Local innovator designs portable homeless shelter

By David Karp

Police in Cairo, Egypt contacted Vancouver Island’s Tony Hoar recently.

”[They wanted] a trailer for six police dogs,” explained Hoar, a former professional cyclist who now builds custom bike trailers and wheelchairs.

”It’s interesting work and it keeps your brain active,”he said. The trailer maker was on campus for UVic’s Sustainable Transportation Showcase March 1.

Hoar, who celebrated his 74th birthday last week, started building handmade trailers for bikes and wheelchairs a few years ago. Since then, he has turned it into a full-time job, building anywhere from two to 10 trailers each month while promoting his company, Tony’s Trailers.

But it’s Hoar’s latest trailer -- as yet unnamed -- that has brought him international attention. The compact trailer attaches to the back of a bicycle, and folds out into a tent. The portable residence is designed as a shelter for working homeless people, and has recently been featured in the Globe and Mail, the Times Colonist, and magazines in Britain, Italy and the Netherlands.

”They actually work hard ‘binning,’ as they call it, collecting bottles and cans. And they won’t go into the shelters -- no matter how cold it is,” said Hoar of the clients for whom his latest product was designed. “They shepherd them into a shelter before eight o’clock at night, and they kick them out at six in the morning – it’s just inhuman, I think.”

Terry Richards is just one of the people Hoar’s new trailers have helped.

”I was pushing a shopping car, and Tony pulled over and said ‘Can I show you something?” he remembered. Hoar gave Richards the trailer, and he loves it.

”I’d rather be in one of those and be self-sufficient than be on welfare living in a shelter,” said Richards, a self-described binner. “I’d be sleeping in doorways if I didn’t have the trailer. Everyone I’ve met wants one.” There is one major setback surrounding the trailers, however. They cost roughly $750 each -- a steep price for most homeless people to pay.

”We have a sponsorship program, where a church, for example, could come up with $600, and a homeless person could come up with $150, and the homeless person gets the trailer,” said Hoar, who explained the program is just getting underway. He also plans to sell some trailers to non-homeless cyclists going camping this summer.

Each trailer is designed for one person, although they can accommodate two people if necessary. It’s like a single camp cot,” said Hoar.

Richards plans to use the trailer to travel this summer with three of his friends, one of whom also has a trailer. They plan to go up-Island and to the Gulf Islands.

Later, they’ll make the two-week journey to the Okanagan on their bikes.

The trailer is one accomplishment in a long line of innovations Hoar has come up with over the years. He has also designed a trailer with suspension for a woman in a wheelchair who couldn’t tolerate the vibrations from the sidewalk.

”They ended up taking her up the outside of the volcano in Hawaii although there was rock and rough ground,” Hoar said. “[Her husband] can take her anywhere now.”

Hoar has also ridden in the Tour de France, served as president of the BC Masters Cycling Association, worked in Chile, and designed racing wheelchairs for Rick Hansen. But even after all that, he doesn’t plan to stop working any time soon.

”What is retiring? Sit around and die?” he asked. “No, I’m too busy for that.”