Easy Housing

Solution Pitch

The Problem

Circular and biobased construction has a huge potential for climate change adaptation and mitigation. This transition is paramount in order to address the growing global housing gap without destroying our planet. Easy Housing is introducing its concept in countries unfamiliar with timber homes to speed up biobased adoption.

The Solution

Easy Housing is a circular and climate-smart building technology, based on sustainably sourced timber. With a focus on developing and emerging economies, Easy Housing provides the building blueprints and materials to their building partners. The concept is scalable and standardized, yet has a flexible design that can be tailored to local requirements. Value chains are fully localized. By working together with local stakeholders and using local materials, Easy Housing stimulates the local economy, creates green jobs and facilitates the transition of the building sector towards circular and carbon neutral building.

Easy Housing’s biobased homes are climate resilient. Timber homes realize a large carbon reduction through construction-stored carbon and by avoiding cement and steel. This makes the homes carbon negative. Furthermore, the system is flood, earthquake, and hurricane resistant and has integrated sustainable energy and water cycles.

Stats

• Easy Housing has completed four homes so far with on average two to three people living in them.

• The projects in Uganda and Mozambique involved many people in the design and construction phase. Many partners take part in the building value chain, which creates jobs and provides capacity development in circular biobased construction.

• An estimated 125 tons of CO2 have been avoided and stored through their projects so far. 

Market Opportunity

Easy Housing is currently targeting a range of market segments, including humanitarian homes, staff housing, urban housing, offices and holiday homes. Their focus lies on providing affordable sustainable homes for low to middle income families in countries in the East and Southern Africa.

Organization Highlights

• Engineers without Borders (NL): in order to develop a three-storey typology in the system that is structurally sound.

• Global Centre on Adaptation: in their community of practice on flood-resilient housing.

• Climate Smart Forest Economy Program (CSFEP): to quantify carbon storage and substitution and work towards carbon monetisation. And to work with their safeguards framework to ensure sustainable forestry and construction practices.

• Casa Real Mozambique: a building partner in Beira, Mozambique.

• Fair Venture Worldwide: working together on a proposal to develop homes in Indonesia. And to propagate biobased construction in East-Africa.

• Levasflor: supply chain partner for FSC timber in Mozambique. They are an FSC-certified sustainable forestry company that maintains natural forest plantations with high biodiversity.

• Green Resources: one of the biggest FSC forestry companies in East-Africa and a supply chain partner.

• Green Home Transformations: a plastic waste upcycling start-up that provides the upcycled foundation columns in Uganda.

Partnership Goals

Easy Housing seeks:

• Expertise in market/product expansion. Specifically, how and when to expand into other countries and regions, while meeting all legal requirements.