Aera and Affordable Housing

We are excited to announce that we have completed our first affordable housing project with Intunity Homes.

Intunity Homes is a Tennessee nonprofit that provides affordable housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Historically, Intunity has purchased single-family homes and retrofitted them to meet the needs of the people they serve. As demand for Intunity Homes has expanded, however, it has become increasingly difficult to find affordable homes that do not require extensive rehabilitation or carry high ongoing maintenance costs.

To solve this problem, Intunity decided to begin building ground-up single-family homes specifically designed for its residents. That is where Aera Systems came in.

We met Intunity Homes through our friends at ShareBuilt, a nonprofit that connects mission-driven organizations with architecture, engineering, and construction companies. Intunity’s need for durable, low-operating-cost, repeatable home designs fit directly with Aera’s core competencies. Together, we set out to translate their existing design and program requirements into an Aera Systems affordable housing model.

The Intunity Home is a 1,700-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom house featuring Aera’s high-performance building envelope, full ADA accessibility, and a home automation system designed to support independent living. On top of that, this first Intunity Home will be one of the first homes in Tennessee to pursue Passive House certification.

While a significant amount of research and development went into this first model, the project has already demonstrated our core thesis: repeatability, prefabrication, and a vertically integrated delivery method can make it possible to deliver high-quality affordable housing.

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