TINY'S HOUSE

An Oakland crew of "poverty scholars" spins a minor revolution in the war on homelessness

- Brian Barth

The Homefulness kitchen hosts a taco-making class.

MASKED CRUSADER

IN EAST OAKLAND, home to what the San Francisco Chronicle calls the "Bay Area's hottest housing market," a row of stucco townhomes sprung up along a blighted stretch of MacArthur Boulevard in 2021. Tan-colored and not outwardly remarkable, they were designed, according to their creator, Tiny Gray-Garcia, as an antidote to "gentrifuckation." Homefulness, as the eight-unit place is known, now provides rent-free homes to recently unhoused individuals-including Tiny and many others who conceived the project, hammered the studs, hung the drywall, and now collectively manage the space. "This is a poor people-led solution to our own problems," says Gray-Garcia, a pigtailed and sharp-tongued 48-year-old single mother who lived in cars and abandoned buildings as a child and young adult.

California has nearly a million more "extremely low-income" households than units available to house them. When it comes to bridging that gap, Homefulness stands in stark contrast to solutions proffered by what Gray-Garcia calls the "non-profiteer industrial complex." While Sacramento recently flooded social service organizations with billions to help end homelessness, to Gray-Garcia, those dollars are a bandaid on a broken "crapitalist" system. As she wrote in The Sidewalk Motel, her new poetry collection, "Change won't come from a savior, a pimp, or an institution. Change will only come from a poor people-led revolution."