The plight of the homeless is largely misunderstood, says Prasoon. Many of them have jobs. There is dignity in everyday life; even a street corner can be ‘home’ to a child returning from school to the same spot day after day.

The fact they are not paid fair wages remains a major hurdle. They can’t amass the kind of assets that would help them secure the loans they need to purchase permanent homes. A homeless person is deemed ‘high-risk’ and must pay more to borrow — making the transaction, ironically, less feasible.

Many homeless families in India live in makeshift structures on street pavements.
© Palita Mumbai and BillionBricks

Prasoon argues that this vicious cycle must be broken once and for all. He calls for a novel financing instrument that bypasses the prevalent prejudicial view of the occupant. In the BillionBricks proposal, this is achieved by shifting risk to the house itself; specifically, via its capacity to generate energy over time.

The design – so different from low-cost solutions usually favoured elsewhere – taps on a seemingly oversized roof: a photovoltaic canopy that can produce 10-25 times the energy the premises require. The surplus generated can be sold to the power grid over a period of 20-25 years. It can also provide revenues to pay off the house’s initial construction costs and land purchase and secure ongoing profits in the long run.

Single-family units with essential living spaces are built with mass-replicable features and materials.
© BillionBricks

The model for the BillionBricks Home is kept simple: it is a single-family home, 30 m2 in area, made of low-cost materials that can be easily sourced and quickly assembled. Prototypes built in India and the Philippines look very similar, reflecting standardisation of form and detail.

The big roof of a BillionBricks net-zero home produces much more energy than what the premises underneath consume.
© BillionBricks

Prasoon covers the prerequisites for his housing plan to succeed. First, it must be possible to feed energy into a grid on any given site. Second, the number of units per development must exceed 1,000, whereby the energy generation capacity is at least 10 megawatts and financially viable. Third, a match must be found between an investor who foots the bill for the shelters upfront and a buyer who commits to purchase the energy they produced.

A residential cluster of 1,000 units generates the minimum amount of energy that makes the BillionBricks housing plan financially viable.
© BillionBricks

Prasoon also concedes that some challenges remain. A thousand homes constitute a neighbourhood, but a community is more than a cluster of houses; it needs social spaces and programmes to forge cohesion. Therefore, how BillionBricks’ game plan ultimately plays out will also depend on the integration of shared amenities on a site, such as playgrounds and shops.

Integration of gathering spaces like playgrounds and shops between homes where communities can thrive is a critical asset of the BillionBricks scheme.
© BillionBricks

The first of the solar communities is being built in the Philippines. Its impact will shed light on how homelessness can be addressed by the private sector where investors have vast capital at their disposal to shape the problem at scale.

Once these communities start to spread, BillionBricks will gradually transition from its roles of developer and matchmaker to facilitator and manager, to help residents settle in and thrive.