Those who are homeless in Greater Des Moines can find a kind reception, a cold bottle of water or a snack and a place to sit down while they recharge themselves and their cellphones at Joppa’s new Homeless Resource Center on Des Moines’ east side. 

By next spring, with assistance from city, county, business and nonprofit leaders from across Greater Des Moines, Joppa founder Joe Stevens is hopeful his organization can finally realize a dream to establish a tiny-home village in Des Moines as a firm steppingstone out of homelessness. 

Working with a steering committee led by retired Des Moines City Councilwoman Christine Hensley and Des Moines Mayor Frank Cownie, Joppa is in the early stages of securing city approval for the use of two adjoining parcels of land in the Cheatom Park Neighborhood of Des Moines for the initiative. 

The concept — which has been stalled for several years for lack of an acceptable site — is to develop a gated village of 50 transitional tiny homes, or cottage lofts, on that site as part of a model to help people transition to more permanent housing. The plan is part of a “three-legged stool” approach to ending homelessness by first enabling more people to receive immediate shelter while receiving other support to get out of homelessness.   

Stevens researched tiny homes and found that several nonprofits around the country were finding success in creating small villages to shelter the homeless. By building shelters that are large enough for a person to sleep in a real bed and have a small amount of living space, the tiny homes provide a safe, secure and warm sanctuary with a door that can be locked. The homes are integrated with programs and support to provide a path out of homelessness. 

“We tried to find every tiny home village and study it, and I went and visited several of them, and I’ve been back to a couple of them more than once,” he said. “We acquired all their best practices and governance and village operational manuals,” he said. 

There have been more that he’s heard of since his initial research. “They’re popping up all over the country.” 

In September, Strategic America associates plan to hold a two-day build in the parking lot of their office to construct ready-to-assemble panels for an initial cottage that will be assembled to serve as a demonstration model.   

The Des Moines Plan and Zoning Commission recently approved a rezoning that Stevens describes as somewhere around step 1 of probably 20 or more toward gaining full approval for use of the two adjoining land parcels — one city-owned and the other developer-owned — that appear to be suited for the project. 

The nonprofit, which was started in 2008, now has a solid track record of success in assisting the homeless, Stevens said in a recent interview. 

“We’ve gotten 470 people off the streets, and we’re at an 86% retention rate [not lapsing back to homelessness], so we know how to help get people off the streets,” he said. “This village is going to take that to a whole new level, because we can certainly help 50 people immediately. And there is the expectation that so many of those people will graduate each year, so that will open up more homes for someone else.”  

Joppa began after Stevens had an unexpected encounter with a homeless camp while he and his family were out walking, which inspired them to take action to help. What had emerged from the grassroots efforts of Stevens and his family — followed quickly by neighbors and friends and then the community at large — in gathering food, supplies and emergency heating for people living in homeless camps, has grown by what may be considered biblical proportions in recent years.    

Coalition led to continued efforts

The nonprofit recently moved its operations from a location near downtown to the city’s east side, in leased space at 2629 Euclid Ave., directly south of the county’s social services hub, Polk County River Place. The recently renovated space in the shopping center is designed to provide a welcoming stop for individuals facing homelessness, as well as a larger base of operations for sending volunteers out with supplies and food to homeless camps around the metro. Joppa is also in the early stages of preparing the space next door to them for a high-end thrift store that it plans to open in the future. 

Stevens’ vision for creating a village of tiny homes to provide safe, temporary housing for people facing homelessness has its roots in a communitywide effort in 2009 led by the city of Des Moines to address homelessness. 

“That was the birth of the Street Outreach Coalition, and we’ve met pretty much every month since then,” he said. “The city manager at the time, Rick Clark, asked me to come up with some solutions for the unsheltered.” When it came time for an organization to step up to lead the effort, none of the other organizations’ missions fit as well as Joppa’s, so the nonprofit has been leading the charge since then. 

“Trying to get this project done, we’ve gone through several hundred properties [that have been considered],” Stevens said. “So we recognized last year that we really needed the city and the county to guide us as to which properties might be acceptable first before we spent the effort. And so we developed last year what we call the Joppa Village Coalition.”

In addition to Mayor Frank Cownie and former councilwoman Chistine Hensley, current City Council members Josh Mandelbaum and Linda Westergaard are members of the coalition, as are Polk County Supervisor Matt McCoy and Matt Anderson, deputy city manager. 

Among Joppa’s project partners for Joppa Village are Polk County Housing Trust Fund, BSB Design, Snyder Engineering, Simonson Architecture, Edge Commercial LLC and Habitat for Humanity. A number of other organizations, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, Primary Health Care Inc. and others, will also be working with Joppa to provide referred services for clients once the village begins operations. 

Tenacity to move forward 

Stevens’ tenacity in continuing to move forward with the project despite significant hurdles — and the strong group of volunteers that Joppa had attracted — persuaded Hensley to co-chair the leadership coalition, she said. 

“I really didn’t have too much contact with [Stevens] until right before I left the council when he was involved with the [Polk County] Continuum of Care and some other things that were going on,” Hensley said. “I was so impressed with how much he had accomplished – his tenacity and what he was able to accomplish with such a strong core group of volunteers.

“I knew that he had had problems trying to find locations, and I thought that the idea of putting an advisory committee together would be extremely helpful to him so that it would have gone through a process and met criteria,” she said. “And we were very strategic in choosing the people that we asked to be on the advisory committee.” 

That committee has been meeting monthly to coordinate communication efforts and to ensure that neighborhood groups understand the concept. 

“Many times, more of it is just strictly about education and making sure that we answer questions,” she said. “The response that we’re getting has been very positive. They’ve gone through planning and zoning and they’ve had some neighborhood meetings.”  

Hensley said she is “cautiously optimistic” that the project will be moving forward. “As a result of what has happened in the past, they’ve taken and really critiqued that [knowledge] and made changes that are very positive at this point.” 

One of the most significant changes was a modification of the original design of the tiny houses that will be built for Joppa Village — which are now called loft cottages — so that each has its own bathroom and kitchenette with running water. The initial design had called for a cabin-like approach in which each resident would walk a few dozen feet to use a community restroom. 

“That was one of the stumbling blocks that we ran into when presenting it to city officials and other people,” Stevens said. “So we redesigned them with plumbing, so now they have a full bathroom plus a little kitchenette. We did that proactively because we recognized that during a pandemic, people need to isolate themselves. And so now we call it a loft cottage. It’s just got a lot of really cool features that make it very dignified.” 

The construction phase of the village project will provide many opportunities for organizations to get their teams involved as volunteers. For John Schreurs and his colleagues at Strategic America, it will allow them to fulfill a commitment they made about three years ago to Joppa that began with a fundraising effort for their annual United Way campaign. 

“We wanted to get involved, and all the associates chipped in and the company did a match on it,” said Schreurs, the advertising agency’s president and CEO. “Then we kind of hit the pause button because Joppa didn’t have a location for it.” In addition to building the panels that will then be transported and assembled on-site, “we’ll also help, hopefully, to add some furnishings to it to add some personality,” he said. 

“We’re excited about it — it’s one of those things we talked about, and now we’re ready to enter that next chapter.” 

Because final authorization for the project hasn’t been received from the city, Joppa can’t accept donations yet that are designated specifically for the Joppa Village project. The nonprofit is currently working with a fundraising organization to develop a capital campaign. 

“We’re getting a lot of interest from the city and county and others,” Stevens said. “I would think this would appeal to anybody in the area who is a community leader. We’ll be reaching out to not just our own donors but to all the usual suspects in town that fund big projects like these.” 

More immediately, organizations can get involved by making general donations or providing a sponsorship to Joppa by visiting its website, or by meeting with Stevens to discuss other potential partnerships.