!["You can, sure, plan for it and do your best [with] the design aspects, but actually standing in this space and looking at each and every process, one by one, that's a completely different experience and I personally believe that it's something that every professional should have an experience of before they enter the field," said UMass Amherst master's candidate, Krashang Giri Goswami (left).](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a3825f1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3682x2268+175+0/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Ffb%2F3f%2F199cf0b3416898070c0ed1b79699%2Fstudents-inside-the-structure-7-25-25.jpg)
A special collaboration in Western Massachusetts is giving college students valuable work experience while providing housing for a couple in Holyoke.
For the past few months, University of Massachusetts Amherst students have been hammering and sawing away on the outskirts of campus.
They are all part of the UMass DesignBuild team – a mix of architecture and construction students working to “build innovative, small-scale, affordable housing for under-served communities in Western Massachusetts,” their website states.
“The program is really aiming to expose students from architecture to how things are actually built in the real-world and [for]the construction students, to see how the design process goes and studio culture and the more artistic side of building,” said UMass Lecturer and DesignBuild Construction Manager Ben Leinfelder.
Their latest effort: a small house destined for Holyoke.
The 600-square-foot structure is a collaboration between DesignBuild, Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity and the Holyoke Housing Authority. The house will eventually go to Chestnut Street, near several other homes HHA and Habitat have previously collaborated on.
While the structure is small in scale, it's big on energy efficiency and affordability, says Amiee Giroux, Habitat’s executive director. It's also more manageable in certain cases.
“There's a wide range of people who need to be housed and not everybody needs a three- or four-bedroom house,” she tells WAMC. “A lot of the work that we do is trying to right-size the families that we're putting into homes so, putting a two-person family into a four-bedroom home doesn't necessarily make sense, and do they want to maintain that? So, being able to have different size houses and this being something to help a family that we normally might not be able to is really great for us to be able to do.”
With the walls up, windows installed and roofing in place, the structure still has a ways to go but the students work fast. Dubbed “Casita de Vida” - “Little House of Life” – they finished designing the one-bedroom structure in May and started construction the same month.
All the while, they had input from the future homeowners, Pedro and Damaris - participants in HHA's homeownership program.
“For example, Pedro wanted to sit in his living room, [have] a wall where he can have a TV and watch it,” recounts graduate student Krashang Gari Goswami as he and others give WAMC a (short) tour. “Damaris wanted to enjoy a hot cup of coffee every morning on her porch, so those little bits and pieces of memories is how we came to a nice design during our spring semester, and now we are trying to make it.”
It’s a small floor plan, but students like recent architecture grad Eren Erden, say working around the constraints has been its own reward.
“One of the reasons I got into architecture was mainly, at the core of it, problem-solving, but doing it in a way that's beneficial for people,” Erden explains. “I really enjoy the tighter the constraints are within the design, trying to come up with a solution that can live within those constraints. I think ultimately, the tighter the constraints, the more unique and the more personality something has.”
Student Yukiho Yoshida says it's a gratifying experience, especially as the state seems to embrace smaller homes and Accessory Dwelling Units to address a statewide housing shortage.
“I think, especially as we've been studying in our studios, we actually looked into a couple of precedents of ADUs … especially with making them energy efficient,” she adds. “I think it's a great opportunity to help this movement and design something that kind of works for the better.”
The structure is also getting a basement on its Chestnut Street lot near the HHA’s offices. Habitat has been responsible for much of the sitework in Holyoke, in addition to accepting applications and facilitating the upcoming mortgage, says Giroux.
"We are anticipating that it will probably appraise at about $250,000. Because we work with lower income homeowners, the mortgage will probably fall [to] about $150,000, give or take, but we try to keep the homeowners’ payments to be 30 percent or less than their income, so that they're not paying as much for their housing,"
Sarah Meier-Zimbler, the HHA’s Director of Development, says the site started as housing authority land that's since been donated, and that once the module arrives in the fall, it will ultimately be sold to the homeowner.
She adds that small homes on their own are not likely to solve the housing crisis – but when the goal is increasing home ownership in a city where many rent, it’s an effort worth pursuing.
“Housing is so expensive and such a challenge and such a huge need that, we're willing to get creative in whatever way it takes - to partner and find different ways to bring housing to folks, knowing that the need is so strong…” she tells WAMC.
HHA recently went the modular route with Phase II of its South Holyoke Homes project – 20 multi-story duplexes made up of prefabricated units stacked on one another.
DesignBuild has also built modular homes for Holyoke in the past, collaborating with OneHolyoke CDC in recent years on similarly-sized structures elsewhere in Paper City.
It's fulfilling work recent-graduate Jacob Agoglia tells WAMC - and a high note to go out on as he ventures into the workforce.
“Seeing this all come together makes me wonder why this isn't more of a thing and in today's political climate, a lot of us are feeling a bit hopeless, but I get to come here every day, and I get to make a meaningful difference,” he says. “This is the best way I've ever ended school.”
