Yale students design new homes for teachers at Friends Center

In 2021, the Friends Center for Children in New Haven announced its initiative to help out teachers by giving them a rent-free place to live.

Now, it's building its third home, which is just months away from being ready for teachers and their families to move in.

The Friends Center said the idea was sparked by the need to better support educators. In a survey, only one of their 29 staff members owned a home. Most said rent was their biggest financial burden.

Once the third home is built, The Friends Center will provide housing for a total of 10 teachers and eight family members, all for free. Each home is also fully furnished, thanks to donations from the community.

The project was made possible by a partnership between the Friends Center and students at the Yale School of Architecture, who design each home.

"I think a lot of the time, when we're learning about architecture, we just draw something without really knowing how it gets made," said Logan Roubasch, an architecture student at Yale. "A lot of those conversations are talking to someone who's made something before, who's tried to cut a piece of wood a certain way, and it's just really hard to do, or it takes a long time. Keeping on schedule, keeping on budget and also making something really beautiful."

This is just a soft launch for other plans the Friend's Center has in store.

They plan to expand this project to a more ambitious goal: to provide 30% of its anticipated 80-teacher expanded workforce with this rent-free benefit by 2028.

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