A Fort Worth church has lost $20,000 after hiring a company to build a tiny home community for unhoused mothers.
Darrel Auvenshine, pastor of Southside City Church Home, told NBC 6 Fix that for 13 years, the church has held a housing ministry with a home-renting program to help the homeless people in the community re-establish their lives.
As rental housing became more expensive, the church could no longer pay for rental housing for those in need. Instead, the congregation decided to build a tiny house community on the 10,000-square-foot unused piece of land behind the church property. The homes would be specifically for mothers in Fort Worth who do not have a place to stay.
Southside City Church Home spent years requesting the needed zoning changes, seeking the Fort Worth City Council’s approval for the project, and finding a company that could work with their specific budget to build the tiny homes.
“For about a year before being ready to build, we were already looking for a builder,” Auvenshine told 6 Fix. “We had reached out to several local companies before we then found A&L Sheds on Facebook.”
Church leaders met with A&L Sheds owner Amanda Sparks and her team, who are based in Houston, to finalize plans for the structures.
According to 6 Fix, the church paid A&L Sheds $19,428 in December 2022 as a deposit for the project. This money was fundraised through community sponsors and supportive people in the community.
A&L Sheds was supposed to begin building in January 2023, but the company pushed the project back for months due to personnel problems, overbooking, or running out of money.
“We had a build date in March 2023, but that came and went,” Auvenshine said, per 6 Fix. “They communicated the day before they were supposed to build and pushed the project two weeks back.”
In July, Auvenshine told the company that the church could buy the materials so that A&L Sheds could begin building the tiny homes, or else they would settle for a reimbursement of the funds. Sparks allegedly told Auvenshine that the company currently had no money to reimburse them, and the church was on a list behind 10 other people needing a reimbursement as well.
The tiny home community was set to open in August 2024; however, after all the delays, the project has now been pushed back another six months.
“It calls our integrity into question. People have donated funds, we’ve communicated build dates, and it doesn’t happen,” Auvenshine told 6 Fix. “We have to communicate to our donors openly about what happened.”
Auvenshine has moved forward with a local construction company as he takes legal action against A&L Sheds.
In January, the Better Business Bureau revoked its accreditation of A&L Sheds due to “failure by the business to adhere to the BBB requirement that Accredited Businesses meet and abide by the following standards:
Address disputes forward by Better Business Bureau quickly and in good faith.
Cooperate with Better Business Bureau in efforts to eliminate the underlying cause of patterns of customer complaints that are identified by BBB.”
A Facebook group titled “A & L Sheds Buyer Please Be Aware” has over 100 members sharing stories of not being reimbursed by A&L Sheds or how their projects have not been started yet.
“It is a bump in the road but not a fatal crash,” Auvenshine said, according to 6 Fix. “We’re going to get back on the path, and we’re going to finish.”
The Dallas Express reached out to A&L Sheds but did not hear back by publication.
Polling conducted by The Dallas Express shows that some 75% of Dallas voters believe homelessness, vagrancy, and aggressive panhandling are “major” problems in the city.
Respondents also appeared to be generally supportive of the “one-stop-shop” homeless services model used by Haven for Hope in San Antonio. The model has been credited with a 77% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in the city’s downtown area.