Alaina Money-Garman: Building to Move the Industry Forward

The Farm at Penny Lane project is a 40-acre farm developed on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and it houses 15 residents living with severe mental illness. And Raleigh, NC-based Garman Homes built those 15 homes, thanks to the support of CEO Alaina Money-Garman.

The Farm at Penny Lane is in partnership with UNC School of Medicine and nonprofit XDS and led by XDS director Thava Mahadevan. It's a holistic approach to mental health services, with the 40-acre property offering service animals, harvesting and gardening, chickens, beehives, yoga, arts, and other programs that aim to go beyond traditional therapies and medicines. 

The farm serves much more than its 15 residents. Its services extend to nearly 2,000 individuals locally who live with addiction, serious mental health conditions, or developmental disabilities. Established in 2011, The Farm at Penny Lane has long offered many of these services, but Mahadevan had a dream to build homes for fully synergistic and integrated services. It finally came to fruition in 2023 after meeting Money-Garman. Where Mahadevan brought the plan, the dream, and the donations, Garman brought the skillset and passion to achieve it.

The 15 tiny homes, each around 400 square feet, were completed in October 2023. The ask was to build each at $50,000 for residents paying $300 in rent, and homes designed with a focus on well-being that further supports the Farm's mission. But Money-Garman knew those homes realistically cost $90,000 each. Still, Money-Garman couldn't pass the project up. 

Money-Garman believes that accepting projects that don't monetarily move the company forward pays dividends by moving the industry forward. Garman Homes does this through its Operation Coming Home builds for Gold Star families, Habitat for Humanity builds, charitable donations, and did the same with The Farm at Penny Lane. And it's part of why Money-Garman was honored as Woman of the Year at the Women in Residential + Commercial Construction Conference 2024.

On this episode of Women at WIRC, learn more about how Garman Homes' built the homes for The Farm at Penny Lane, how Money-Garman achieves the Garman Homes difference of giving back to the community, and her perspective on home builders' impact on housing.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction to Women at WIRC Podcast 
00:18 Meet Alaina Money-Garman: Woman of the Year 
00:56 The Farm at Penny Lane: A Special Project 
01:23 Garman Homes: Building with Purpose 
03:45 Designing for Healing and Connectivity 
07:31 Challenges and Successes in Building Tiny Homes 
12:12 The Team Behind the Project 
16:34 Garman Homes' Commitment to Giving Back 
21:37 The Broader Responsibility of Affordable Housing 
23:38 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript:

CB: Welcome back to Women at WIRC brought to you by Pro Remodeler and Pro Builder. On this podcast, we talk to standout women and residential construction to share their professional insights and a highlight the strong, but small share of just 11% of the industry.

I'm Caroline Broderick, editor of Custom Builder. And today I'm sharing my conversation with our Woman of the Year Alaina Money-Garman, CEO, and founder of Garman Homes. We had the honor to honor Elena at our women's conference in Phoenix this month. The Woman of the Year award recognizes a female leader. Who's had an impact on the industry, upholds the highest of standards and sets an example as a woman and a leader.

This person embodies the spirit of the WIR+CC conference. Which is difficult to describe to those who have not experienced it, but as someone who is a changemaker, a mentor, a positive force, You'll hear instantly why Elena's deserving of this award. Our conversation today uses a special project. She worked on the Farm at Penny Lane as a lens for discussing accessible and affordable housing.

AMG: I'm Alaina Money-Garman. I'm the founder and CEO of Garman Homes and based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

CB: So Alaina, thank you so much for joining me today I think we gotta start with just knowing a little bit about you though first So i'm gonna ask you please. Can you share a brief background an overview of Garman Homes? 

AMG: Oh, sure. It's my favorite story to tell Garman Homes began in 2007. I joined in 2008 Right, before the brink of real estate disaster the great recession which I always say was  Just the best thing to ever happen to us because chaos creates opportunity.

And we could only afford the lots on a clearance anyway. So it was. It was helpful for us. We also had nothing to lose. So we sort of built the company out of that time and that has probably informed every decision we've made. We're a private home builder owned by my husband and me and one angel investor.

And we build This year over will be close to 400 homes. So that feels weird for me to say,  we've doubled over the past few years and worked really hard on our operating systems, but Garman Homes started out of the idea that we could be a production builder, but offer a very custom-like experience.

I like to say that the currency of our company. Is not and never will be in the amount of homes that we build and the quantity of homes But in the quality of our connections with everyone who comes in contact with our company And so that's something we try to live up to every day. And so we have four Garman differences that help us Make that true.

I would I have a fear of being a fraud So I wouldn't sleep at night Garman differences come true every day and we just are here to do something special To create a connection and to never lose sight of the fact that you're building the backdrop of someone's home, their best moments, their worst moments, and how we rise up to meet them emotionally where they are is, is a good predictor of how successful we will be over the longterm.

CB: That's wonderful and beautiful. And I mean, it ties exactly in what we're going to kind of talk about today, which is accessible and affordable housing. And so it really sounds like you're not just, you know. You're walking the walk. You're not just talking the talk when it comes to Garman Homes, especially with this project that I want to chat with you about today.

And so that project is the farm at Penny Lane, right? And it's a pretty significant project and I want to use it today as a lens for this conversation of affordable and accessible housing. But first let's just start off, can you just share with our listeners? What is the farm at Penny Lane project?

AMG: It's the most special project. It's, it's an actual farm. It has wraparound support, social social services for the residents and for people. It's a, it's a It's a collaboration between XDS, which stands for cross disability services and the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of social work and school of medicine.

And so it's an actual farm working farm with things like chickens and bunnies and bunny therapy. Have you ever heard of this? No,  dog therapy, horse therapy residents on like doctors without borders on site with a, like a.  I don't know how to say this actually. What is it when Doctors Without Borders but domestic,  so there's medical personnel on site but this idea was Tava Mahadevan's idea, who is a refugee from Sri Lanka.

And himself went through periods of being unhoused, lived in a refugee camp in India when he was 16 years old, made his way to Davidson College and had this dream of creating a place where people could hear from, heal from serious mental illness, create a community of volunteers and people working together in this very special place.

And he had the idea to build 15 homes. To complete his vision for the Farm at Penny Lane And he was looking for 15 different builders to each build one home for him And he got donate he had donors for every house. He had 15 $50,000 donations just sitting in a bank And he reached out to me to ask me to build one home and we had coffee together and I left and said Thank you if you let me redesign that, that house plan that you just showed me, which is not 50, 000 because he got it drawn before the pandemic.

And this was post pandemic and the price had gone up probably to 90 to a hundred. And so I said, if you let me build what will cost me 50, 000, we will build all 15. And so that's what we did last summer. And it was super rewarding, wonderful, wonderful project to get to be a part of. That's amazing. And I love this last portion of Tava, him being able to achieve this dream is ensuring people can live there.

And it's actually even more special because the people that are living there are the ones that are going to benefit from this amazing environment. Right. Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, so the residents are the residents are people who use the Cross Disability Services, the XDS companies, social services, which Tava is the CEO, he, he owns this company, so he knows this population, this very underserved population of people who need to heal.

from serious mental illness, some from military sexual trauma and need a space that's affordable to them. People who are living on a fixed income of 300 a month  for housing and that just doesn't exist. And so Tava is already connected with a population of people who will benefit greatly from all the different types of services there and working on this farm.

And really it's that grounding. You know, people say touch grass. This, this, this sort of is Rooted pardon the pun in that in that theory of connectivity, right? So it's scripted connectivity. It's choreographed  But it's also an opt in opt out, right? So if we are healing from something traumatic  If we are healing from mental illness, we need to retreat And we need to connect.

We need both of those things. So when we were designing the houses, it was a very intentional effort to create a space where people could opt in and out of those two very different environments.  So definitely a unique set of requirements that you had to meet, but one that it sounds like you are the perfect builder to do so.

CB: And so you built, correct me if I'm wrong, 15, what you consider tiny homes. You know, obviously due to the budget you had, you said, we'll build what we can within your budget. And so that is going to house 15 underserved people to use these services and kind of live there, right? Right. Yeah. They rent, they rent from Tava.

AMG: And so it's 416 square feet. It's a one bedroom. We were given the parameter of not a studio, but a one bedroom  and one bath, obviously. And we needed to infuse that 416 square feet with as much healing as we could. Now, there was a study done by the University of North Carolina social work so that we had some metrics from which to plan this space and be very intentional with it.

So it's the amount of windows that we used and the, the light we used a lot of natural light to again, inspire creativity, reflection not a dark space and a huge kitchen island. We really  outsized the island because we were trying to

That reflection, that solo piece of healing where we do in our own self reflection, but there's also a connection that we need to sort of pull ourselves into that next phase of healing. And so the kitchen island represents that hope, that ambitious feature of, of other people being in that home with the single occupant we made the bathroom a lot bigger because The original design had like a three by three shower stall.

And I always say that's about large enough to soak the walls and spin. And we really wanted it to be a lot more inclusive for body shapes and sizes and, and ease of movement. And so we we sort of maxed out the size on that shower and. Really paid attention to how the houses actually line up. They all face a green space.

They, they're built around the circle, but some of the houses face directly onto the circle and some of the houses are faced parallel to the circle, parallel to the street so that the front porch space. can be one of those opt in, opt out of community spaces so that you, you might not always want to be on your front porch and be accessible to people.

You might want to be not as accessible or in isolation, but outside. And it's also to prevent someone from triggering someone else inside their home.  If you're in a good place and someone else is not, you can actually stumble upon someone that you could get accidentally triggered. And it's just thinking through all of those different scenarios, all of those different good days and bad days, and how could the space rise up to meet the person with what they need when they need it?

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned, you know, studio was not an option. It was very purposeful as well. It was a one bedroom. Can you explain a little bit as to why?  I think to mimic a typical.  you know, typical living situations. I mean, studios are definitely more popular in  areas where it's very expensive to live in cities.

AMG: But the one bedroom was really to sort of mimic everyday life, make this home live as largely as it could within the tiny home parameters. And so having that. One bedroom having that ability to go in a bedroom shut the door and really have a smaller space To sleep and to rest was very intentional so that what there's one space to rest and one space to be active if you can imagine someone  Who's having trouble getting out of bed in the morning?

you might spend all day in bed if your whole space was your bedroom,  but You need to eat. You need to bathe yourself. You need to take care of yourself. And so I think the bedroom facilitates a little bit more movement than it would have if it was just a studio, right? Oh, absolutely. And I love that you're talking about the kitchen.

It's this, it's, it's functional, but it's so much more of also a symbol within the home, which is beautiful. You're talking about certain amount of windows. How many windows, by the way, did you have? You do in each of these. I believe it's six. But if I get this wrong, my apologies to my team,  there are six windows and it's a combination of operable windows.

And then there's high transom windows which allow a lot of light in, but then give you a lot of flexibility on how you arrange furniture so that people really make the space a reflection of how they want to use it and preserve their privacy. So maximize light, preserve privacy. And then also some of them are, are, are functional so that you're not, but you're not too you're not too connected to your neighbor, you know,  preserving that sense of uniqueness to each home.

Listen to the full interview above.