Local company keeps environment, as well as future residents’ needs in mind
Everyone deserves a place to call home, but housing is not always easy to come by. Mezzo Homes in Selkirk has been working to fill that need with high-quality modular housing that provides safe and lasting transitional shelter.
Mezzo Homes is a Selkirk-based, Métis-owned, company that was started in 2018 by Founder and President Jason Vitt. He started off with small homes, and residents can see some of his original work on Robinson Ave. in Selkirk. After a few years where planning board issues slowed the business, Chris Poponick, now the company’s Vice President, Community Development, brought his connections to the partnership, particularly his history working with Manitoba’s First Nations communities.
The modern iteration of the business sees them helping create homes that are long-term structures that can be easily shipped to where they are needed, and have everything that someone would need to get a fresh start.
“I spent a long time up in Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, working with them for about six years, and through that process, the Chief at the time, Lorna Bighetty, said to me, ‘Chris, do something about my couch surfers.’ And, I didn’t even know what a couch surfer was. Found out that it’s CFS post majority kids that have basically left the program and they’re no longer funded by the foster parents, so boot out the door they go. These kids are basically surfing from couch to couch to couch, at aunties, at grandma’s, at uncles, at cousins, at friends. They don’t really have a place to live because they’ve been in foster care their whole lives,” he explained.
It was through this project of looking for solutions to housing for former foster kids that Poponick first met Vitt, and though the project in Mathias Colomb Cree Nation didn’t end up coming to fruition, it did spark the idea that a structure like their current iteration of Mezzo Homes could work.
A few years later, Poponick was working with a different Manitoba First Nation when the idea came up again for more small homes to help people.
They teamed up and started to build homes with the idea that they could design them to create small groups of homes all together, and that a great deal of the costs could be covered by government grants, making these much needed transitional housing projects more affordable for the communities they would end up in.
“We had to change and upgrade, and improve on our homes to maximize the funding. One of them was the energy efficiency (needed to be improved). So, (Don McIntosh, of Great White Insulation), he’s our spray foam guy, and that’s one of the key components of our homes, is (that) they’re spray foam all the way around through the entire envelope. Adding that energy efficiency, putting in better windows that are more efficient, better doors, was the upgrade that we needed,” said Popnoick.
He explained that they emphasize working with local companies and developing local relationships in their buildings.
Some examples of ways that they see these homes being used would be to help young adults who need a place to transition to after leaving foster care, another idea might be a group of homes where people with intellectual disabilities could live independently but also be close enough together and to needed resources so that they could get access to support more efficiently. The homes themselves are fully functional, so they could be used to temporarily house people in the military, workers in places like Churchill, where projects like work on the port might bring in temporary workers, or they would even be an option for locum doctors and other health care workers who might be coming into a community for a short amount of time. The homes are also small enough that they might be a great fit for retirees wanting to downsize, and a final idea of how the homes might be used would be as transitional homes, so that people leaving difficult situations could have a place to start anew.
“We’ve had conversations with First Nations about using these as motel units. We’ve had conversations with different developers about using them as seasonal rentals,” said Poponick.
Right now, Mezzo Homes is offering one-bedroom, two-bedroom or accessible unit options, which meet all universal standards.
Though some of the options that Vitt and Poponick see the homes being used for are as transitional homes for people, the homes themselves are meant to be permanent, but movable if needed.
“We’ve got a house that’s going to be there 100 years from now. It’s set up in such a way that if you do need to use it in one location and that location changes, they can easily be moved. They’re placed on screw piles that can be easily picked up and shipped to another location if necessary,” said Poponick
The homes are also built to a dimension where they can be shipped by truck, by train, or even by barge all across Canada.
Another feature of the homes is that it’s possible to have solar panels hooked up to them to help make them even more energy efficient.
Vitt explained that they have put so much energy into trying to make the homes energy efficient because it’s just the right thing to do. It benefits not only the future people who live in the home but the environment as well.
So far, they’ve completely finished ten of these units with orders for at least 20 more coming in recently, and there’s no sign of that trend slowing soon with the rise in housing needs in Canada.
As for the future, for production in Selkirk, Poponick has an optimistic outlook.
“We want to continue to build the homes, but just stick with the models we have, get great at that and really document how we do that. We’ve got expansion plans that include adding another factory on the site here that could get us to about 100 homes a year in production. Right now, we figure we can do about 30 to 40 a year. So, we’d likely to be able to double that by building a larger factory. We’ve laid the groundwork for that to start,” he said.
Vitt said that he hopes that these homes help a lot of people.
Learn more at mezzohomes.ca.
