The Voice on Fire Interview - Series #3 - ELVIS SUMMERS

On the streets of South Los Angeles one day, Elvis Summers encountered and eventually befriended a homeless woman named Smokie who collected recyclables in the area. To Elvis, Smokie represented a living example of the inequity in greater Los Angeles, a hugely populated city.  To provide her with safety, security, and basic comfort, Elvis built her a mobile emergency tiny shelter.   

Soon after, Elvis was receiving hundreds of e-mails and messages on social media. Many homeless people began asking for help, so he quit his job to devote 100% of his time to building shelters for the unsheltered population in his area. It started with simply replacing tents with the small, safe, and sturdy emergency tiny shelters.   

Despite coverage via social and news media, which revealed a divide between the general compassion of the public and the unwillingness of the City to accommodate the shelters, Elvis discovered that the Los Angeles City lawmakers did not approve.  Within a year, two laws had been changed to prevent the shelters from being placed in public spaces and several tiny homes were illegally confiscated, but Elvis continued to pursue legal avenues to erect the shelters - preferably in a village model on any of the 8,000 empty, unused lots within the City limits.  

In 2017, new City officials invited Elvis to submit a formal bid to build the first pilot emergency shelter village. The bid was verbally accepted, but the City unexpectedly pulled out of the agreement.  To date, Elvis Summers has built many dozens of emergency tiny house shelters, and has sheltered nearly fifty people with them, though few with the approval of authorities. 

He has inspired countless people all over the globe and instructed hundreds of people on how they, too, can get started building tiny emergency shelters.   

Local humanitarian groups also sequester the shelters from Elvis, as all continue the uphill battle of: 

• ending the negative stigma of “homelessness”  
• seeking to build low-cost, single-dwelling emergency shelters 
• helping to improve the mental and emotional dignity of this tragically ignored group of people.    

To contact Elvis, to donate, to help build, or to help challenge the City of Los Angeles and gain approval for this great cause: 

Website: https://www.thetinyhouse.org/index.html

​LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elvis-summers-77550359/

​Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElvisSummers 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elvissummers/

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Contact Terri: terri (at) terrimitchell.com.au