Tiny homes to offer big support for homeless young women

SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – We’ve all heard the phrase, “it takes a village to raise a child.” What happens when that child ages out of foster care? The non-profit Faith and Fostering is providing that answer by building a village of tiny homes to shelter and support young women who have nowhere to go after leaving foster care.

Christi Robinson is the founder and executive director of Faith and Fostering and has always had a heart to serve. “I served women from very hard places being rescued out of trafficking, drug addiction, said Robinson. She said she knew she was being called to even more after a particularly heart-wrenching experience, trying to help two young women who were aging out of foster care who didn’t take her advice.

“I was just heartbroken because I was afraid we were going to lose them. And sure enough when they aged out we lost them. So we don’t know if we lost them to prostitution or drug distribution or even death,” Robinson recalled. “We don’t know what happened to them.”

She said that’s when God led her to create Faith and Fostering. Since March of 2020, the non-profit has provided housing, education, life skills and employment training, to help young men and women ages 18 to 24 become self-sufficient.

“God just started miraculously sending people and resources,” said Robinson.

Those resources included a donated home and several acres of land to create what will soon become a village of tiny homes for young women in the program.

“They’re going to be 500 to 600 square feet per unit and it will house one person,” said Barbara Lewis, Community Relations Coordinator for Faith and Fostering. “We will have a couple of units that will be up to 800 square feet and have one bedrooms for a mother that may have a child.”

The donated home is now an administration building, which includes living space for the staff members who will live on the property full time. The next phase is to clear the land before building the 18 tiny homes. Faith and Fostering is looking for sponsors.

“What we would love to see is businesses to donate a unit or a church donate a unit and that could look like they just buy it outright and place the unit here or they can have different people in their organizations come and do work for them,” Lewis explained.

“It really takes a community to solve the problem,” Robinson reflected. “Faith and Fostering is just one piece of the puzzle. But we need people. If they have a heart for this we have a place for them.”

Faith and Fostering will host a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house on Friday, February 14, 2025, from 10:00 a.m. to noon. The address is 3248 Bert Kouns Industrial Loop in Shreveport. The public is invited to attend and RSVP online.