Plover Place
One Roof Community Housing is a non-profit organization committed to providing housing services and building and sustaining affordable homes and healthy neighborhoods. This project includes two 4480 square foot buildings (8960 square feet total) that will be placed in Duluth, MN. Each building will have 12 efficiency units with access to a common kitchen, living, and laundry area. The project is a partnership with our Modular Dealer, Ideal Homes of Barnum, MN. The project is to be completed by year end 2024.
Plover Places Origin Story:
For many years in Duluth and around the country homelessness has been precipitously on the rise despite the best efforts of those of us working to development affordable housing and provide services to keep people housed. In response to this frustration, in the spring of 2020, One Roof convened a group of stakeholders from our community in Duluth to see if we could conceive of a model of housing that would be less expensive to build yet still a humane, healthy place to live. In addition, we aimed to see if we could better utilize a State of MN rental assistance and services program that was undersubscribed due to lack of available units as a means to create new housing instead of using that program to house people in existing single-family homes.
Representatives from Loaves and Fishes, Duluth HRA, the City of Duluth, St. Louis County, Center City Housing, CHUM, the Human Development Center, American Indian Community Housing Organization, Wagner Zaun Architecture, Coulson Architecture, and One Roof met regularly over several months to work this puzzle. Ultimately, the group settled on a specific housing type that we referred to as the New Model–dormitory sized apartment units with sufficient amenities (toilet, shower, sink, kitchenette, sleeping space, and storage) to allow residents maximum independence while still having space on site for service provision and community building.
After the concept was developed, we worked with the architects and builders to refine the plans to make sure they were buildable and ideally replicable, and we worked to find an organization that would operate the housing—the Salvation Army. Ultimately, thanks largely to the City of Duluth and St. Louis County we were able to secure funding, and finally this past fall we broke ground to build two 12-unit buildings (24 units total).
Construction is anticipated to be completed by mid-April, and residents will start to move in soon after.
Construction Update:
Representatives from the St. Louis County Chamber of Commerce, the City of Duluth, and One Roof Community Housing gathered on February 12th to celebrate the proceeding construction of the Plover Place project.
“It’s a two building, 24 unit project-12 units in each one, designed specifically for folks that have had a history of homelessness,” explained Jeff Corey, the executive director of One Roof Community Housing. “Its about trying to create a more cost effective model for humanely housing folks that have not been housed.”
The first building’s modules were craned into place this week and the second building will be craned into place this upcoming week. Watch the video here.
