Key Points
- CEBs, is a historic building model regaining popularity.
- Riddle plans to builder smaller CEB homes and make them affordable for homeownership
- His goal is to rebuild in the central city as an alternative to gentrification.
Godfrey Riddle’s family lost their home to foreclosure when he was a child. That experience catalyzed his drive to build affordable housing and enable wealth-building and empowerment in marginalized communities.
“Affordable housing is a problem in life generally and has been in my own,” Riddle says. “My family lost our home to foreclosure, and it really changed my perspective on housing.”
Riddle is the founder of Civic Saint, a local social venture that aims to create sustainable, ultra-affordable homes directly for consumers. Civic Saint uses a combination of unfired earth bricks and prefabricated home designs to offer affordable housing options in Kansas City’s historically redlined neighborhoods.
Reclaiming a Historic Building Model
“The future of affordable housing is underneath our feet,” Riddle says of his bricks.
The bricks are made by compressing a mixture of soil, water, and cement into oversized earth blocks known as compressed earth bricks (CEBs). It’s a historic building process that’s regaining popularity.
Riddle says CEBs are substantially more energy-efficient while being less expensive to produce than standard building materials and non-toxic.
“They’re twice as strong as concrete or clay,” Riddle notes, “and resistant to fire, moisture, and even bullets.”
An Affordable Housing Option
He sees the smaller 600 to 850-square-foot homes he plans to build using this technique as one solution to the city’s dire need for affordable housing. .
Skyrocketing rental costs and home prices have pushed homeownership out of reach for many working families. According to estimates, the metro area faces a deficit of around 66,000 affordable homes for households earning under $35,000 annually.
“We are in a real crisis with affordable housing, particularly in the urban core,” says Pat Jordan, President of the Gem Cultural & Educational Center and a longtime housing advocate. “We have to address it like it’s a pandemic and find creative solutions across sectors, even moderate-income folks cannot afford housing.”
Riddle says that CEB construction can represent one option to help alleviate the problem.
That low production cost enables Civic Saint to offer single-family homes at prices virtually unheard of in today’s market.
Estimated complete building costs for a Civic Saint house is around $98,000 for an 850-square-foot, two-story unit. Based on current rates, Riddle estimates the homes could appraise between $130,000 and $140,000 – nearly half of the average price for a home in Missouri and a fraction of the national average sale price.
“The main idea is to create something not only obtainable but sustainable,” Riddle says. “We want to make a quality structure that a person can call home and a stepping stone for Black families becoming homeowners.”
Accepting Something Different
While the compressed brick model shows promise as an affordable housing solution, scaling up production poses challenges that could limit Civic Saint’s initial impact.
“I estimate I can manufacture over 13,000 earthen blocks in eight hours and erect a tiny house within a week with a team of 8 to 10 workers,” Riddle says. “But that’s still a relatively small scale compared to the full scope of the need.”
There are also regulatory hurdles around permitting the non-traditional construction material that Riddle has had to navigate by educating city officials. Construction companies have also been resistant due to unfamiliarity with CEBs.
“The biggest problem is education because people tend to pump the brakes when they’re uncertain,” Riddle acknowledges.
However, Civic Saint’s model is gaining momentum. Last August, Civic Saint won both the Inaugural Communities of Color Initiative (CoCi) Biz Pitch and the overall Biz Pitch competitions hosted by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, bringing in $55,000 total. Further facilitating growth, Riddle’s venture was also selected for the latest LaunchKC Social Venture Studio accelerator cohort, which offers office space, mentorship, technical assistance and will give Civic Saint a grant of up to $25k.
With that backing, Civic Saint aims to construct its first full home in Kansas City’s Montgall neighborhood this summer, with plans for 4 to 20 additional units by the end of 2024. Riddle says over 50 people have already expressed interest in purchasing one of the affordable compressed brick homes.
An Answer to Gentrification
Beyond affordability, a core mission for Civic Saint is revitalizing and empowering marginalized communities systematically shut out from homeownership and economic mobility through racist housing practices like redlining.
“We have the ability to rebuild the urban core in an equitable fashion,” Jordan says. “We just have to work on more than one thing at a time, it’s probably more like five or six different issues to have an impact.”
While likely not a silver bullet to all the metro’s housing woes, Riddle’s dirt-cheap construction method hopes to offer culturally affirming affordable housing and grassroots economic empowerment.
“Our business model is focused on creating artful, affordable homes sustainably,” Riddle says. “We’re not just looking at bricks and mortar, we’re looking at people. We have to work together to better tackle this issue as a community.”
Part of that involves rethinking traditional gentrification models, which often displace existing residents through the rapid development of high-end housing.
“We don’t necessarily want $500k to $600k houses in the neighborhoods in the urban core, that’s not what they need,” Jordan explains.
Rather than pushing out longtime residents, Riddle aims to create an affordable path to homeownership directly within their communities.
As Jordan echoes: “It’s not a political issue, it’s a human issue.” By tapping into the ancient legacy of earthen construction, Civic Saint could help chart a way forward for Kansas City’s housing future, starting from its redlined past.
