photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Peaslee Tech instructor Jay Hundley offers guidance during a late March class period. Students in the class will build a fully-functional home that will be placed in the community within the next couple months.

By the end of the spring semester, students at Peaslee Tech will have finished building a home that will be ready and waiting to be lived in.

As part of a brand-new class, Peaslee students are partnering with Tenants to Homeowners to build small homes from the ground up in their classroom space — including installing plumbing, electricity, heating and air conditioning. The homes then will be towed to sites in Lawrence and utilized as affordable supportive service housing for folks experiencing homelessness as part of Tenants to Homeowners’ community land trust portfolio.

Though the partnership between the nonprofit and Peaslee Tech was only announced a couple of months ago, leaders with both agencies told the Journal-World this past week that there’s already been a substantial amount of progress toward constructing the first roughly 330-square-foot home.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Peaslee Tech students learn to build the exterior walls for a home during a late March class period.

When the Journal-World visited the class in late March, students were learning how to build the home’s exterior walls. But Peaslee Tech CEO Kevin Kelley told the Journal-World Friday that by this coming week, those walls should be standing, and the week after that the roof should be installed. Kelley said the home should be ready to be transported to the job site by early May.

The work taking place in Peaslee’s classroom space between now and then is what Kelley called “rough-in,” the early structural and utility work done when a home is essentially still a shell. The class will get to finish the home at the job site next month, Kelley said. That’ll include building interior walls and installing the finished electricity, plumbing and other fixtures.

“The great part for us is all of our building trades get to build something that they can kind of show off to people — that ‘I did this,'” Kelley said. “… They’ve actually built a home for somebody. Not many (students) get to say that.”

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The idea was born from a few different inspirations, one of which was another Tenants to Homeowners partnership with Build SMART, a Lawrence-based company that manufactures and ships components of homes to be assembled on site.

Another inspiration, Kelley said, was another Peaslee Tech program that’s been sponsored by the Lawrence Home Builders Association for the past five years or so. The association has funded, donated equipment and sponsored scholarships for a class where students completed essentially the same process of learning to build and outfit a small home.

photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Peaslee Tech instructor Jay Hundley demonstrates how to use a tool to help with the process of building an exterior wall.

Tenants to Homeowners’ executive director, Rebecca Buford, told the Journal-World this past week that there would likely be a learning curve in figuring out exactly how the logistics will work as the partnership evolves, but she’s optimistic that the class will be able to produce one home every semester thanks to the straightforward design students will be working with.

“I think we’re going to find the perfect balance of instruction and oversight,” Buford said. “This home is really streamlined and simple, which is ideal. And each time they build it, we don’t have to do new bells and whistles — they’re just going to get better and better, the instructors are, at what works and what doesn’t.”

Kelley confirmed on Friday that the goal of two homes per semester was achievable, and he said he’s even got a tentative idea of where each of the first two years’ worth of homes will be going in Lawrence. The first one, for example, will be going to a plot right off Haskell Avenue in eastern Lawrence, not too far away from Peaslee Tech’s campus.

If the partnership is ultimately successful in turning out two homes per year, Buford said that’ll add to Tenants to Homeowners’ capacity to create efficient units and fill a crucial need at the same time.

“The need for units for one- and two-person households is the biggest need we have,” Buford said. “I know people often think about big family houses, but really there are many more people that need affordable rental and ownership units that are one- or two-bedroom.”

Even though the first build is a simple one, both Kelley and Buford do already have some ideas for how the structures built through the program could be adapted and combined into larger modular homes in the future. That could be as simple as putting two of the units together to form a three- or four-bedroom home, or adapting the plans to build on a foundation, basement or second floor.

As an added bonus, Kelley and Buford said the partnership will also bolster the county’s population of skilled trade workers, a necessity to put a dent in the lack of available housing options in the first place.

“This isn’t just building a house — (students) learn safety, they have to apply mathematics and geometry,” Kelley said. “This is not just a saw and a hammer. You have to have a foundational knowledge. Building trades are applied sciences.”