About The Tiny Homes Program

Mayor Kriseman helping build tiny house at Tiny House Festival

The Second Chance Tiny House Manufacturing Corporation has emerged as a program of the Pinellas Ex Offender Re Entry Coalition. Students receive Carpentry and OSHA Certification at Pinellas Technical College and are paid part-time for hands on training in the construction trades.

This program is the ultimate win-win-win-win, where innovative training is combined with community partners and resources to solve multiple social issues.

Those who hope to become and remain ex-offenders receive training leading to jobs in a booming construction market and one that has upward mobility.

Those in training will gain experience working ‘on-the-job’ in the mornings (training in the afternoon) building 25 tiny houses (352 square feet) for homeless Veterans in Tampa Bay as part of a Veterans Village in South St. Petersburg.

As more students go through the training program, we will begin working on 30 houses to be built in the Lealman area of Pinellas County for affordable housing stock.

We will be replacing vacant lots from torn down homes and potentially old mobile homes with ‘Miami Dade’ hurricane rated modern/new homes.

The pilot class of this program has already seen 13 people placed in jobs! MULTIPLE contractors came to the program graduation to offer jobs ON THE SPOT!!

The list goes on and on!

The goal of this fundraiser is in support of the on-the-job training portion of the program. The goal is to have 60 clients go through the training, help revitalize our community, make a dent in veterans homelessness, create more affordable housing stock, and ends with these people becoming tax paying citizens in our community! They will have a good paying, upwardly mobile career path in a high grown industry – and OUT of the criminal justice system’s pattern of re-arrest and re-incarceration.