The Syracuse non-profit Tiny Homes for Good marked another milestone Monday, though it wasn’t the typical ribbon cutting. Executive Director Andrew Lunetta says the COVID-19 pandemic means the two homes on Marquette Street just off Spencer Street have been lived in and already have stories to tell.
"While we can ackowledge completed homes for sure, I think what we're celebrating more is our actual mission. We're celebrating the 7 men and women who are in these houses right now, who prior to this were living in a shelter, under a bridge, or in transitional living home."
About a year ago, Jeanette Kilmartin says she was homeless and overcoming a drug addiction, not knowing where she’d be day to day. Now she’s living in a tiny house on West Matson Street, with flower gardens that make the front yard among the brightest on the quiet block.
"Had it not been for Tiny Homes stepping up and providing affordable, good, clean, safe homes for people like myself, I don't know honestly if I would be alive right now."
Tiny Homes came along just as her time at Helio Health supportive housing was about to run out, and Helio was helping her find a new place.
"They were taking me to places where my $388 a month would get me. They were nothing more than rooming houses, roach infested, rat infested, with urine soaked mattresses. It got so bad that my counselor wouldn't even go in the rooms with me anymore, but you expect me to live there."
Kilmartin says she has a job waiting for her a nearby animal hospital when they fully reopen. For others, though, the pandemic has made life more difficult than it already is. Andrew Lunetta says COVID only reaffirmed their work.
"Just knowing that our tenants who were previously living a shelter or two feet away from someone else outside now had a place where they could stay home, actually stay home."
...which is what we were told to do during the height of the pandemic. Onondaga County earmarked 235-thousand dollars to build seven tiny homes in an effort to provide stable housing as a step out of poverty. There are two on Marquette, two on West Matson, and three on Highland Street on the north side.
