Elevate Branson is a Christian organization that does a lot of different things under the umbrella of ‘addressing poverty in Taney County.’ They provide meals for the community, they teach soft skill classes, and they operate a thrift store. A while back, they were featured in the New York Times for a program providing scooters to workers without transportation.
One of their long-planned projects finally started construction in January. The Elevate Community is a planned complex of 48 tiny homes, intended to serve the city’s many residents who live either on the street or in motels.
"We recognized the need," Elevate CEO Bryan Stallings told KSMU. "And really, loneliness has become kind of an epidemic, so we really wanted to be able to create community. When you have community with one another, there’s people to pick you up when you fall down, there’s people there to support you."
Branson’s housing woes have multiple roots. For one, there’s the town’s location in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. "We have such a difficult terrain here that it is hard for a developer to come in and build affordable housing and for it to be profitable," explained Stallings.
There’s also the problem of jobs. Branson has a way-higher-than-average proportion of people working in low-wage service positions, which are often seasonal, part-time, or both. This makes affording already-expensive rent more difficult, and confines many to extended-stay motels. That makes it even harder to build savings or, like Stallings alluded to, anything resembling a support network.
Checking off the boxes
Elevate’s headquarters are near Branson attractions like White Water and the Titanic Museum. In 2019, Elevate purchased an adjacent plot of land for the tiny house project and began the grant process. They received several, including a state Community Development Block Grant (CDBG). But using state funds means a lot of red tape, and between 2020 and this year Elevate was stuck in the proverbial trenches.
State regulators required an environmental review. "It was identified that we were within a five mile radius of an endangered bat," Stallings explained. "And these bats roost in certain types of trees. We had to remove those trees, but you can only remove those trees a certain time of year, when the bats are in hibernation."
State funds also mean that local tribes can request a cultural review — an archaeological dig to make sure the land doesn’t house any important artifacts — which the Osage did.
"Then, when we were looking at our sewer options, we just couldn’t get a gravity-fed sewer to work on the existing property with where the sewer tie-in for the city was. The elevation was just- we just couldn’t get there," said Stallings. "So, then we needed to cross the adjacent property to be able to do that."
That meant purchasing more land, which meant months of negotiations followed by environmental and cultural reviews on the additional property.
"You overcome one thing, and then you get to this next point, and then there’s something else and you have to overcome that. It’s been a journey." Stallings laughs. When asked what Elevate would do differently were they to take on a project like this again, he says that he’d wait longer to announce the project, and avoid paying for engineering using grant money — public funds meant an open bidding process, which took time, which meant that the sewer issues took longer to come out.
A second round of funding
Then, last May, issues came up with the Branson Board of Aldermen. Here, it becomes helpful to understand how CDBG money is administered. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development allocates funds to the State of Missouri, which allocates funds to local governments. Nonprofits and other entities can apply for CDBG money as a sub-applicant, with the main applicant being their municipal government. If money is awarded, the nonprofit can then send invoices to the city government who is then reimbursed by the state. No money actually enters the account of the sub-applicant.
So, in 2021, Elevate receives a CDBG-DR (disaster relief) grant through the City of Branson for the public infrastructure of the Elevate Community, totaling $1,940,000. Then Elevate gets stuck in the weeds for a couple years, and during that time, four out of the six city aldermen seats change hands. On May 9, 2024, the Board of Aldermen holds a special meeting on affordable housing, wherein Elevate requests to apply for CDBG funds for two projects. One of those projects was a motel-to-apartment complex conversion called "New Horizons Apartments." The other project was the Elevate Community, specifically an expansion of 20 homes more than the original 48. The board has questions about the lack of progress on the Elevate Community as well as how funds are allocated, and they end up voting down resolutions of support for both projects and postponing an ordinance formally approving the related documents — Bill No. 6442.
On May 28, during the Board’s regular meeting, they read a different ordinance — Bill No. 6447. The staff report for that ordinance notes that the only qualified bid for the public infrastructure, from Emery Sapp & Sons, was for over $3 million, which is more than a million dollars over the CDBG money awarded back in 2021. So the bill specifically authorized Elevate to apply for more funds to cover the infrastructure. Stallings gives a presentation, a number of people speak in support of the ordinance (including State Representative Brian Seitz), and the bill passes unanimously.
"I don’t believe, maybe, they were fully aware of how the process worked in the case of these funds," Stallings told KSMU regarding the process. "They were a little concerned because it’d been several years at this point that no work had been done yet, and so they were a little hesitant to allow us to apply for another grant until they could see some work taking place. Even though there was a lot of work being done on the backside — the administrative side — that they just weren’t aware of. And so, that was probably me not educating them well enough. We’ve worked through that, and we’re moving forward."
Looking forward
Elevate is anticipating houses on the ground in late summer or early fall, with private infrastructure finished and residents moved in by 2026. As mentioned before, there are 48 houses planned for the Elevate Community; the number of applicants at the time of writing sits near 200.
Rent for a 400 square foot tiny home will be $495/month including utilities, fully furnished. To be eligible, one has to have been a Taney County resident for at least 12 months, be 18 years or older and able to verify that they fall below the 50% area median income of $24,750, or $28,250 for a household. Stallings also mentioned that violent or sex offences on a criminal record will be a disqualifying factor.
Elevate also intends to run community programs as a part of the project. "We have a program called Elevate Work," explained Stallings, "and it’s really designed to teach soft skills on not only how to get a job, but how to keep a job, how to be the best employee you can be to hopefully climb that economic ladder, get promoted, those types of things. There’s also a financing and budgeting class in there, as well as computer literacy classes.”
Stallings continued: "Now, we do recognize that some individuals are going to be on fixed incomes, whether it be social security, or maybe a disability income. But, it doesn’t mean that they can’t be encouraged to have some sort of workforce development training, and even work a little on a part-time basis. And so, we want to make sure that we provide that skilled training for them. The eventual goal is that we’ll even have an art and woodworking studio on the property so that maybe they can craft something. They may not be able to stand behind a cash register for eight hours a day, but maybe they can make a painting, or craft something in the woodshop, or the pottery shop, and then we can sell that for them in our marketplace so that they can earn a dignified income."
Ultimately, Stallings hopes to establish the Elevate Community as a "model" for other, similar communities. Elevate will be tracking health outcomes of community residents to whatever extent is possible, in the hopes of demonstrating not only the efficacy of nonprofit-public partnerships, but the particular model of the tiny home community.
"I think the biggest difference between a tiny home and an apartment or a multi-family unit is your own independent four walls," Stallings said. "There’s just something about a home. A home feels like it’s a place of belonging, and it’s a place of storytelling."