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When Patricia Smith landed a spot in a new tiny home community in unincorporated San Leandro, she thought her four-year ordeal with homelessness was over.

The tiny home village was billed as a stopover on her way to permanent housing. And 66-year-old Smith was eager to find a place she could afford on her monthly Social Security income of $1,388.

But after a little more than two months there, Smith says she was told that her time was up and she’d have to move on after Thanksgiving. Now she’s back to living in her car.

“For the first time in a long time, I thought wow, I might be a normal human being again. And then to just pull the rug out from under me …” Smith trailed off, recalling her disappointment.

Smith is one of several people who say they were informed their stays had expired and were either told to leave before finding alternative housing or threatened with removal. Alameda County’s housing department and Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency — the nonprofit managing the site — blame the trouble on communication blunders, kinks in a brand-new model, and the Bay Area’s lack of affordable housing options. They say everyone who has left was offered a spot in another shelter — a claim some program participants deny.

The complaints at the tiny home village, which opened just three months ago, highlight a broader challenge: Even as Bay Area cities and counties come up with new ways to get people off the streets fast, moving people from those temporary solutions into long-term housing is difficult.

With the COVID-19 pandemic came a new push to move unhoused residents — who experts feared would be particularly susceptible to the virus — into short-term shelters with private rooms where they would be protected from infection. Bay Area hotels opened their doors to unhoused residents last year. New tiny homes sprang up in Oakland, and San Jose built modular communities with private apartments.

But now, as the hotel programs wind down, counties are scrambling to move residents into permanent housing. Alameda County has found spots for more than 1,100 people who were in hotels and other temporary COVID shelters, but there are always people who fall through the cracks. And San Leandro’s new program suggests tiny home sites won’t be immune from that struggle.

The project, located in the county’s Fairmont campus, is really two programs in one. Nineteen of the tiny homes are for people who are waiting for permanent housing. As long as they’re actively working with staff on a housing plan, they can stay until they’ve found housing, according to the county. The other 15 tiny homes are short-term medical respite units for people recovering from illness or medical procedures. They generally have 45 days.

Sandra Erskine, a 74-year-old diabetic, moved into one of the medical respite homes after she passed out from extremely high blood sugar and ended up in the hospital. Though she was offered an affordable apartment in Oakland, Erskine said she later found out she didn’t qualify because she wasn’t an Oakland resident.

She was told to leave Nov. 19, and moved into her car, she said. Now, she’s in a convalescent hospital recovering from kidney issues.

“As soon as they got us medically stable, we were out on the street,” Erskine said, “and I ended up in the hospital.”

Smith also landed in a medical respite unit, though she says she didn’t know that when she moved into the tiny home. She has excruciating back pain, which she suspects was caused by years of living in her car. It didn’t get any better while she was in the program, Smith said.

Donald Frazier, executive director of Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, said staff members are working on improving their messaging so participants will have clear expectations about the program going forward.

“Certainly our partners and all concerned need to do better with that communication,” he said.

Smith, he said, was referred to two different homeless shelters, but declined both and told staff she’d move in with a friend.

“We do not put people out on the streets,” Frazier said. “That is not what we do.”

But Smith said she never received a referral to a shelter. She sleeps on a friend’s couch occasionally but doesn’t want to wear out her welcome, so she mostly stays in her car at the San Leandro Marina.

Kerry Abbott, director of Alameda County’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination, said staff members are re-examining the program to see how it can be run better. Ideally, she said, people who recover from their medical problems would be transitioned to the housing side of the program. The problem is, there aren’t enough tiny homes for them.

Nor is there enough permanent housing. Staffers have applied for housing vouchers for residents in the non-medical homes, which should start arriving in the next few weeks, Frazier said. But the county is having trouble finding enough landlords willing to rent to homeless people, Abbott said.

Related Articles Housing | Letters: Wrong pick | Honor flag | Owned by oil | Hydrogen’s promise | Gun control | He’s no Reagan  Housing | Judge temporarily blocks plans to clear massive Oakland homeless camp Housing | Oakland clears part of its most notorious homeless camp, makes way for new shelter Housing | Monterey County homelessness summit examines root of problem Housing | San Rafael defeats lawsuit over homeless camp Donna Ohnstad, 53, and Kevin West, 46, each say they were told they’d have to leave their tiny home earlier this month. After this news organization inquired, both were granted last-minute extensions. West, who is recovering from a hip replacement, said he would have gone back to a tent on the railroad tracks. Ohnstad said she was offered a shelter in Richmond, but couldn’t accept because she can’t take her beloved cat, Booger.

Ohnstad and West hope the reprieve will give them enough time to find housing.

“We have a lot of confidence that we … will get the kinks out of the system,” she said, “and hopefully move toward a lot of really successful, happy housing placements from the site.”

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