Last year, 'pallet shelters' looked like a quick way to provide cheap roofs. Where are they?

PROVIDENCE – You can assemble one of the micro-cottages known as pallet shelters with a small group of people – no specialized training required – in about the time it takes to put together a flat-pack living room set.

But standing up a small village of the units to provide a temporary home for people living on the street is taking Rhode Island considerably longer, anywhere from six months to more than two years depending on when you start counting.

On a freshly laid gravel lot on Victor Street, 45 pallet shelters known as ECHO Village sit dark and empty less than a mile from a tent encampment Providence police plan to clear this weekend.

ECHO Village was designed to help people just like the residents of the encampments who can't or won't move into traditional homeless shelters.

But construction of the village was halted at the end of February, a little more than a month after it began, because the state Department of Housing was still working to get the permits it needed from other parts of state government.

So Laura Jaworski, executive director of House of Hope CDC, the nonprofit agency that will run ECHO Village, waits.

And waits.

"There's been a lot of head-scratching," she said in an interview this week.

Tiny dwelling units a mismatch with building, fire codes

Jaworski doesn't blame anyone for the delay or suggest state officials are doing anything but try to apply the law. However, she said, the "wheels" of bureaucracy "turn slow."

What's particularly challenging is that the state's building and fire codes were not written for places like ECHO Village and don't have categories to match it.

Is it a congregate living facility? Forty-five single-family homes? A motel? A trailer park?

Since it is none of those things, ECHO Village has had to apply for a series of variances from code requirements such as the distance between buildings and specifications on light fixtures and sprinklers, among other things.

Despite each shelter containing only 70 square feet of living space, a single bed and no flammable wooden framing, each shelter is being required to have more fire protection than the old houses that make up most of Rhode Island's code-grandfathered housing stock.

Getting past the sprinkler requirement

To get around the code requirement that each tiny unit have a fire sprinkler, major plumbing for something so small and temporary, the Fire Safety Code Board of Review agreed to a "dry chemical automatic fire-extinguishing system, according to board meeting minutes.

Jaworski described the dry suppression system as little pods that release a chemical flame suppressor when exposed to high heat. The fire marshal required direct proof from the manufacturer that the system would work as intended, she said.

The fire marshal signed off on ECHO Village last month, and the state Building Code Standards Committee approved variances Thursday.

"The approval on Thursday is the green light we're looking for to get construction started again," Jaworski said.

Originally set for spring, ECHO Village opening now 'mid-summer'

If work is restarted, Jaworski said she hopes to have ECHO Village ready to open in "mid-summer," which is around three months later than hoped for when the location of the village was announced at the start of this year.

In the world of construction projects and government regulation, three months is not a long time.

But it is sign of how slow and challenging it is to build new public infrastructure in Rhode Island, especially if it is something out of the ordinary.

After all, the whole idea of Pallet shelters, which Jaworski calls "rapid deployment units" is that they are inexpensive and quick to build.

Emily Marshall, spokeswoman for the state Housing Department, said Thursday that ECHO Village is also contending"supply chain" issues including shortages of the commercial-grade electrical circuit breakers known as "switch gear."

The Department now estimates that ECHO Village will not open until "this fall."

While the shelters are new to Rhode Island and its code-enforcement officials, they exist in 100 communities in the United States and Canada, according to Pallet, the Washington state company that makes them.

A 33-unit village opened in Burlington, Vermont, in February 2023.

Boston's Shattuck Village opened in Jamaica Plain in 2022 and is set to close this summer when funding runs out, possibly before the Providence shelter opens.

How the pallet-shelter village was financed

The Rhode Island Department of Housing has committed $3.3 million in federal funds, mostly pandemic aid, to ECHO Village.

Of that total, $1 million is for operations, which includes round-the-clock staffing of the complex. The rest of the money is for construction, including a separate bathroom and shower building, office, laundry, community room and dog run.

Typically, temporary shelters are focused on the winter when sleeping outside is most dangerous.

But ECHO Village is set to open when the weather is warmest and it is unclear how long it will stay open.

Marshall said the state has a contract to keep ECHO Village open through September. To keep it running when the weather gets cold again will take a new funding source.

It's been a long road for a solution to homelessness once seen as quick

The permitting struggle is just the latest challenge facing ECHO, which stands for Emergency COVID Housing Opportunities, and was born during the pandemic era.

Jaworski said she first got the idea in 2020 while House of Hope was running an emergency COVID quarantine shelter at the now abandoned Sheraton Hotel near TF Green Airport.

The first location for ECHO Village was a warehouse on Prairie Avenue in South Providence, but neighbors objected to a new shelter there and House of Hope moved on.

Jaworski and Housing Department officials looked across the state.

A possible location in Pawtucket fell through when the property owner backed out.

Just the suggestion of putting a village at the state-owned Pastore complex in Cranston mobilized rapid opposition in Cranston City Hall.

"There is a location in every city and town that would work," Jaworski said. "It is the next set of questions that makes this possible or not."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI is struggling to deploy pallet shelters quickly to ease homelessness