We’re getting started in Oshkosh, WI in partnership with Community Supported Shelters (CCS) and we need your help!
Our vision is creating new types of housing for all from those without a roof over their head, to renters that are overburdened by rising costs, to our entire community who can live better together in community.
The project’s list of current needs:
- People who’d like to build, lobby for, live in, and organize new kinds of housing. sign in here.
- Full sheets of plywood.
- 8 feet or longer 2x4s.
- An exterior door.
- Solid foam insulation and fiberglass batting in good condition.
Here is an illustrative plan view of what’s possible when a community tries new kinds of housing and participatory community:
Map of tiny home opportUNITY village in Oregon
The Make A Village Oshkosh project’s progress so far:
- December 2025 – Oshkosh Tool Library (OTL) awarded $5000 to consult with Community Supported Shelters with these objectives: To address this need for affordable housing, we need to disrupt the types of housing we’re building and the governmental policies that would prevent such alternatives. We will use funds from this grant to receive consultancy from the nonprofit Community Supported Shelters who have experience building 154 shelters/beds in their community and have provided plans or consultancy for shelters in over 46 states and 9 countries. The ‘conestoga huts’ they provide plans for cost around $3,500 per unit to build, orders of magnitude less than current housing options. Our primary objectives will be to create a strategy to influence policies to allow micro-shelters dwellings in Winnebago County and build the relationships required for funding and locating such shelters. Currently, there are minimum square footage laws for housing that prohibit such small shelters, despite the distinct need. Oshkosh Tool Library’s mission is aligned with this effort to create and foster community empowerment and we are well equipped to address this problem with the tools and space to build conestoga huts. Our existing connections with unhoused individuals built through bike repair tool use, mutual aid events, and prototype shelters will enable poignant collaboration.
- January 2026 – OTL organizers met with CCS leaders to discuss engaging in a consulting relationship that would include conestoga hut plans, hut templates, their policies and procedures for reference, and 6 total hours of consulting help.
- February 2026 – OTL organizers completed CCS Readiness Assessment and started forming organizing team and this website
- April 2026 – Secured a donated trailer to build a conestoga hut. It should be 6 feet wide and 10 feet long, plus or minus a foot. We’ll use this to show city officials and local residents the nice curb appeal and zoning worthy design.
Here is an example of a conestoga hut built on a trailer:
