The city of Little Rock has broken ground on a new “micro village” aimed at housing the city’s unsheltered residents.
The Little Rock Micro Home Village will be located at 3405 W. Roosevelt Road and will feature housing, a community center and wrap-around services for as many as 206 residents.
Speaking at the site’s future home Wednesday, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said the plan has been years in the making.
“My team and I sat with each individual department director in the early days of 2020, months before the pandemic. And what you see today is not only planning, it is perseverance; we went through a pandemic and we still made sure that this was a priority for the people, to focus on the unsheltered,” Scott said.
Kevin Howard, the city’s director of Housing and Neighborhood Programs, says the site will be the first of its kind in the city.
“It’s going to take a holistic approach with the nonprofit organizations, the shelters that are around, the City of Little Rock, individuals, volunteers,” Howard said. “This is just one step… this micro home village needs to be done in several other wards around the city.”
The site will host 50 single units, 22 units for families of four and eight which can accommodate a family of six. Howard says the city will work with residents on a case-by-case basis to ensure their stay at the village hopefully doesn’t exceed six months.
“The case manager will work with them to get permanent housing. In [the meantime] we will work with them on all the supportive and wrap-around services that they need, health services, if they need IDs we’ll make sure that they get City of Little Rock IDs,” Howard said.
Howard says the residences should finish construction in about six to eight months, with the city dedicating $3 million to the project. Pulaski County officials are also undertaking a similar project to be located in the southwest part of the county.
