9-Year-Old Girl Has Been Growing Vegetables For Over Four Years And Has Built Wooden Houses For The Homeless

Oct 22, 2021

When Haily Fort from Kitsap County, Washington, saw a homeless man on the street at the age of 5, she knew she needed to do something to help.

In 2012, she started a garden, where she grows food that she donates to her local food bank. She also had the idea of ​​building shelters from scratch. She is still involved in helping the homeless even today.

At the age of 6, Hailey Fort started a garden to grow food for the local homeless community. The garden was called Hailey’s Harvest, according to ABC News. 

Haily has harvested hundreds pounds of food for the homeless, but she knew she wanted to do even more. In addition to her garden, Hailey purchased P.O. boxes to help homeless people apply for jobs and donated feminine hygiene products and coats to those in need.

 "Hailey is repeatedly told that she can stop at any time but she continues because this is her passion. I think a lot has to do with setting such high goals and then the rush she gets when she meets them,” Hailey’s mother, Miranda Fort, told ABC News back in 2015.

In 2015, when Hailey was 9, she met Edward, a local homeless man, befriending him. Edward had lost his job at a local grocery store, which eventually led to him losing his home, too.

Hailey knew she had to help him, so she started building mobile homes from scratch on her own with the supervision of her mother at the age of 9.  

“It just doesn’t seem right that there are homeless people,” Hailey told a local news outlet. “I think everyone should have a place to live.”

The homes are complete with windows and insulation to protect the occupants from the cold. After building a house for Edward, Hailey said she wanted to build another 10 to help other homeless people in the local area.

“If she had her way we’d have mobile sleeping shelters taking up our front lawn,” Hailey’s mom told reporters jokingly.

The cost to build one structure, according to ABC News, is around $300. The low price is thanks to the Kitsap community, which donates many items. The structures’ walls are made out of repurposed pallets, which are insulated with denim. That’s in addition to vinyl flooring, a shingled roof and drywall, along with a few finishing touches like a front door lock, a solar-powered lamp and curtains.

​​"It is no surprise to me that Hailey is this selfless with Miranda as an example,” Hailey’s dad Quentin Fort told ABC News. 

“I am immensely proud of the contributions Hailey has made and will continue to make to her community. I just hope we, as parents, can do enough to satiate her desire to help those in need."

Tiny homes like Hailey’s have caught on as a solution to homelessness. In the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, the county recently built the largest tiny home village in the U.S. to house some of the city’s homeless residents, according to NBC Los Angeles. The Tiny Home Village is set within a 6.8-acre plot in Arroyo Seco Park, and it includes 117 housing units and 224 non-congregate beds to be used as transitional housing.

"The Arroyo Seco Tiny Home Village is all about restoring hope to people whose lives have been shattered into 1 million pieces by homelessness,'' councilmember Kevin de Leon said. "This is a crisis of despair and hopelessness affecting us all. But that's changing and today marks another step toward reversing the pain and suffering to those on our streets who are experiencing it.''

Compared to Hailey’s tiny homes, the residences at Arroyo Seco Park are quite expensive at around $55,000 each. That said, officials said that the new development is the least expensive source of homeless housing in the Los Angeles area. YouTube artist Zach Hsieh and a team of other creatives helped to paint the homes. The tiny home development was completed in just 90 days.

"Solving homelessness demands creative and lasting solutions that meet the immediate and critical need for housing today while giving our unhoused neighbors a path to a permanent place to call home tomorrow,'' Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the development.

According to a March 2021 report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the homeless population grew for the fourth consecutive year — and those numbers don’t reflect the pandemic’s impact.

One worrying statistic is that the number of adults living unsheltered and outside, 209,413, exceeded the number of homeless people living in shelters, 199,478, according to NPR.

Luckily, projects like Hailey’s are catching on.

​​"The only way to end this crisis is with more long-term and quality housing options,” Mayor Garcetti said.  

What do you think of Hailey’s work to help homeless people at such a young age? Let us know, and make sure you pass this along to your friends and family!