PRESS RELEASE: Panel: The Future of Portland’s Tiny House Village Movement

Saturday, December 10, 2016 - 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

Mediatheque at Pacific Northwest College of Art

511 NW Broadway, Portland, OR 97209

Portland's tiny house village movement extends back more than fifteen years, with the founding of Dignity Village, a self governing membership-based community in NE Portland composed of formerly houseless residents. Saturday’s panel discussion is a chance for attendees to understand thePartners On Dwelling (POD) exhibition in its historical context and learn more about the social ingredients necessary for a self governing community, the benefits of living in a small village, the legal and political impediments to establishing additional villages, and the solutions that professional creatives can offer to major social problems.

Panelists will include Mark Lakeman (cofounder of The City Repair Project, Principal at Communitecture), Andrew Heben (Program Manager atSquare One Villages and author of the book Tent City Urbanism), Vahid Brown (Housing Policy Coordinator for Clackamas County and cofounder of the Village Coalition), Sergio Palleroni, Director of Portland State University’s Center for Public Interest Design, and leaders from the houseless community. It will be moderated by David Bikman, a volunteer member of the Village Coalition.

The POD exhibition is taking place in collaboration with PNCA, a major hub for creative innovation, and co-sponsored by Portland State's Center for Public Interest Design. The exhibition's intent is to illustrate the impact that thoughtful design can have on public perception of housing insecurity. By demonstrating how easy it is to build a safe, affordable, and attractive community for Portlanders in need, the POD Initiative hopes to catalyze the construction of similar clusters of tiny homes throughout the city.  The POD Initiative is an invitation to Portland's creative class to direct their passion and expertise toward the challenge of providing low cost, abundant housing to all who need it.

Invitees to the panel include the residents of Dignity Village, Right2DreamToo, and Hazelnut Grove, students and faculty from PNCA and PSU's Schools of Architecture and Social Work, supporters of the Village Coalition, local architecture firms, and the general public.  

The POD Initiative is sponsored by the Village Coalition, a coalition of urban villages and their allies in and around Portland, including Dignity Village, R2D2, and Hazelnut Grove.

For more information, visit:
http://www.cityrepair.org/village-coalition/
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htqj226vu0s)