Cabin village for homeless moms coming to El Cajon

A small cluster of cabins that will serve as a temporary home for young mothers is under construction in El Cajon, and the little village some day could serve as a model for other communities seeking alternatives to homeless shelters.

“We’ve been working so hard for so many years, and now we’re here,” said Lisa Kogan, treasurer of the nonprofit Amikas, which has organized the construction next to Meridian Baptist Church. “And we’re going to do it.”

Amikas formed in 2009 with a mission of housing women, children and female veterans, and in the past five years has advocated for using cabins to provide a safe and secure shelter for homeless people who otherwise may be living on sidewalks and canyons.

The group constructed cabins at various local sites over the years as demonstration projects, but never got a buy-in from civic leaders or found a property for their project.

But two years ago, Steve Goble brought the idea before his fellow El Cajon City Council members after seeing a demonstration cabin Amikas had built at Meridian Baptist Church a year earlier. Council members in August 2020 unanimously approved a pilot program through December 2023 that would add five more cabins, plus one for security.

Eva Rapp was among the volunteers working at the Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon to construct six small cabins for homeless people.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Amikas received its building permit in January, and began work at the site last month. Volunteers will be on the property each Saturday, with a goal of completing all five in April.

Home Start, a nonprofit that provides housing and programs for young mothers and pregnant women who are facing homelessness, will refer clients to stay in the cabins. The city agreement asks clients to be from El Cajon and to stay in the cabins just 90 days.

While the first people to use the cabins will be young mothers, the village could serve as a model to serve a large population of homeless people.

Outreach workers commonly find that people living in canyons and sidewalk encampments routinely turn down shelters for a variety of reasons, and homeless advocates have called on civic leaders to be open to alternatives such as safe campgrounds and cabins.

“This could be a model for many, many, places in San Diego County,” Goble said. “Not everyone can function well in a tent with 200 other people in bunk beds. This partnership among the city of El Cajon, Meridian Baptist Church, Amikas, and Home Start, Inc. provides another solution, something needed because the reasons for homelessness vary as well.”

Amikas President Shanna Welsh-Levin agreed that cabins could be a way to get more homeless people off the street and into a safer environment.

Volunteers work in a lot at the Meridian Baptist Church in El Cajon on one of six small cabins.

(Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“Cabins provide more autonomy and privacy than shelters,” she said. “It’s very different from a shelter situation. There are certainly populations that could benefit from these, particularly women with children.”

The cabins are 12-feet by 12-feet with a porch and have 96 square feet of living space. Cabins will have electricity, but no plumbing.

Kogan said the cost of each cabin kit had been about $4,000 two years ago, but the escalating price of lumber during the pandemic has added another $2,000.

The Rev. Rolland Slade of Meridian Baptist Church is an Amikas board member and said he originally contacted the group to offer a site.

“We were harvesting tumbleweeds there,” he said about the vacant land next to his church.

Slade said he encouraged Amikas to build a cabin on the property so City Council members could have an idea of what could be accomplished.

“I said let’s do it the right way and go through all the processes we need to go through, the permits, the zoning checks, and do this right with the city’s buy-in,” he said.

Having gone through the city approval process, Slade said he can help other faith-based organizations that may want to offer their property for another Amikas village.

Kogan credited the city with helping them along the process, and said the two years that passed since the project was approved was not because of roadblocks in the city.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Kogan said. “We thought we needed this. We thought we needed that. We made it a little bit longer, and that was on us, not the city.”