3D-Printed Homes to Combat Homelessness

Nonprofit home builder New Story and construction technologies company Icon designed a 3D printer to make single-story homes measuring 600 to 800 square feet.

The homes can be printed in underserved areas in less than 24 hours for $4,000. “3D printing can deliver a house, and I mean ready to move in, for about 30 percent less than conventional building,” Jason Ballard, Icon's CEO and cofounder, tells Zillow. New Story and Icon printed 100 homes in El Salvador last year, “One of our favorite things to hear was, ‘Holy cow, I would live in that house,'” says Ballard. “That made us feel like we had succeeded.” A new prototype was printed in Austin, Texas in March, making it the first site-printed, permitted, 3D-printed home in the nation.

More than one billion people are living without shelter across the globe. New Story — a nonprofit building homes in the developing world — is reminded of this problem every day. “We would go and look at where kids were being born into tents with mud and sewage that would rush through the dirt floor,” says New Story CEO Brett Hagler. “We learned that they couldn’t really sleep at night, and would get sick just [because of] where they are.” When you consider the cost and time it takes to build homes, this problem isn’t just daunting — it’s insurmountable.

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