Errin Stanger and her team at Providence Park are building something monumental: a tiny house village designed to serve people facing chronic homelessness, a multifaceted experience that includes living in a place unfit for human habitation for at least one year. Set to open its first 100 homes this fall, Providence Park will eventually provide a permanent and meaningful community in Pulaski County for up to 400 central Arkansans who have lived without community for so long.
A Foundation of Service
While Stanger’s path didn’t lead directly to her current role as founder and CEO of Providence Park, pivotal steps along her personal and professional journey brought her ever closer to this life-changing project.
“I come from a really sweet family of doers … and really servant-hearted parents. We were raised in an environment of service,” shares Stanger, who is the youngest of three girls.
After college, her sights were set on medical school, but a single moment changed her trajectory.
“I got this call from my sister Kelli to tell me that she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer,” Stanger says. “I said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’”
And that’s just what she did. Stanger hopped on a plane to join her sister in California without a backward glance at her unfinished med school applications or thought for her professional future.
Stanger became her sister’s caregiver, and when Kelli decided to move back to Little Rock mid-way through her five-year battle with cancer, Stanger was introduced — albeit reluctantly — to nonprofit work. A friend invited her to volunteer for Race for the Cure, but her first answer was no.
“I was at that stage in grief where you’re just going through a lot of emotions. And I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can handle that.’ But volunteering really helped.”
Race for the Cure allowed Stanger a crucial glimpse of how powerful a community can be.
“I was surrounded by people who were obviously helping to raise money for breast cancer research, but it was also like a survivor parade,” she says. “And I started to think, ‘I love spending my time here. What would it look like to go down this route professionally one day?’”
A Life-Changing Friendship
Stanger built on her experience with Race for the Cure in her next role as director of the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub in Argenta. And it was during her decade at The Hub that Stanger had another life-changing interaction. One morning, she arrived early at the office to enjoy a quiet, productive hour to herself. As she headed inside, she noticed a woman she had never seen before sitting against the building. True to her caregiving foundation, Stanger sat down and asked about her story. She soon learned her name, Miss Joan, and that she had been without a home since Hurricane Katrina, nearly a decade at that point. Stanger jumped into action and worked to connect Miss Joan with local organizations that could support her immediate needs like food, water, clothes and a shower.
Miss Joan made a lasting impression on Stanger.
“You have those interactions with people who stay with you. She really taught me what it looks like to be chronically homeless here in central Arkansas.”
As Stanger got to know Miss Joan, she began searching for ways to care for her better.
Credit: Jason Masters
“I realized I didn’t know enough about our current providers here in central Arkansas. I felt like what I knew was an inch deep and a mile wide.”
To remedy the gap in her knowledge, Stanger embarked on what turned out to be a years-long, self-assigned research project. She started by learning the ins and outs of how central Arkansas organizations support the local unhoused community. She soon knew when to get in line at Our House and The Compassion Center, but still had not found an organization that could fully serve someone like Miss Joan.
“I’m looking for permanent housing, and I’m looking for support services that could just be wrapped around her,” says Stanger, who then expanded her research to the entire state, then across the country and around the globe, all in her spare time while running The Hub.
A Model Community
After about three years, her search brought her to Community First! Village in Austin, Texas. Founded by Alan Graham, the village is a 51-acre master plan that provides permanent housing and wraparound support services for the chronically unhoused. Much like Stanger’s path, Graham’s journey didn’t start with a 400-home tiny house village. It started with a food truck in 1988.
“What’s really cool about his food truck is that you’re on the same side of the serving counter as someone who comes up and needs something,” Stanger says.
This simple shift nurtured relationships between Graham’s nonprofit team, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, and the people they were serving.
To deepen this community forming around his food trucks, Graham started dreaming of creating an RV park for his unhoused neighbors. And after wading through zoning issues and weighing costs, Graham established Community First! as a tiny home village in 2016.
When Stanger visited the site, she knew right away it was a special place.
“The first thing I saw were neighbors working and laughing and healthy. I’m in this gorgeous clean neighborhood and I thought, ‘Where am I? This is amazing.’”
Community First! supports residents through opportunities for dignified work like running on-site rentals, selling concessions on movie night, gardening and creating art to sell at their community market. And in a direct echo of its food truck ministry, the village intentionally draws neighbors out of their homes and into relationships through communal kitchens where they can cook and share meals together. Although chronic homelessness is an undoubtedly complex issue, Graham believes the core cause always connects back to catastrophic loss of family and connection.
Path to Providence
After her visit, Stanger was convinced this was the model she’d been searching for.
“As I’m driving off property, I remember saying out loud — and I do not talk to myself — ‘How am I going to bring this to central Arkansas?’”
Community First! offers a “replication pathway” for other organizations to study and create their own community-focused, permanent housing neighborhoods. Stanger was inspired to establish a replicator village in central Arkansas, one of about a dozen across the country.
“We all might be serving in a little bit different capacity, but here in central Arkansas, we really are doing a full replication of Community First! because we are serving the chronically homeless, and we are going to build 400 tiny homes, which is what they have on 51 acres in Austin.”
But before moving forward with her dream, Stanger checked in with local organizations that serve the unhoused community to see if they thought this model would be a good fit for central Arkansas.
“At that point, I was on the periphery of homelessness because I’d been doing the research, and they were in it. Their opinion really mattered to me.”
The answer from those providers was a resounding encouragement to “please figure this out.” Stanger was comforted by their support and excited to partner with them through her project.
“They are working so hard, and most of them have waiting lists and they wish they could do more, so I’m so proud of what we’re doing already.”
Yet she still needed land to truly make her dream a reality. Based on Graham’s suggestion, she had her sights on county land to avoid zoning issues within city limits. That led her to a meeting with Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde. After her presentation on Community First!, Hyde was inspired to visit the village in person.
“He got to meet Alan, experience Community First! with him, see the culture, embed himself in that, see the neighbors,” Stanger says. “Then he flew back from that trip and immediately came to see me.”
While she thought that was a positive sign, she could not anticipate Hyde’s profound support, and yet another pivotal conversation ahead.
“He said ‘I’m in.’ And then he leaned forward and he asked me, ‘Are you in?’” Stanger says. “I was thinking, ‘I’ve been in.’”
Hyde proceeded to show her a map with 150 acres earmarked for the full replication project with the central 50 acres carved out for the Providence Park community. The site, located in southwest Pulaski County, is about 20 minutes from downtown Little Rock. But the good news didn’t end there, Hyde also shared that the county was planning to set aside American Rescue Plan dollars to install the infrastructure for the neighborhood.
“I felt like I was going to fall out of the chair,” Stanger says. “You know how you have these moments in your life where you have done all this hard work and everything is summed up in a paragraph? Everything became very, very real.”
During the research phase of her project, Stanger had created a nonprofit for herself as a birthday present. So when the request for proposal went out for this project, she was ready to apply, and her organization, titled Refuge Village, won the work.
Invitation Into Joy
At that point, Stanger left The Hub to work on the Providence Park project full time. Inspired by her nonprofit mentors at Susan G. Komen, she cast a wide net for people willing to help.
“When they went and started to try to get support [for the race], they said, we’re not going to go to one TV station, we’re going to go to all.”
That mentality paved the way for Providence Park to work with more than 100 partners and counting, including multiple architects, education groups, church ministries and even a labyrinth maker designing a meditative maze for the grounds.
“If you open it up to invite people into the joy, it’s probably going to be better,” Stanger says. “So how can we just continue to invite people in?”
People in central Arkansas can answer Providence Park’s invitation by volunteering their time and donating toward the project as a whole or toward stocking future homes.
Welcome Home
Each feature of Providence Park is thoughtfully planned, starting with the entrance. A roundabout will be stationed at the front, serving as a new stop on the southwest loop of the Rock Region Metro bus route. An accessible mode of transportation is key, says Stanger, “because we’re a little bit out in the county.”
There will, of course, be places for neighbors to live — tiny houses each complete with a mini kitchen, living area, half bath and sleeping area — and places for neighbors to work. A convenience store, community garden and soft fruit orchard are in the works, as well as a Visitor’s Village with rentals for the residents to run and maintain. In a future phase, Stanger has a makerspace planned for residents to create art and crafts to sell in a community market.
There will be places for neighbors to heal. A clinic will provide medical, mental health and dental care on site to offer those elusive wraparound services that Stanger sought for Miss Joan and others transitioning out of homelessness.
And, at the heart of Providence Park’s mission, there will be places for people to connect. Harmony Hall, the community center, will house offices and meeting spaces. A stage and amphitheater will offer a site for movie screenings and open mic nights. A tiny home chapel and memorial garden will hold space to celebrate life. A dog park will allow pet ownership. And finally, communal kitchens will draw neighbors to join together around the table.
Stanger’s passion for the project is palpable. Today, construction continues in the southwest corner of the city, a launch date draws ever nearer and the invitation to joy is on the table. And soon, they’ll open the doors to new neighbors, and complete with all of life’s complexities, they’ll open their hearts to deep, lasting community.
Learn more about Providence Park and how to get involved at providenceparkhome.com.
PHOTOGRAPHY
JASON MASTERS
HAIR & MAKEUP
LORI WENGER
CLOTHING, JEWELRY
BARBARA/JEAN