Homes for Hearts builds tiny homes with big dreams for Memphis’ unsheltered

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Henry Comas says he parked his 2002 Mercury Grand Marquis by the dumpster behind the Waffle House at Sycamore View Road and I-40 nightly for five years. For Henry, now 60, and his dogs Kaki and Whopper, it was home.

“I did have an apartment, but I couldn’t afford it; it was hard paying the bills,” Henry said through an interpreter for Bridges West, an agency that serves the deaf and hard of hearing.

Henry and his dogs appeared at the doorstep of Bridges West two years ago, pleading for assistance to find housing on a particularly cold, snowy winter day.

Henry Comas

“He finally decided, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’” said Mary Kathryn Rogers, a Bridges West team member who knew about Homes for Hearts, a Memphis nonprofit’s tiny homes initiative.

“So, we contacted Zach,” Rogers said.

“We’re building tiny homes for Memphians experiencing homelessness,” Waters said outside the agency’s newest creation on a side street off busy Chelsea Ave. in North Memphis.

“Together with our partnering organizations, we’re helping move Memphians toward affordable and sustainable home ownership,” Waters said.

Zach Waters, founder of Homes for Hearts

Waters says Homes for Hearts finds candidates for its tiny houses through agencies like Bridges West and Room in the Inn, another nonprofit that houses people inside Memphis churches and its headquarters at 409 Ayers Street.

Waters’ own heart was moved when he befriended Lee Brown, a chronically homeless, mentally ill man who spent twenty years and seven months on the streets.

Waters studied film at Memphis College of Art and created a docuseries about Brown entitled, “A Lee Dog Story,” using the street nickname Brown gave himself.

“So, for me, filming Lee’s story was an early passion of mine,” Waters said. The videos, still available online via YouTube, feature rough cut interviews with Brown and other unsheltered people.

Waters devoted himself to studying homelessness in Memphis through the eyes of the unsheltered.

“Through those stories I just became really inspired to shift the paradigm,” Waters said.

After graduation, Waters helped start a film production company, Prodigi Arts, which remains in business in Los Angeles. He also used his talents as a filmmaker to create videos for Avalon Cakes School of Sugar Art, a teaching platform with over four hundred step by step lessons in creative cake design.

But when Brown died of sepsis in July 2018, Waters says he felt moved to dive back into his passion for solving the crisis of homelessness hundreds of Memphians face daily.

The fruit of all of Waters’ long labor can be found at four locations around town, tiny houses in Orange Mound, the Beltline and now North Memphis where the smallest structures permitted by the Memphis Shelby County building code have become the first four Homes for Hearts.

A tiny home by Homes for Hearts

“This is 280 square feet, a four-room home with a separate living room in front, separate kitchen, bathroom and bedroom in the back, so all of the regular amenities of a typical home built with the same grade quality materials,” Waters said.

The nonprofit accepts no government funding and relies entirely on individuals and businesses to make tax-deductible gifts that are transformed into tiny places for people to live.

Waters says Homes for Hearts makes zero profit from its lease-to-own agreements that clients like Henry sign.

“We’re keeping folks below a 30% threshold of their total income going towards housing,” Waters said.

Henry says his monthly Social Security check is his only income, but that he can afford his tiny house based on the Homes for Hearts formula.

Waters says the first twelve months of Henry’s lease payments will go toward his purchase of the appliances that came installed in the tiny house.

After the first year, Henry’s low monthly payments will go toward his ultimate purchase of the tiny house, currently worth $48,700. Waters estimates that it’ll take Henry 11 years to pay off the home and the land it sits on, but Henry insists it’s a payment plan he can afford.

“Homelessness is not going away,” said Lolita Crittendon, the chairperson of Homes for Hearts Board of Directors. “The numbers are escalating as we speak right now,” Crittendon said in the North Memphis living room where Henry moved in on Monday, May 12.

Lolita Crittendon

“This has been a long time coming, “Crittendon said. “I couldn’t even sleep last night; I’m so excited you’d think I was moving in here,” the Homes for Hearts leader said.

Crittendon learned the plight of Memphis’ homeless population firsthand by volunteering to help unsheltered people where she worships each week, Freedom’s Chapel Christian Church.

The congregation houses people in its sanctuary on select nights as dozens of other Memphis churches do through the services coordinated by Room in the Inn.

“I will forever advocate for the less fortunate, the homeless, or the marginalized,” Crittendon said.

The woman’s passion impressed the team at Room in the Inn and Crittendon served as the agency’s full time Hospitality and Housing Stabilization Coordinator for a number of years.

She left the job two months ago to return to school but says she felt called to help Homes for Hearts and knows many people on fixed incomes who are struggling to pay escalating rents need the kinds of places Homes for Hearts creates.

“I know this is what the Lord put me here to do,” Crittendon said.

Henry’s tiny house has come with an unexpected struggle for Homes for Hearts.

With construction complete, Homes for Hearts held an Open House on the weekend of May 10-11.

Removing the protective plywood from the windows and doors for the Open House, burglars ransacked the property on the night before Henry was set to move in.

The criminals took everything of value: a hot water heater, stove, refrigerator, even the toilet. With the services of a talented contractor, Homes for Hearts replaced all those items before Henry moved in. But the nonprofit got stuck with the extra costs of replacing all the appliances stolen from the property.

Homes for Hearts added a security door and volunteers spent the weekend, May 17-18, building Henry a new fence. It gives Kaki and Whopper a backyard to mark as their own.

Henry is extremely grateful for the great lengths Zach Waters and Home for Hearts have gone to make his tiny house possible.

“I am so happy. It is great,” Henry said with a smile through his interpreter in his new living room.