Business Description
Makes A Village has developed a replicable model for creating job-linked affordable housing, to help veterans and others who are at risk of displacement get living-wage jobs (in construction, agriculture, and artisanal manufacturing) and rein in their housing costs.
We are starting by building tiny houses for people facing homelessness, as a way of creating temporary affordable housing and also entry-level jobs. Makes A Village wants to help people create the conditions for a better life.
We are currently building two tiny houses, one for a wildfire survivor in Northern California, and another that will be used as temporary housing for veterans (in partnership with the Veterans Village program of the nonprofit Patrick McCaffrey Foundation. You can follow the progress of our current build here: https://www.facebook.com/makesavillage/
We are seeking $10,000 financing for the construction of a smaller, less expensive, model that can be used to house single individual veterans, to be repaid over 36 months.
What is the purpose of this loan?
My project helps people who are displaced or unaffordable housed find jobs, and live in decent, if very small, temporary housing until they qualify to join a limited equity housing cooperative, which they will own part of.
I have architectural plans, a builder lined up, and financing for the first two tiny houses, but with more than 12,000 new homeless every month in Los Angeles, I need far more financing than I have available to me. I am pilot testing financing through KIVA to see if that can be part of the answer to getting more people off of the streets.