Chilean Emergency Housing Initiative

The Chilean Emergency Housing Initiative will design and construct high quality temporary and semi-permanent housing for victims of the recent massive earthquake in Chile.

The initial stage of CEHI will construct 15 new homes by Fall 2010 in Concepcion, the city that took the brunt of the earthquake. If that initial stage is successful, CEHI will roll out a much larger effort in the following years to build large numbers of homes.

Alberto Alvarez, CEHI project director, is a distinguished architect based in Los Angeles. Alberto grew up in Concepcion, attended university in Chile, then came to L.A. to attend the University of Southern California where he received a masters degree in architecture. Alberto and a group of fellow architects and engineers are the design team behind CEHI. Their goal is to create cutting edge, inexpensive ($10,000 US or less per unit) housing that eventually can be reproduced in disaster scenarios around the world.

Alberto and his team have already completed the preliminary designs and are laying the groundwork in Chile to begin construction.

Visions Made Viable is delighted to provide long term fiscal sponsorship, administrative support, and consulting to Alberto and his colleagues as they develop this creative, timely, and critically important project.