Adrian Giacca will be continuing to push for tiny homes in Revelstoke, and now, thanks to a grant from RBC and the Revelstoke Community Foundation, he is being paid to do so.
Giacca, 28, applied, and was chosen, for the RBC Future Launch Community Challenge, a grant for youth to fund their bold ideas to address a local challenge.
The challenge that Giacca identified, more than a year ago, is access to affordable home-ownership. His vision, to develop land in harmony with nature.
| A concept rendering of a small-home village. (Submitted) |
With the $15,000 from the challenge, Giacca will be continuing his work: looking for land, gathering community input, pitching ideas to mortgage lenders and advocating for approval from local and provincial governments.
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At the moment he is using a design he created at a permaculture design course earlier this year, as an example of what he is trying to do.
The design features eight small homes in a village-type setting, with shared community spaces including recreational spaces, agricultural spaces and options for storage.
“This is a design concept, not necessarily the be-all, end-all solution,” he said. “This is just a framework for us to start a conversation around tiny homes, shared amenities and community spaces.”
Giacca used the three founding ethics of permaculture: people care, earth care and future care, and combines them with the twelve principals of design.
“This project is less about housing and more about community,” he said.
The village features a central community gathering space, Giacca called The Sanctuary. Though there is space for parking on the edges of the development, priority in the village is given to pedestrians.
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“Through my research I have noticed this sort of dichotomy where on one hand we have home ownership that builds wealth and rises real estate market values and in some ways is unsustainable,” Giacca said. “We can’t continue to build massive houses, we can’t continue to live disproportionately to the rest of the world. And then on the other hand we have individuals living in ecovillages who are forgoing, often times, home ownership but they live in community, they share things together, they grow food together, they compost everything, and they are, arguably, living very happy lives.”
| Adrian Giacca is hoping to develop a pilot project. (via Facebook) |
Giacca also intends the project, however and wherever it ends up being, be perpetually affordable. The small homes will not increase in value 18-20 per cent per year, as other homes in Revelstoke have been, but rather rise to match inflation and interest rates.
“I believe that our future is dependent on our ability to solve challenges and achieve more sustainable lifestyles,” he said.
The RBC Future Launch Community Challenge is put on by the RBC Foundation and Community Foundations of Canada. Revelstoke was one of several across the country to hand out the grant, which was intended for youth between the ages of 15 and 29.
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Get ahold of Giacca at adrian@remotelandscape.com
@JDoll_Revy
jocelyn.doll@revelstokereview.com
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