Easy Housing

What makes your solution innovative?

Easy Houses are climate friendly, circular, healthy, biobased, and resilient to natural disasters. Together, these unique selling points give Easy Housing many important advantages compared to traditional building methods. The demand for affordable and climate resilient housing is large and our standardised building concept allows us to provide fast supply to this demand. Fast because our prefab building technology reduced the construction time significantly as compared to mainstream building technologies.

As mentioned, the construction materials of Easy Homes consist almost solely of sustainable timber, making them biobased homes. All elements but screws, the roof cover and foundation are made of timber. This enables Easy Homes to function as carbon sinks that withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere. The building system consists of standardised segments that can be combined into almost any floorplan or typology. All construction elements are attached to each other with screws, which means that the homes can be taken apart and rebuilt at any moment - making the homes 100% circular. In addition, transport and construction of the homes is easy, as all the materials could fit within a shipping container and can be delivered as an ‘IKEA-building package’, including manuals and technical details. This easy and standardised technical design allows for fast scale-up and construction, keeping the construction costs low and the houses affordable. Next to these advantages, the features of the technical design make Easy Homes climate resilient. As explained in Q5, Easy Homes can withstand floods, earthquakes and hurricanes up to and including category 4. 

The building concept is designed to have a healthy and comfortable indoor climate. It has been proven that timber buildings have a healthier indoor environment and high comfort level than concrete buildings. As mentioned, the passive house design principles make Easy Homes very well ventilated and resilient to the heat from the sun. The homes are also elevated above the main ground, which makes the homes resilient not only against floods, but also against vermin like termites. Furthermore, the design allows for the houses to be equipped with improved sanitation and to be connected with clean drinking water systems to ensure a good hygiene and health of the inhabitants. In this way, our building concept helps to avoid certain health risks, which is considered to be an advantage over traditional building. 

The Easy Housing building system is very flexible, allowing it to tailor projects to the local building requirements, such as cultural aspects, available building materials, and climate conditions. Easy Houses are also flexible concerning typologies and floor plans, enabling us to make Easy Homes ranging from small studios to bigger family homes with multiple bedrooms and up to two floors. This flexibility helps to ensure cultural integration and adaptation to the local context, demands and needs of each project. Furthermore, Easy homes can easily be connected to existing infrastructure, such as sewage and water supply systems. The roofs are also suitable for both solar systems and rainwater collection systems, which can for example be used to flush the toilet. 

In addition, this flexibility makes Easy Houses very suitable to combine with new incremental financing possibilities. The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa has called upon financial institutions and the private sector to make incremental mortgages more available. Easy Housing is an incremental building method, which means that end users are able to build the house in certain phases that correspond with their socio-economic situation. Incremental building fits well in the traditional local building sector and enables people to make use of incremental mortgages that grow along with incomes and family sizes. Thus, our innovative building system does not only allow the housing quality to be very high and climate friendly at the same time, but also enables people to have access to more financing possibilities.

What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?

Project and expansion plans for five years 
In the coming five years, we aim to become a well-known player in the global, affordable, sustainable housing sector. We will scale up our  value chains both vertically (within current focus countries) as well as horizontally (expansion to new countries). This includes reliable sourcing from sustainable (certified) timber forestry partners in these markets. As shared before in this proposal, we partner with the Climate Smart Forest Economy Program to develop environmental, ecological and social safeguards for our value chain, which becomes increasingly important as we scale up. 

Our demand-side strategy for the coming five years looks as follows:

• We are developing partnerships with international and multilateral organisations, including UNHABITAT, UNHCR, UNOPS, Reall, IKEA Foundation, CAHF, NGOs and the Global Centre on Adaptation. These organisations are expected to become either clients or knowledge partners. Some concrete examples: i) We are currently competing for the World Habitat Awards, which is awarded in conjunction with UN-Habitat ii) three international NGOs in Uganda have requested quotes for staff housing and we are in contact with UNHCR about refugee housing, iii) we are an active member of the Global Center on Adaptations Flood Adaptive Housing Community.

• We are developing long-term partnerships with housing developers in our focus markets. Examples include: i) Our existing partnership with Casa Real in Beira, Mozambique and ii) the partnership with African Century in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, which is about to be kicked-off and which will focus specifically on resettlement homes for internally displaced people. 

• We work closely together with governments and other policy makers in our focus countries to: i) make them aware of the benefits (e.g. affordability, scalability, sustainability, employment potential) of timber-based housing and ii) incorporate their needs, demands and expectations in our strategy, projects and designs. 

• As shared earlier, our Easy Homes are already price competitive as compared to mainstream construction from concrete and cement. However, our ambitions reach further. We want to reach the bottom of the pyramid. Therefore, we aim at partnering up with organisations specialised in inclusive finance, to provide access to housing financing schemes. We are currently developing the following pathways: i) NFTs and other blockchain-based technologies with our DeFi housing finance partner Empowa, ii) Carbon monetisation to reduce construction costs for the end users, with our partner CSFEP and iii) a revolving fund for which we are currently scouting partners.
  
  

Quantitative five-year milestones:
In the next five years we aim to: 

• Provide the blueprints and materials for at least 10,000 homes;

• Provide housing for 40,000 inhabitants (4 residents per home on average);

• Create 25,000 FTE (2,5 FTE per home on average); 

• Train at least 2,500 workers in circular timber construction;

• Have established partnerships with at least 25 building partners in at least 15 countries; 

• Create a value of at least $10,000,000 in Carbon Credits (based on the current voluntary carbon prices of $28 per tonne of CO2, which are expected to rise in the coming years).
  
  

Qualitative five-year milestones:

• Able to reach the bottom-of-the pyramid with affordable, sustainable and disaster-resilient homes through a combination of tailor-made typologies and accessible housing finance;

• Provide high quality, affordable and circular housing to refugee and IDP (internally displaced people) communities;

• Projects in African, Asian and Latin-American countries. 
  
  

Qualitative two-year milestones: 

• Scale-up operations in Mozambique and Uganda. Business and partnership development to make this happen are well under way;

• Start operations in Ghana. We have a launching customer in Kumasi, the second city in Ghana. We are currently developing the supply chain, and expect to start construction in July or August of this year. 

• In 2023 we aim at market entry in 3 new countries. We have leads in South-Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Somalia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Colombia, and Jamaica. We are currently exploring which of these leads are most promising. As market entry in one or more Asian countries is a priority, we have expanded our team recently with a colleague from Indonesia (intern) and a colleague from Bangladesh (volunteer). 

Social Impact Goals
By reaching scale and thus providing many homes, we want to create a large impact on people’s quality of  life (healthy, affordable and resilient homes), the communities they live in (green jobs and economic development), and on their natural environment (increased forest coverage and biodiversity conservation). We want to continue and extend our impact on all SDGs that are mentioned in our theory of change. In addition, with the support of international and local institutions and networks, we aim for timber building to be culturally integrated in local communities and markets. Through our country teams and participatory co-creation approach, using focus group discussions, key informant interviews and participatory prototyping, we work on tailoring our typologies to specific needs, expectations and abilities of our target customers.  

Local Economic Impact Goals 
We create a significant positive impact in the local economy. In the coming five years we want to have created at least fifteen well functioning local supply chains for sustainable circular timber construction. Through our partnership and thought leadership model, we enhance local economic impact by creating jobs in sustainable construction and by facilitating production and building partners in their local capacity. 

In addition, we want to have substantially facilitated the transition of the local building value chain towards sustainable, circular, healthy construction. Construction workers will have healthier working conditions when building with timber, since it is lighter and generates less dust. We provide capacity building for these workers to learn about circular economy and construction. 

We will professionalise our capacity building program and building manuals in 2022/2023 so that they can easily be replicated to new partners and markets. Easy Housing will inspire and support construction industries to unlock new markets, transition to circular building technologies, and increase their currently unused potential of sustainable forestry and engineered timber applications. 

Furthermore, we envision to develop decentralised financing schemes for our target population, together with our partners. We will catalyse access to housing finance through engagement with policy makers, EDGE Carbon Zero certification and IFC Green Bonds, Empowa and their blockchain finance access, revolving funds, lease-to-own constructions, carbon monetisation and so on. This will have a bifold impact, as we will create more housing finance opportunities for low-and middle income families, and create a huge financial incentive towards biobased building in our operating markets. 

Environmental Impact Goals 
In the coming five years, we want to accelerate the paradigm shift towards circular and biobased construction in the markets that we operate in. Concrete construction shall become the exception instead of the norm. We want to work with external carbon accreditation companies, like Gold Standard or Verra, in order to monetise our carbon (and ultimately other SDGs too) impact for each home realised. If we manage to secure carbon credits for the emission reductions and carbon storage we generate compared to the concrete baseline, this would boost the affordability of our homes.

The carbon credits and the increasing carbon price on the markets will push down the cost of our concept well below the price of concrete homes, which will catalyse the market adoption of our homes. Through our building partners, we will generate sustainable jobs for thousands of construction workers and foresters. And, above all, in the coming five years we will give at least ten thousand families access to a healthy, comfortable and sustainable home.

How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?

Social & Economic Impact Measurement
Easy Housing measures its impact by looking at several factors. Concerning the direct impact on people’s lives, we create and measure local social and economic impact. We keep track of the local jobs we have created by working together with local partners and using local materials. In addition, we keep track of the living environment improvements of the inhabitants  of our residents and the consequences of housing on other living factors like work availability or personal development. This includes the measurement of how much more income can be used for food, water, energy and as savings for structural matters like education. 

Environmental Impact Measurements
Furthermore, we measure our impact by calculating how much CO2 emissions are economised by using our carbon-sinking housing concept versus traditional building methods with concrete. Also, we facilitate circular impact by making sure that all components of our homes can be incremented, reused, relocated, and rebuilt. We keep track of the tons of material that we have produced that is circular, hence which substantially reduces waste. The less waste we measure, the more impact we have. In addition, we keep track of all companies and organisations that have adopted sustainable and circular practices via our housing concept and encourage them to publish sustainability reports. Furthermore, we keep track of renewable energy (in watts per capita) we have created via the integration of solar systems in the Easy Homes built.  

SDGs Impact Measurement
Finally, our innovative building concept impacts 16 out of 17 SDGs (see Theory of Change). We measure our SDG progress over time and report on all SDGs that are integrated or directly benefit from our concept. 

Project Evaluations
As mentioned, in march and april 2022 three of our team members will be visiting our finished project in Beira, Mozambique to evaluate the impact of our project. Interviews will be held with all stakeholders that are involved in the project and the feedback will be used to further improve both the technical details as well as the social and cultural integration of our building concept. Furthermore, people’s development on the SDGs as described in our Theory of Change will be measured to see if we truly make the impact we aspire, or how we can improve our concept so that we achieve the long-term impact envisioned. 

Impact Reports: University Collaborations
In earlier stages we have worked together with Universities to conduct academic research on our impact. In 2020, a group of master students from the Utrecht University conducted academic research on the potential impact of Easy Housing as an international solution for affordable housing. Using literature and interviews, they looked into the obstacles the sustainable and affordable housing sector faces in emerging economies. They found that currently most suppliers of affordable housing are not concerned about sustainability, and that sustainability is severely limited by various issues, high prices, and lack of funding options. Easy Housing has a high potential to fill these gaps.

In 2021, another group of students from Utrecht University did a research project about Easy Housing, looking into the positive impact that Easy Housing has on the environment, the carbon footprint and the SDGs, compared to traditional buildings. They concluded that Easy Housing positively impacts the climate and housing crises by reducing CO2 emissions, being circular and being climate resilient to floods and earthquakes. However, they also pointed out the importance of understanding the local context. This is something we take very seriously at Easy Housing, and will be at the core of each project that we do.

Currently, we are exploring possibilities to work together with local universities in our focus countries to conduct the same kind of research as described above. This would not only help to increase the validation of our social, local-economic, and environmental impact, but also increase the social involvement of the local community and enhance the cultural integration of timber building for future generations.

What is your theory of change?

Impact
The mission of Easy Housing is to make affordable, circular, climate-smart and healthy homes available for everyone in the world. Therefore, all our activities in the end aim to provide as many timber-based homes as possible. By building timber houses with our innovative, circular and sustainable building concept, our work directly contributes to our mission in several ways. The way in which our activities & outputs produce outcomes and have impact on people's lives can be explained the best by explaining our positive impact based on the SDG goals. We aim to achieve long-term impact on 16 out of the 17 SDGs. This can be divided into primary and secondary long-term impact. 

Primary Long-term Impact:

SDG 1 - No poverty
Access to affordable housing is one of the most important drivers in ending poverty. Costs of housing directly affects a family’s ability to provide for their other (basic) needs like food, water, energy and education. The circular and affordable nature of Easy Housing allows for new financing models and has the capacity to unlock affordable housing in many markets. 

SDG 2 - Zero hunger
As mentioned under SDG1, creating affordable housing directly relates to a household’s ability to provide for their basic needs like food. Affordable housing creates more savings as well as new economic opportunities for households and reduced inequality. All these factors will contribute directly and indirectly to the eradication of hunger. 

SDG 3 - Good health and wellbeing
Living in a safe and comfortable home has a large positive impact on people’s health and wellbeing. The covid pandemic has clearly demonstrated the link between decent housing and health. The security of a home strongly reduces stress and mental risks. Timber homes are proven to have a positive effect on people’s wellbeing and offer a higher living comfort. 

SDG 6 - Clean water and sanitation
Waterborne diseases still cause a lot of unnecessary suffering and can be easily overcome with proper sanitation and sewerage. In our building system, it is easy to connect and maintain infrastructure like plumbing and sewerage. In addition, the roof’s rainwater run-off can be collected and stored in rainwater tanks. 

SDG 7 - Affordable clean energy
The roofs of Easy Homes are structurally sound and strong enough to carry full surface PV (solar) panel installations. In addition, Easy Homes make use of passive house design principles to ensure that little energy is needed for heating and cooling of the home in the first place. 

SDG 9 - Industry, innovation and infrastructure
The timber industry will play an important role in solving the housing crisis in the coming decades. Easy Housing and other timber solutions will push the timber industry towards innovation and scaling up their sustainable production forests. Through Easy Housing, these industries can unlock emerging markets and increase their currently unused potential of sustainable forestry and engineered timber applications. 

SDG 11 - Sustainable cities and communities
For cities and neighbourhoods to be truly sustainable and thrive economically and socially, it is very important to have inclusive and mixed city planning. Our building system offers many options for housing typologies, clusters and neighbourhoods, all within its standardised system. This enables local architects and city planners to adopt our system in their designs in order to create sustainable and inclusive communities and vibrant neighbourhoods.

SDG 12 - Responsible consumption and production
Easy Homes are 100% circular and can be reused, repurposed, relocated, rebuilt, incrementally expanded, stored flat-pack and repaired by replacing individual components. Easy Housing aims to be an example for the construction industry to show the advantages of circular building methods. 

SDG 13 - Climate action
Easy Homes are carbon negative and thus reduce the amount of emissions in the atmosphere. This will help to reduce global warming and thus climate change. In addition, the homes are resilient to natural hazards, providing climate adaptation benefits. 

Secondary Long-term Impact

SDG 4 - Quality education
The link between a safe and affordable home and education is bifold. First, affordable housing enables parents to pay for the education of their children. Second, having a decent dwelling provides the right conditions for children to do homework and study at home. Simple things like a room to study without distraction and proper lighting can make a huge difference.

SDG 5 - Gender equality
Many girls still have lower access to education than boys. When a family has access to sustainable affordable housing, the girls in the household are more likely to get decent education and equal opportunities to develop themselves. Besides that, decent affordable housing also reduces the chance of getting exposed to gender based-violence (GBV) for girls and women, because it creates a safer living environment for them.

SDG 8 - Decent work and economic growth
Adequate access to housing is essential for economic opportunities. Basic things, like access to sanitation and a decent bed, can strongly improve one’s opportunities on the job market. In addition, Easy Housing also ensures local job creation by working with local partners and teams.

SDG 10 - Reduced inequalities
Better access to housing is paramount for elevating people from poverty. It will increase their economic opportunities, protect them against the negative impacts of climate change, and improve their overall health and well-being. The circular concept also allows for new financing models and incremental building options for the poorest people. This can create a lot of value for this demographic. 

SDG 15 - Life on land
By using and promoting sustainable timber, the demand for sustainable timber will increase and this will help to reduce deforestation and biodiversity loss. The circular nature of Easy Homes creates long-term value, as the materials can be reused and repurposed. In addition, Easy Housing does not create any building waste during or after construction. 

SDG 16 - Peace, justice and strong institutions
Sustainable affordable housing plays an important role in the prosperity of communities on all levels. Access to decent housing reinforces the stability of the social fabric and fosters strength of institutions and their ability to maintain peace and justice. Obviously, this goes two ways and we need strong institutions to realise sufficient sustainable affordable housing and inclusive urban planning. 

SDG 17 - Partnerships for the goals
The building industry is a complex web of stakeholders that all have to work together to transition towards sustainable and circular methods. For this reason, the partnership model of Easy Housing is key to its success factor. For an innovative sustainable building system to get embraced, it needs to be embedded in the existing construction ecosystem so that cultural acceptance can be ensured.

Outcomes
Easy Housing achieves its long-term impact goals by setting up the right conditions in the right place, hence our outputs. Together, our outputs make it possible for us to achieve our desired outcomes which in the end result in our main long-term impact. Our main outcomes include:

• Increased access to affordable, sustainable housing to a large number of people

• Increased carbon sequestration and storage

• Increased forest coverage and biodiversity conservation

• Increased local economic and labour development

• Increased awareness about the benefits of timber construction 

• Housing industry transitions to circular and biobased technologies

• increased labour force skilled in circular construction

• Long-term partnerships for circular housing development

Outputs
The tangible products that we create in the coming years and result in our desired outcomes include the following:

• 10.000 sustainable & affordable homes constructed

• 40.000 inhabitants provided with homes

• 25.000 FTE 

• 15 market entries in new countries

• 15 well-functioning value chains 

• 50  international partnerships with organisations and housing developers

• $10.000.000 value created in Carbon Credits

• 2500 workers trained in circular timber construction

Activities
Our work activities include:

• Deliver blueprints for sustainable, circular and affordable Easy Homes

• Facilitate training of building capacity 

• Exploring and establishing new international partnerships with sustainable partners

• Create local jobs

• Create certification of carbon credits

• Facilitate focus group discussions, key informant interviews and social design workshops

• Setting-up country teams

• Use only sustainable materials

Describe the core technology that powers your solution.

The core technology that powers our solution is the timber-based building technique. This innovative and circular building technique helps to effectively overcome simultaneously the housing deficit, climate change, and deforestation, while facilitating circular and sustainable growth of emerging economies. The building technique is innovative in the following ways:

• Proprietary circular building details that allow for prefab construction in emerging economies, incremental building, circular financing and relocation of homes. The latter is particularly relevant for slum upgrading and refugee settings.

• Strategic focus on carbon impact quantification of biobased construction with running projects and partnerships (CSFEP) towards carbon monetisation of our carbon storage and substitution impact

• Localised supply and value chains with FSC timber and localised labour (through training partners)

• Climate resilience through passive house designs, carbon negative footprint, flood and hurricane resilience, solar energy and rain water collection services

• Digitalisation of our building concept that facilitates quick designs, automated building drawings, BOQs and technical details.

The building system is a standardised, yet scalable concept. It is developed in a way that homes can be scaled in width (horizontally) and depth (vertically) and it allows for designs up to three storeys high. The technology consists of standardised segments of 16 m2, and the homes can be adjusted in width in steps of 1.22m. The standard depth is 6m (including overhang), which can be increased to up to 12m. We are working with our technical partner Engineers without Borders to explore typologies that can even go higher than that. For urban and semi-urban areas in particular, it is important to be able to build multi-storey homes. 

Partition walls can be positioned in any way and windows and doors can be positioned anywhere within the grid of the façade. This way, we offer many potential typologies and building sizes, from studios to large family homes and multi-storey apartments, as long as they are within the grid of the building system. Installations, infrastructure and finishing options can be selected to fit the project needs and can be integrated in our homes just like in any other building method. Our Easy Homes are designed to be equipped with improved sanitation, solar and rainwater harvesting systems. Hence, our homes tackle a combination of key sustainability challenges in one-go.

Easy Homes are standardised and engineered to be safe and comfortable in different climate zones and cultural contexts. Our concept is structurally sound, and the technical details are developed in line with good building physics and have fire safe and acoustically decent technical details. 

Resilience to natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and hurricanes, is essential to ensure the safety of buildings. Timber has several qualities that make it resilient to such disasters. For example, timber is much more flexible than other building materials like concrete and steel, enabling it to withstand high loads for short periods of time and retain its elasticity and strength. This is especially important during earthquakes and extremely strong winds. In addition, timber construction frames weigh less than concrete and steel frames, reducing inertial seismic forces. The repetitive framing structures also improve the buildings’ ability to withstand high winds, and it provides multiple load paths for extreme forces. This reduces the chance that the structure will collapse if some connections fail.

Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

A new technology

How do you know that this technology works?

In August 2020, Easy Housing delivered its proof of concept by building its very first Easy Home in Hilversum, the Netherlands. This demonstration project was realized to show the feasibility of affordable, sustainable housing, and also allowed us to successfully develop and test the technical details of our building concept.

In November and December 2021, Easy Housing completed its first international pilot project in Beira, Mozambique, together with its partners Casa Real and Empowa.

Recently, in February 2022, we have finished our first Easy Home for a private client in Arua, Uganda, together with our partners Green Resources and Green Home.

These projects demonstrate that the Easy Housing building system is technically feasible and suitable for different contexts around the world.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

• Materials Science

https://www.easyhousing.org/

Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?

• 1. No Poverty
• 2. Zero Hunger
• 3. Good Health and Well-being
• 4. Quality Education
• 5. Gender Equality
• 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
• 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
• 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
• 10. Reduced Inequalities
• 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
• 12. Responsible Consumption and Production
• 13. Climate Action
• 15. Life on Land
• 16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
• 17. Partnerships for the Goals

What type of organization is your solution team?

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

How many people work on your solution team?

4 full-time, 2 part-time, 3 Interns, 1 ambassador

How long have you been working on your solution?

2

What is your approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into your work?

Diversity and inclusion are at the core of Easy Housing’s vision, mission and strategy. We strongly  believe that having a diversity of cultural backgrounds, identities and disciplines in our teams is the best guarantee for maximal social, environmental and business impact. After all, the specific needs, beliefs and possibilities in terms of supply chains, vary from context to context. Through our tailor-made and participatory co-creation approach, we adapt our housing typologies to each and every specific niche market. This might even vary per region within a country. A good example is Mozambique. The typologies that we developed with stakeholders in cyclone-prone Beira are different in design than the homes we are currently developing for and with internally displaced people in Cabo Delgado. The same is true for Uganda, where we have tailor-made typologies for private clients in semi-urban areas and for refugees and host communities in the West Nile region of the country (see our Arua One-Pager, also available on the website).

Easy Housing was established to make the global housing market more inclusive, focusing on emerging markets in the southern hemisphere. Founder Wolf Bierens had already successfully set up and grown scale-up Sustainer Homes in the Netherlands. He founded Easy Housing to contribute to providing people in the Global South with access to affordable and sustainable housing. 

The Easy Housing core team currently consists of 9 individuals, all with different international backgrounds and expertise. When recruiting individuals, Easy Housing pays particular attention to cultural diversity and gender balance. Regarding cultural backgrounds, our team consists of experts from Europe, Africa and Asia. Europe is currently overrepresented in the team, as Easy Housing is based in Europe, but this is rapidly changing. Our 3 newest members from the team come from Mozambique, Indonesia and Bangladesh. We are currently in the process of recruiting new team members from Mozambique and Uganda.  The team consists of 5 men and 4 women, thus having a rather equal gender balance. As our team expands in the future, we will make efforts to at least keep and preferably improve this balance. When contracting people for our projects, we proactively search for female labourers.

Our project teams consist almost solely of labourers and other experts from the communities and markets we work in. Through our inclusive partnership model we put particular emphasis on involving disadvantaged groups. Concrete examples include our close collaboration with: i) Young Africa in Mozambique, who provides vocation skills training to unemployed young people and ii) the St. Joseph College Carpentry in Arua (Uganda) that provides vocational skills training and labour to young people in the region.

We strive to actively involve and empower each team member equally in our projects. We do this to create an inclusive and diverse workplace where everybody feels safe and welcome. We have an agile working environment with little hierarchy in which all team members are stimulated to work proactively, taking ownership over their own tasks and responsibilities, while involving other colleagues where needed. Our work is largely remote, as we all live and work in different countries. We meet every morning virtually to kick-off the working day together as a team. In these ‘dailies’ we discuss the plans for the day, but also check in on how everybody is doing. Furthermore, every week on Tuesday, we have an extended meeting where we share our progress in the past week, plans for that week and any challenges we might encounter. This way, each of the team members is not only involved in their own work, but also in that of their colleagues. . Whenever we happen to be in the same country, we make sure to spend as much time as possible together. . 

In addition to the core and project teams, we have a third team: the Easy Housing Ambassadors. This is a group of Easy Housing enthusiasts with either a professional background or strong affinity with sustainable, affordable housing. They provide us with solicited and unsolicited feedback on our strategy, and with expertise on specific markets. Every first Tuesday of the month, we have a monthly meeting in which the core team and ambassadors discuss key developments, trends and opportunities that are relevant for Easy Housing.

By creating an inclusive and diverse workspace with respect for different perspectives, potentials and unique needs of every individual team member, Easy Housing aims at offering people a safe work environment where everybody feels equally involved, appreciated and supported. We believe that this results in a variety of benefits for both our team members and the company. For example, an inclusive and diverse workplace creates deeper trust and more commitment from our employees. This creates a workspace where everyone feels safe and free to share and discuss ideas or other possible contributions which enhances both the innovative product and the business development of our company. 

Next to that we believe that an inclusive work environment will help us to attract and maintain a diverse team of talented people. We are currently also developing a partnership with the Young Expert Programme - funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs - to offer our young experts in Mozambique, Uganda (to be recruited) and the Netherlands training, coaching and networking opportunities. 

We believe that we can reach further if we stand on each other’s shoulders.

What is your business model?

Revenue model
Our primary business model has several core activities that generate revenue. We sell building blueprints, building materials and capacity building support for circular timber construction to our building partners. These building partners (such as our private partner African Century and social housing partner Casa Real) are our prime customers. The exceptions to this rule are launching customers in new markets. These business-to-consumer (B2C) clients enable us to develop a supply chain, typologies and a proof of concept in new markets. Hence, entry into new markets goes in 2 steps: 1) establish operations through demo projects for launching customers and 2) scale up through partnerships with building partners.

In addition to this, we aim at monetizing our carbon impact (and eventually also our impact on other SDGs) through carbon offsets and NFTs.

So our business model consists of the following components:

• The building blueprints are sold in a licence fee model and are the most scalable aspect of our business model. 

• To support the local supply chain for building partners, we also offer the sourcing and procurement of the sustainable timber building packages for projects. We do this to ensure the quality and sustainability of the used timber and to accommodate building partners with convenient delivery of the required construction materials. 

• Design fees for making new concept designs and technical drawings

• The capacity building or training of building partners is provided to ensure that new building partners learn how to build in our system.

• Carbon credits for carbon stored in the homes and through substitution of  concrete. 

The licence fees and carbon credits provide income for Easy Housing Global. The timber building packages and capacity development provide income for the local Easy Housing subsidiary. To explain our business model a bit more, here is an example: 

• Our building partner wants to build 10 starter homes of 33sqm. 

• The licence fee is USD 550,00 per home. In total, the project licence fee will be USD 5,500. This will go to EH Global. 

• The local Easy Housing subsidiary sources and delivers FSC certified timber. For each home, this creates USD 5,500 of revenue, of which USD 900,00 is margin. In total, this will generate: USD 55,000 revenue for the subsidiary of which USD 9,000 margin (15%).

• 12 tonnes CO2 reduction credits for EH Global valuing 350 USD per home, hence 3,500 USD carbon monetization for 10 homes.

Licence fee
The amount for the licence fee is determined by the type and scale of the project. Typically, we aim for a licence fee of USD 550 to 1100 per home. This is around 5% of the total building cost. The licence fee covers the building blueprints, including the technical drawings, construction details, building instructions, bill of quantities and relevant engineering documents. This is a common percentage for the construction design and these drawings that are typically part of it. In addition, Easy Housing develops the building concept and engineering around it, and finances the concept development through these licence fees. 

We establish partnerships with building partners like contractors and sign MOUs with them to guarantee that they will not copy our concept without paying us the licence fee.

Partnership model
As mentioned, partnerships are at the core of our business model. Easy Housing works together with local stakeholders like governments, project developers, contractors, community leaders and NGOs to realise sustainable and affordable housing projects. The building system of Easy Housing facilitates the local building sector to switch to a scalable and sustainable way of building, while enabling local partners to keep playing their role in the process and ensuring local jobs.

In MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with our partners, we ensure that the IP of Easy Housing is legally protected and the partners are bound to pay the licence fees. In addition, Easy Housing holds the legal claim to the carbon storage and offset credits, which is secured through these MOUs.

Carbon credits
We supply the timber building packages through our subsidiaries in the local markets. This way, we ensure the quality and sustainability of the used timber, and we know the exact amounts that are ordered and stored in our partners’ projects. We sign agreements with both the building partners and the forestry partners that Easy Housing is the company that holds the claim to the carbon credits for the construction stored carbon and for the carbon offset credits compared to the concrete brick baseline.

We are developing this carbon credit certification over the course of 2022 and have this strongly embedded in our company vision. For example, the current voluntary carbon markets range around USD 30 per tonne of CO2. For an average 100 sqm home of Easy Housing, that reduces 35 tonnes of CO2. This means a carbon monetisation potential of USD 1050, which already is around 5% of the total cost of this house (USD 17,500) in markets like Uganda and Mozambique! This can create a huge financial incentive towards biobased building in these markets.

In addition to the carbon credit certification, we are also exploring the potential of monetizing our impacts on other SDGs through e.g. NFTs, but it will take time to make this reality.

Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?

What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable?

Easy Housing is growing rapidly. We started in 2019 with an idea and a few volunteers. Today, we completed 3 projects in 3 countries, and we have a team of 9 dedicated professionals. Up to now we have funded our operations by a combination of personal investments, seed funding from launching customers and grants. In Q4 2021, we received a subsidy from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) of EUR 33.000. The RVO also invited us to submit proposals for 2 projects of EUR 50.000 each. 

In the long run, our business model has four core activities. 1) We sell the building blueprints of our homes through a licence fee model. This is our main source of income, usually USD 550-1100 per home. 2) We offer the sourcing and procurement of the sustainable timber building packages for projects. 3) We provide capacity building support on circular construction to  building partners. 4) We are working on the certification of carbon credits. This can provide major sources of income in the future.

Easy Housing believes in entrepreneurial sustainability: we use grants and private investments for R&D and to enter new markets, but it is our ultimate target to be an own-income driven company. However, we also want to state here that we are a for impact company. Profit is a means to an end (survival and growth of the organisation), not a goal in itself. 

For 2022 we anticipate a revenue from projects of around USD 250.000 - 300.000 and additional funding of USD 350.000. We aim to realise around 25 homes in 2022 and expect to hit break even in 2023/2024.

Based on our completed projects and market research we know the following:

• Entering a new market costs around 55,000 USD per market. We cover these costs with grants and revenues from launching customers;

• Easy Housing has a margin of at least 1,800 USD per home (conservative estimates: 550 USD licence fee; 900 USD margin on building materials; 350 USD carbon monetization);

• This means the break-even point is reached when we manage to sell 28 homes.

As mentioned earlier, the market potential for affordable, sustainable, scalable housing is huge. An estimated 3 billion people will require adequate and affordable housing by 2030. (— SDG Indicators (un.org)).

We conducted market studies for our current focus markets. Hereafter, 2 examples: 1) the market potential for staff and refugee (re)settlement housing in the West Nile region of Uganda and 2) the Ghanaian market.

Staff and refugee (re)settlement housing in Uganda

• Based on current business traction, we expect to sell 100 homes in 2022, which will steadily grow towards 1,000 in 2026 for Uganda alone, which is a conservative estimate. 

• Assuming a revenue margin of USD 1,800 per home, the cash flows would look as follows:

2022: 100 homes X $1,800 = $180,000
2023: 200 homes X $1,800 = $360,000
2024: 300 homes X $1,800 = $540,000
2025: 600 homes X $1,800 = $1,080,000
2026: 1,000 homes X $1,800 = $1,800,000

beyond 2026: hard to put an exact number here, but with a total refugee population of 1.4 million people, the potential is immense.

• Furthermore, we aim at tapping into the global market for resettlement housing with the value propositions which we are developing in the West Nile region of Uganda. UNHCR estimates the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide at 84 million people. This number will (unfortunately) only grow as a result of climate change and geopolitical tensions (e.g. Ukraine refugee crisis). 

Ghana

• In 2020, the housing deficit in Ghana was about 2 million homes (CAHF Yearbook, 2021). 

According to the Ghanaian government, 170,000 to 200,000 homes have to be built annually to close the housing gap. If only 10% of those homes were to be built from timber - which given the international trends is a conservative estimate - that would mean a potential market for Easy Housing of 17,000 - 20,000 homes annually. 

• Assuming we could capitalise on 10% of that potential - which again is a conservative estimate given that to the best of our knowledge we currently do not have competitors in scalable timber housing at the Ghanaian market - this would equal 1,700 - 2,000 homes a year. 

• Assuming a margin of USD 1,800 per home, the potential cash flows look as follows: 

Year 1: 100 homes X $1,800 = $ 180,000 (Market entry and prepare for scale up)
Year 2: 1,700 homes X $1,800 = $ 3,060,000
Year 3: 2,000 homes X $1,800 = $ 3,600,000
Year 4: 2,000 homes X $1,800 = $ 3,600,000
Year 5: 2,000 homes X $1,800 = $ 3,600,000

Share some examples of how your plan to achieve financial sustainability has been successful so far.

In Q4 2021, we received a subsidy from RVO (the Netherlands Enterprise Agency) of EUR 33.000 in two terms. The RVO is an executive body of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, that helps business owners to run sustainable, innovative, agricultural or international businesses. We used this subsidy to work on the market entrance and business development in Mozambique.

To ensure future financial support, Easy Housing is applying for several different funding options. We recently applied for the Start Small Fund. In March we were also invited by RVO to submit 2 proposal for the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research), an innovation competition for small businesses, helping them to fund their Research and Development. Easy Housing has submitted two proposals: 1) for West Nile, Uganda, focusing on further developing and co-creating our refugee (re)settlement proposition; and 2) for Ghana, aiming to develop a local concept line and value chain. RVO will decide on the funding by mid-April and we expect to receive a grant amount between EURO 50,000 and EURO 100,000. 

In addition to these grant applications, we also have a number of promising leads in the pipeline. Following our successful demonstration project in Arua (Uganda) in February, 3 NGOs requested quotations for staff housing in the West Nile Region. As shared earlier in the previous section, we only need to sell 26 homes to reach the break-even point. If all submitted quotations were to be accepted, we would already start making profit in year 1 of our Ugandan market entry. This is still possible and if this was to happen, we would beat our own milestone planning. We see similar traction in Mozambique, where we have been invited to submit proposals for 2 housing projects of scale: 1 in Beira and 1 in Cabo Delgado. We started our operations in Mozambique in Q4 last year, and we are well on track to reach at least the break-even point this year. 

We believe that this private traction proves that our theoretical business model in the previous section is likely to be validated in reality this year.

2021 Numbers
Easy Housing has made approximately EUR 73500 revenue in 2021. This is compounded by EUR 27000 in project revenue, EUR 33000 in grants and EUR 13500 in consultancy fees. The overhead of the company is still low, because the management team is working largely pro bono until sufficient cash flow is generated from projects.

2021

Revenue                              EUR 73500
Costs of Goods Sold (COGS)  EUR 25000
Company overhead               EUR 7000