By Lourdes Medrano for Yes! Media. Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Arizona News Connection, reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration.

For more than three years, 23-year-old Baneen Albotaify bounced from one friend's house to another, sleeping on couches or in laundry rooms while working on her college degree. The stress was high, but she couldn't afford a place of her own.

"I was really depressed. I was always in survival mode," says Albotaify, who lives in Tucson, Arizona.

After a friend told her about I Am You 360, a nonprofit that provides housing for young people, she applied for the program and her life began to change for the better. Albotaify is currently living in a studio apartment in a 10-unit building run by the nonprofit, alongside other formerly unhoused folks. She now works as an electrical technician and, after taking a semester off school, she plans to continue college in the fall.

By year's end, Albotaify and some of her fellow tenants are slated to move into a new I Am You 360 housing project: an eco-friendly tiny house village currently under construction that, when completed, will include 10 homes, a water-harvesting system, and a community garden.

"We want to set them up for success," says Desiree Cook, the nonprofit's founder and executive director.

Success, for Cook, means integrating unsheltered young people back into society as well-rounded productive citizens. With a place to live, Cook says, these young people will no longer be continually victimized in the streets. While living in the tiny houses, tenants will have access to not only various tools that will help them forge a new life, but also common spaces where they can build community.

"There's a difference between giving someone a house and giving them a house so that it can be a home," Cook says.

The tiny-house village will be Tucson's first, but in recent years, cities from Seattle to Los Angeles to Madison, Wisconsin, to Austin, Texas, have turned to these affordable and energy-efficient living spaces to shelter people experiencing homelessness. Although programs and resources vary greatly, tiny houses are usually a step up from overnight shelters and short-term transitional housing, because they can provide shelter for longer periods of time, and act as a bridge to permanent housing.

I Am You 360 settled on a construction method known as insulated concrete form for its tiny houses: interlocking modular foam blocks that are stacked and then filled with concrete. This method appealed to the nonprofit because it's more energy-efficient and more durable than wood-frame houses, which will mean more utilities savings for tenants in the long run.

"We want our homes to be more sustainable, so they can be here for generations to come," Cook says.

But housing advocates say the tiny house trend (like all proposed housing solutions) is not an end-all to homelessness if it doesn't include access to services people need to stay healthy and keep a roof over their heads.

"A lot depends on whether it's part of a coordinated strategy to reduce homelessness or just a form of shelter that's put out there with nothing else," says Steve Berg, vice president of programs and policy at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. "I think that's the key today."

The nation's homeless population totaled about 580,000 on a single night in January 2020, according to an annual survey by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Slightly more than 34,000 were unaccompanied young people, and of those, 90% were between the ages of 18 and 24. In Arizona, nearly 11,000 individuals were unsheltered.

The HUD count does not reflect the changes brought about by COVID-19, which exacerbated homelessness across the country. Berg says outreach workers have noticed a surge in the unsheltered population since the pandemic began. The 2021 count is considered incomplete because many cities did not conduct one, and HUD has yet to issue a 2022 report to Congress.

Still, these official surveys only include people staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing, bus stations, parks, and other temporary sites (not those like Albotaify, who are living in homes that aren't their own). Many are young people who age out of the foster care system at age 18 and end up living on the streets.

"We have to remove the temporary housing mindset," Cook says. "It should be about permanent housing so that these kids can thrive."

Cook's desire to help young people experiencing homelessness or foster care is rooted in her own experience. During her struggles with drug addiction, she became unhoused and was incarcerated, and four of her children were placed in foster care. After being released from incarceration, taking steps toward recovery, reuniting with her children, and getting married, she decided to lend a helping hand to a young population that she says is often stigmatized.

"Society has done so much damage to these kids," she says.

Cook established I Am You 360 in 2014 to provide free hygiene products to foster group homes. Seeing the other needs of foster youths motivated her to incorporate a housing component into the nonprofit's programming. Having a safe, affordable place to live is a significant step toward achieving stability and self-sufficiency, Cook adds.

Studies have shown that stable housing is key to people's overall well-being, too. That's something Albotaify can attest to. Last year, after moving into the 350-square-foot studio that was her space alone, her stress levels dropped, and she was able to focus on school and make up courses she had failed.

"It was honestly a dream come true," she says of her new home. "It has given me a lot of stability and improved my mental health."

Future tenants who are not already in the program (or living in the apartments) must be between 18 and 22 years old when they move into the 450-square-foot houses. They will pay $1 per square foot in rent, which includes utilities, and they can stay for two to three years. Half of the rent they pay during this time will be set aside in an escrow account, and when the young tenants move out, they will get that savings back to put toward the down payment on a house. I Am You 360 connects residents with nonprofit partners to guide them through the process of buying their first home and help find housing assistance programs that fit their needs.

In the next five years, the nonprofit plans to purchase the studio apartment complex it is currently renting and expand to build a second tiny house village modeled on the first.

The 10 young people who currently live in the apartment complex frequently gather at the I Am You 360 headquarters in a lounge filled with green, yellow, and orange furniture. Affirmations printed on colorful paper grace a wall next to a mirror, to encourage self-esteem development. "I am somebody," one states. Given the trauma they've endured in their young lives, Cook understands how difficult it can be for them to relearn how to trust others and themselves, and stop expecting the worst.

"We have to turn all that around, so that they're looking at the glass half-full, rather than half-empty," she says.

While temporary housing is important, Berg said that to help lower the number of unhoused people, it's imperative that tiny house programs across the country also incorporate access to a wide spectrum of services, whether on-site or through partnerships. That's why I Am You 360 offers assistance through partner organizations to help tenants find employment assistance and medical, behavior health, and other services.

The tiny house village will be built on land owned by I Am You 360, next door to the nonprofit's headquarters. This could facilitate more on-site program operations-like resident workshops on employment, education, financial literacy, and life skills-that don't require outside coordination or transportation.

Eventually, the former tiny house tenants will be living on their own, so Berg stresses the importance of connecting graduating program participants with landlords who will rent affordable housing to program participants, as well as help finding employment and obtaining medical care after leaving the tiny house village.

Cook says she spends much of her time working to raise awareness about the value of investing in the housing program. She says rising inflation in the past couple of years has already increased the cost of building each tiny house from $40,000 to $75,000, which makes fundraising to build them even more challenging but all the more important. The city recently allocated $500,000 to the nonprofit, an investment derived from federal stimulus funds. The money, Cook says, will go a long way toward providing housing for young people like Albotaify.

"This program gave me a safe space to live in peace," Albotaify says.

Cook emphasizes that people becoming unhoused is a community issue, not an individual failing. So possible solutions will come down to the investment and collaboration of communities.

"It's going to take all of us to work on it together," Cook says. That will take time, but the goal is to build a sustainable future rather than a quick fix. "It takes community compassion to invest for a long-term change."

Lourdes Medrano wrote this article for YES! Magazine. Medrano is an independent journalist in southern Arizona, where she writes about immigration, underserved communities, the environment and other matters of importance in both the United States and Mexico. A 2020-21 Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she has written for various publications including the Washington Post, Undark Magazine, The Atlantic and Audubon Magazine. She speaks English and Spanish. Reach her via Twitter at @_LourdesMedrano


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By Anya Petrone Slepyan for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Roz Brown for New Mexico News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Carlos Miller is a college student who grew up in rural Taos, New Mexico, but he isn't sure he'll be able to come back to his community when he graduates. James Cross, the CEO of the local Holy Cross Medical Center, is paid competitively, but still can't afford a home. Tiana Suazo, of the Taos Pueblo community, lived for years with her abusive father because she couldn't afford to move out. Meanwhile, the beds in the town's homeless shelter are filled with people who have lived in the community for decades.

These are just some of the stories shared by residents of Taos as part of a new video campaign called "Why Housing Matters." The campaign was created by the Taos Housing Partnership, a non-profit organization that acts as a bridge between the Town and County governments, developers and builders, local stakeholders, and residents to create a unified local strategy to address the housing crisis in Taos County.

Nestled in northern New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains, the town of 6,500 people is known for its galleries, restaurants, live music scene, indigenous landmarks, and year-round outdoor recreation. And while visitors continue to stream in, it has become increasingly difficult to buy or rent a home in either the town of Taos or Taos County.

"People just can't afford to live here," said Lisa O'Brien, the executive director of the Taos Housing Partnership in an interview with the Daily Yonder. "We have vacancies in our school districts and vacancies in our healthcare system and vacancies across the board. And most of the time they've recruited, they've interviewed, they've hired. But that individual doesn't have a house to move into."

The crisis has been building for years, according to O'Brien. And though the County has taken steps previously to understand the scope of the problem, there hasn't been an organization ready to enact solutions until now, she said.

"There was never an entity that took it on. And that's what we're going to do right now that's different," O'Brien said. "We know what the problems are. We need to start getting to the solutions."

Though Taos may be facing old problems, the scale of the crisis is new, according to research conducted for the Taos Housing Partnership.

In June of 2023, researchers examined the homes available in Taos County on a particular day to get a snapshot of the state of the housing market. They found that while there were 121 homes listed, only 8 of them cost $300,000 or less. Meanwhile, around 20% of the homes for sale cost over $1,000,000.

This is notable in a county with an area median income (AMI) of $76,000. Even for families who make 120% of the AMI, a $300,000 house is at the "upper limit of affordability," according to the report. Furthermore, the median sale price of a house in Taos County rose by $122,000 - or around 35% - in just three years between 2020 and 2023.

Renters are also facing an affordability crisis in Taos. According to the report, nearly 45% of all renter households are paying "unaffordable housing payments," with 86% of households earning less than $35,000 a year considered cost-burdened. As a result, it is estimated that as many as 750 low-income families have moved out of the county in search of affordable housing.

"We're in a pretty dire situation right now, and I don't think we're any different than a lot of communities in the country, particularly small rural ones," said O'Brien.

Rural communities across the country face similar housing affordability challenges as Taos, with limited housing stock, a high percentage of second homeowners, and a lack of rentals. In counties with recreation-dependent economies like Taos housing tends to be less affordable than other counties.

In Taos, a number of factors have contributed to the crisis, according to O'Brien. Lack of housing stock across all levels, from below-market to high end homes, means it is difficult for people in any income bracket to find a place to live, though more affluent people have significantly more options. With an average of just 16 units built per year between 2020-2023, according to the report, the county is falling far short of the 300-500 units O'Brien estimates are needed to resolve the crisis.

But with the price of building materials still far higher than their pre-pandemic costs, correcting this deficit won't be easy, especially when it comes to affordable housing.

"People ask me, Lisa, why can't you just go build houses that people can afford?' And I always chuckle, because I can't call the lumber company and say, 'hey, can you give me the affordable housing window package?' It doesn't exist. The cost of building is what it is." O'Brien said.

Instead, O'Brien says the organization is looking at a range of possible solutions to reduce other costs. Land and infrastructure subsidized by the local government are one possibility. Changing zoning codes and encouraging developers to build higher-density housing will also help solve the shortage in homes. And mortgage assistance programs are another way to close the steadily increasing gap between the cost of a home and what most locals can afford to pay.

"There's not one thing that's going to fix the housing situation," O'Brien said. "But there's a lot of little things that you can do, and if you do ten of those things it may add up to getting someone into a home."

Coming up with a range of possible solutions is one thing. Actually enacting them, with community support, is another, O'Brien said. This is especially true when it comes to building affordable housing developments, which is a critical part of Taos Housing Partnership's strategy.

"People have concerns about water here, and if we have a strong enough social infrastructure to support a growing community. These are all rational questions," O'Brien said. "I think the challenge is when there's this global sense of 'we don't want to change...we don't want anything that looks like growth. And that stops a conversation right then and there."

One of Taos Housing Partnership's many tasks, according to O'Brien, is facilitating community conversations to "level set" the way Taoseños are thinking about housing. O'Brien and her team are trying to help residents understand the deep connection between housing and other issues that affect the community, from education and healthcare to the town's tourism-based economy, which depends on service workers.

"We have to say, 'we all want to be part of a vibrant, thriving, growing community, which means having a strong healthcare system, having a strong school system, we want all our favorite restaurants to be open.' And if we want all of those things, we have to be able to provide the housing that accommodates that," O'Brien said.

O'Brien is the first to admit that turning the tide on Taos' housing crisis won't be easy, especially with decades of inertia working in the other direction. But she believes that the Taos Housing Partnership's grassroots approach to building support for a range of housing solutions is the way to move the community forward.

"So I think there's excitement in figuring out how do you get people of all ages from all different income levels to start talking about why housing is so important for the health and vibrancy of the community? We all live in it," she said.


Anya Petrone Slepyan wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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By Dwight Adams for Mirror Indy.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Mirror Indy-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

People can almost always use an extra hand when winter arrives.

What do people need the most? "Coats. We can never have enough coats, hats, boots," said Maumi Van Kirk, director of retail sales for the Julian Center, including its Thrifty Threads store. "We always run out of coats. That's what people are looking for - warm gear."

Along with free clothing, local organizations can help with food, rent and utility payment assistance, bus passes and car repairs.

The township you live in can also be a good resource for assistance, whether you need food, medicine, clothing or help paying your bills.

Help with rent

Renters living in Marion County are not eligible for the Indiana Emergency Rental Assistance program.

Instead they can call 211 to learn about Indianapolis' Office of Public Health and Safety, which created programs in partnership with local legal aid providers to help residents facing eviction. That includes the Tenant Legal Assistance Project (TLAP) and the Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP).

Renters who have received an eviction notice or believe their landlord is getting ready to file one can call the Tenant Information Hotline at 317-327-2228. Also, Indiana Legal Help has information about legal assistance for housing and other issues.

The Housing Choice Voucher program, administered by the Indianapolis Housing Agency, also can provide rental assistance for qualified low-income families. Under the HCV program, also known as the Section 8 program, participants pay no more than 30 percent of their monthly adjusted income toward rent and utilities. But the agency is under a federal takeover right now and isn't running the voucher program effectively, as a Mirror Indy investigation has shown.

Help with utility bills

Energy Assistance Program

The federally funded program provides a one-time annual benefit through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program that is paid to your local utility vendor to cover heating and electric costs.

Indiana households that earn 60 percent of the state's median income or less may qualify for this benefit. You can apply before April 14, 2025, on the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority website, by mail, in person, or by calling 211.

Know your rights

According to Indiana law, a regulated utility cannot turn off residential utility service from Dec. 1 through March 15 to any customer who has applied for and is eligible for the Energy Assistance Program. This includes utilities that provide electric or gas energy.

Winter Assistance Fund

Families and individuals in Marion County who don't qualify for the EAP can get help paying for heating bills through the United Way of Central Indiana from Jan. 1, 2025, through May 31, 2025.

Utility company assistance

Citizens Energy Group has a section called "Trouble Paying Your Bill" on its website, which includes information on the EAP program, as well as discounts for natural gas and wastewater bills. Citizens' Warm Heart Warm Home Foundation offers grants to help customers sustain utility service and catch up on past-due bills. You can apply by calling 317-924-3311.

AES' Indiana's Power of Change program can also help provide electric bill assistance.

Food pantries

Along with well-known food pantries offered through Gleaners and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, local churches, schools and other community organizations (like Mary Rigg on the west side and Pathways on the east side) also run food pantries, where Indianapolis residents can get free food this winter.

Food pantries also have opened on local college campuses including Ivy Tech Community College and Indiana University Indianapolis.

Free winter clothing and household items

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis Catholic Charities has a free clothing room at its offices in the Xavier Building, 1435 N.Illinois St. You can 317-236-1512 to plan a visit.

B.A.B.E. (Beds and Britches, Etc.): The B.A.B.E. program, run by the Marion County Public Health Department, provides new and gently used clothing, as well as maternity wear, baby supplies, bedding and blankets, baby toys and personal hygiene items for pregnant people and children up to age 5. Call 317-221-3050 to learn more.

Fletcher Place Community Center operates a free thrift store for people who are homeless and low-income families at the Elaine Cates Center, 924 S. Shelby St. Call 317-636-3466, ext. 403

Julian Center Thrifty Threads store, 1501 W. 86th St., offers free, gently used clothing, furniture and household goods to people in need. Call 317-802-9612 to learn more.

Lambswear Clothing Closet provides childhood necessities to families throughout Central Indiana, including free children's clothing from preemie size to 14/16 youth.

Operation School Bell: The Assistance League of Indianapolis offers free new school clothing, winter coats, shoes and school supplies to eligible students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Call 317-872-1010 to learn more.

Servant's Heart of Indy helps people living in Beech Grove and adjacent southeast areas of Marion County with year-round support, including its food pantry and warehouse of free clothing, furniture, toiletry items and holiday gifts. Call 317-788-9433.

Society of St. Vincent de Paul's Mission 27 Resale Shop sells clothing, used furniture, small appliances, and household items at a discounted price. Proceeds support its

Bus passes, car repairs and transportation

The Archdiocese of Indianapolis offers short-term assistance with transportation through bus tickets and vouchers for gas. Visit their website or call 317-236-1512.

Community Action of Greater Indianapolis can provide assistance with services such as car repairs and rental assistance. Visit their office at 3266 N. Meridian St. or call 317-396-1800.

Irvington Community Advocacy Network can provide information and help regarding free transportation services within limited boundaries. Call 317-322-9645.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society can offer assistance with paying for car repairs. Call the help line at 317-687-0169.

IndyGo offers half-fare discounts for bus service to qualified individuals, including youths 18 and younger, persons 65 and older, and persons with disabilities. IndyGo also offers a taxi voucher service to its IndyGo Access Riders to arrange travel for any time of day or day of the week. Call 317-635-3344.

Nationwide charitable organizations may also be able to provide help with repairing or buying a low-cost car, including Free Charity Cars and the Causes Charitable Organization.


Dwight Adams wrote this article for Mirror Indy.


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Construction will begin early next year on new affordable housing dedicated to low-income Oregon farmworkers. This project is the latest by the Farmworker Housing Development Corporation, a nonprofit that is partnering with Energy Trust of Oregon to make their housing more energy efficient. This year, the FHDC hosted workshops teaching more than 200 families how to save energy at home.

Ramon Martinez, communications and advocacy coordinator with the FHDC, said the payoffs are significant. Along with receiving more than $20,000 in incentives to help reduce energy use across their properties, residents' bills are down.

"During the cold months, some people are afraid to turn on the heater, right? But its been great because I've heard successful stories about residents seeing $200, $300 bills, lowering it down to the $100 range," he explained.

Research shows that most farmworkers in Oregon do not have access to affordable housing and often live in over-crowded conditions.

In Oregon and Washington, 32% of farmworker households live in poverty, which is more than twice as much as the general U.S. population. The Farmworker Housing Development Corporation manages 460 units across the central Willamette Valley, providing affordable housing to more than 2,000 people. Along with rental housing, it also helps farmworkers who are interested in becoming homeowners.

Christian Meneses-Zurita, senior asset manager with the FHDC, said it has hosted homebuyer resource fairs and recently started a fund to help farmworkers find housing and pay for education.

"Our affordable housing options can be a stepping stone," Meneses-Zurita said.

More information about the Ramon Ramirez Fund is at www.FHDC.org.

In early 2025, construction will begin on new affordable housing dedicated to low-income Oregon farmworkers.


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