3D Printing Homes Multiplies the Impact of Your Donation

Every day, more families wake up without a safe roof over their heads.

They struggle to keep their children dry when it rains, which in some places is for more than half the year. They save their money for concrete blocks to make their homes safer, but 10 years of saving might get them just halfway there. They work hard to make life work — commuting to a job, tucking their kids in at night, and doing all the things we all do in our every day, but without the safety of a secure, stable home. For many of these families, every day is a struggle just to survive. 

Currently, nearly a billion people live in survival mode, without a safe home to call their own. The global housing crisis is so severe, it’s arguably the largest problem, affecting the greatest number of people, aside from climate change. By 2050, it’s estimated that the number of people living without adequate shelter will triple — increasing to roughly 30% of the total world population. 

As a housing nonprofit, we’ve built over 2,200 homes for families in need in the last 5 years. We build as fast as traditional high-quality construction will allow, typically building a home in just 2 weeks and a whole community in 6 to 12 months. While we build fast, the housing crisis grows even faster. Even with our best efforts, we knew traditional construction could never meet the massive need for homes. That’s why we decided to do something crazy: build the world’s first 3D printed community.

Working with ICON to utilize their technology, 3D printing homes has the potential to produce homes exponentially faster and at a higher quality than traditional construction. These homes are safe, built to last, and customized to the specifications of the families who will live in them. They’re just as strong, if not stronger, than the traditional homes we’ve built. So far, though we’re early in the process, the results are promising and we believe the return on our donors’ investment will be getting to see thousands more families living in safe, stable communities.

Before investing in 3D printing homes, we wanted to make sure this crazy idea was the right idea to pursue.

We did our research. After all, there’s no time to waste as more families every day are struggling to survive without a home. We looked into, and are still looking into, several options for other ways of providing better homes, faster. All in all, the possibilities for 3D printing homes with ICON far outweighed the risks — we kept asking ourselves, what if we could build better homes, exponentially faster, and then put that technology into the hands of nonprofits everywhere?

Investing in 3D printing homes, though it sounds crazy, has the potential to revolutionize the affordable housing industry with high speed, high quality home building.

Not only does this mean good things for the families we serve, we believe it’s great news for our supporters as well. Giving a charitable donation to building any home is amazing — but what if you could support the next generation of homebuilding technology? We’re thankful to say we’re supported by a visionary group of donors who do just that. 

We often get asked why do something crazy, why not just keep building regular homes? The answer is simple, and it starts with someone named Rosie. 

Rosie was one of the first women to move into a New Story community — back when we’d only built 6 or 7 homes in Haiti. We went to meet her the night before she would be given the key to her new home in a beautiful ceremony we had planned. The night before the ceremony, the sky opened up and a terrible storm covered the already battered countryside. We knew then that we had made a mistake — we’d waited one day too long to bring Rosie into her new home. She could’ve been sleeping safely under her new roof, but instead she weathered the storm in a tent incapable of withstanding the wind and rain. Since then, we remind each other often: this problem is not only life-threatening, it is urgent. One night, one day, one hour can make all the difference. By partnering with you to build homes faster and better, we can invite more women like Rosie to come in from the storm.