True love knows no boundaries – even if the lovers in question are homeless.
Larry Cannon, a Vietnam veteran, and Julia have been desperately in love and living on the streets while dreaming of having a home in Los Angeles. But hope is on the horizon now because of a community that cares.
Elvis Summers and his volunteers worked some magic in December when they built these lovebirds a “tiny house” shelter. Now they are raising money to buy a plot of land on which to locate it amid a new tiny home community. But Elvis is not only solving matters of shelter, but matters of the heart, as well.
MORE: Cool Tiny Home Village Opens With Electricity and Water to Care for Seattle Homeless
During a weekend build session on the grounds of a church in the Compton neighborhood where they were constructing eight new dwellings, Elvis and his crew put together a wedding ceremony for the luckless couple.
“The wedding was so beautiful, everybody cried,” Elvis told Good News Network.
The pastor and his wife at Faith Community Church were “so excited”. Members of the church hung decorations and hours before the wedding, the pastor’s wife found, among the construction volunteers, singers who wanted to form a makeshift choir.
“An hour and a half later, they were singing ‘Going to the Chapel’ as Julia walked down the aisle,” recalls Elvis. “It was awesome.”
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After a video camera recorded the exchange of vows (below), the newlywed couple was gifted with a tiny purple home painted with “Just Married!” emblazoned on the side for Mr. and Mrs. Larry Cannon.
Elvis, with his spiky hair, has become a full-time hero to the homeless and built 37 tiny houses since his story on Good News Network “blew up” and went viral worldwide in April 2015. He now works seven days a week– unless his girlfriend forces him to rest for a day–planning and building portable shelters on wheels so people can have a place to sleep, removed from the mean streets in California. His campaign, My Tiny House Project L.A., has hosted tiny house building marathons for which 200 volunteers show up.
“They’ve got tiny home communities in Seattle, Texas, Colorado, Tennessee, and Oregon–and they are working,” says Elvis. “I get calls all the time from around the country asking how to build a community and recently I traveled to Arizona and saw two 40-acre lots on which they are planning one with showers, community gardens, the works.
Due to L.A.’s recent ban on tiny shelters because they violate zoning laws, Elvis was forced to think bigger. His new mission is to buy a plot of land to start a tiny home community right in the city that needs it most.
You can help our intrepid hero by donating to Elvis’s Campaign, Here. Though he hasn’t received his 501c(3) status yet, Elvis says, “It’s in The works.” (The group is incorporated and a registered charity in the state of California.)
(WATCH the wedding story below, via Good News Network’s YouTube page)
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