Envision Community
Story By Mair Allen
“Hey, what about if you come and take a tour of one of our houses? What if I show you?” asks Freddy Toran.
Freddy is a Leader at Envision Community, an organization developing micro-homes to provide more accessible housing for people experiencing homelessness in the city. In September, they’ll break ground on their first intentional community in North Minneapolis, where they’ll begin building 20 affordable living spaces.
Open the door to Envision’s prototype home in the parking lot of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, and you’ll find a thoughtfully designed living space — a raised bed with blue quilts and storage space underneath, a bathroom straight from an IKEA showroom, and an addition representing the shared common house that will be at the center of the community. Light shines through the windows. Everything is tucked in its own perfectly-sized place.
Freddy can tell you why the space feels so functional. It’s because community members who have experienced housing insecurity, like him, led the design. “When you invite the homeless people on board with the building, then that’s how it works,” he explains. “Because we were able to tell them how our experience was living on the streets and what we need.”
This is at the core of Enivion’s mission, not only to provide housing, but to recognize that the experience and knowledge of the unsheltered community is an asset. It changes what the house might look like, but it also changes the goals and motivations of the organization.
“My passion is trying to help people be their present self and not have to be judged on their yesterday,” says Armel Green, another Envision Leader. When Armel was released from incarceration, his biggest obstacles to creating the life he wanted were housing and employment. And he wasn’t alone. “I saw people getting out of prison, who just wanted to do right,” he says. “They want to contribute, and they're not getting that opportunity to, because everybody looks at their record, looks at their background, and they tell them ‘no.’”
This is why Envision won’t have many of the requirements common to other rental properties: criminal backgrounds won’t be disqualifying, deposits and rental history documents won’t be required. This low-barrier model opens the door for more people to find stable housing, which Freddy calls the first step towards bigger dreams and opportunities. He looks forward to asking residents: “Now you got your house, what are some of the things that you’d like to do?”
Both Freddy and Armel see a future where Envision communities are helping to break cycles of homelessness across the country. “We have them everywhere,” Freddy says of this future. “We get more land, build more houses.”
Armel sees what that future would mean for the lives Envision hopes to reach. “Envision won’t be just another place for people to go, where they don't come out better than when they went in,” he says. “They'll be able to teach people who come from the life that they've come from. They’ll be able to tell them that there is hope.”
Learn more about the project and how you can get involved here.