SC Connecticut News

Generations of Yale architecture students have designed and built affordable homes in New Haven. The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, established in 1967, has offered students at the Yale School of Architecture the opportunity to design and build a house in New Haven, creating badly needed homes for individuals and families who would otherwise struggle to afford one.

The project recently launched a multi-year partnership with the Friends Center for Children, an early-childhood care and education center in New Haven. This collaboration aims to design and build five adjacent houses for two of the center’s educators and their families by 2027. The initiative is part of the Friends Center’s Teacher Housing Initiative, which addresses both the crisis in childcare and affordable housing by providing 20% of the center’s educators with rent-free homes, substantially increasing their take-home pay.

Last year, Yale students designed and built the first duplex dwelling in the Fair Haven Heights neighborhood of New Haven. Throughout this process, from initial site visits through design and construction to the celebration of the newly completed home, students gained hands-on experience.

The project is a key component of the curriculum in the school’s professional architecture degree program. It was established when Charles Moore directed Yale’s Department of Architecture from 1965 to 1971. Moore sought to address students’ desire to pursue architecture committed to social action. The program has since been emulated by many other architecture schools.

In its early years, students traveled to sites in Appalachia to build community centers and medical facilities. Since 1989, when the project shifted its focus to building affordable housing in New Haven, first-year students have designed and built more than 50 homes in economically challenged neighborhoods within the city.