
Source: The U.S. Sun