Springfield photographer creates video for tiny homes for homeless project

Gathering Tree founders David and Linda Brown partnered with Springfield photographer Randy Bacon to create a promotional video for Eden Village, a planned community of tiny homes for homeless people.

Linda Brown said the video was created be shown to prospective donors. She shared it on her Facebook page Friday morning. Within a few hours, it had been shared nearly 150 times.

"We are visual people and story tellers and this video has hit home," Linda Brown said in a message. "(We are) so excited."

Eden Village will be located at 2801 E. Division St., the site of a former mobile home park near U.S. 65.

The Gathering Tree is a nonprofit organization that operates an evening drop-in center for homeless people. The Gathering Tree purchased the 4.5-acre tract of land in north Springfield to create a tiny-home community for disabled, chronically homeless people.

In the video "A Place to Call Home," the Browns talk about the history of the Gathering Tree and their reasons for wanting to help homeless people.

"We knew God was calling us to do something," David Brown said in the video.

Bacon, whose studio in downtown Springfield is known among the homeless as a place where they are welcome, used footage from the Gathering Tree and from homeless camps in Springfield in the video.

"Together with a small group of friends, we decided to start the Gathering Tree," Linda Brown said in the video. "We decided we wouldn't value people by what they have or how they look. Instead, we chose to see them as God does: his children and our brothers and sisters."

The Browns go on to detail their vision for Eden Village. Bacon shot footage of the Browns at the property with architectural renderings for Eden Village.

The first home has been purchased thanks to a $30,000 donation from Coldwell Banker Vanguard Realtors and will be delivered in February. That first home will serve as a model to allow people to come see what the homes and the community will be like.

After more homes are purchased and set up, Linda Brown said she expects people will be able to start moving to Eden Village in the fall of 2017.

Brown, who is also a real estate agent, said in an earlier interview that she had been looking for property for the tiny home community for some time.

She recently found the trailer park, which was already complete with concrete pads and utility and sewer hook-ups for the manufactured homes.

The city has confirmed to Brown that the property will not have to be rezoned.

The homes, which will be manufactured in Athens, Texas, are about 400 square feet, with one bedroom, one bathroom and a kitchen.

Eden Village will also have a community building with laundry facilities and a large kitchen with space for entertaining up to 30 guests. Brown hopes to have the community building constructed in early 2017.

Eden Village will specifically house individuals who qualify as “chronically disabled homeless” by standards of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Residents, many of whom are on disability, will pay their own rent.

Residents will have access to case management and services. It will be a gated community, with residents free to come and go as they please.

The total cost of the project, with the planned 30 homes and community center, will be about $1.8 million.

"We believe the Eden Village model is easily replicated and has the potential to transform the housing movement for the homeless for other cities throughout the country," David Brown said in the video. "Eden Village will simply be life changing and life giving for our residents, a place of hope and new beginnings."

The video can be viewed at gatheringtree.org.