Carmen Guidi has an incredibly huge heart As he showed me around Second Wind Cottages, and told the stories of the men who will soon call the place home, it became clear that Carmen is one of the most humble and caring men I have ever met.
Carmen donated the land and started building small cottages in rural Upstate NY after one of his homeless friends committed suicide. Later in the day, Carmen took me on a short tour of the tent community where his friend and several others died. After experiencing first hand how broken homeless services system is, Carmen just decided to take action, and soon 18 people will have a small cottage to call home.
I really love this model of creating small communities for our homeless friends. My friend Alan Graham, a personal hero of mine, likes to call his “Community First.” Homeless people have also created tiny house communities, and maybe my favorite is Dignity Village in Portland, and someone posted on Facebook a link to tiny house community for normal people.
With lack of affordable housing increasing and homelessness increasing, I think tiny house communities are brilliant. If you’d like to learn more about Carmen’s Second Wind Cottages click here: http://secondwindcottages.org. There are only a few days left on their IndieGoGo campaign so if you’d like to help click here.
