HomeStart Aims to Save Families from Eviction by Selling Digital Apartments in the Metaverse

HomeStart is selling NFT apartments in the Metaverse to raise donations and shine a light on homelessness in the real world.

NEW YORK, May 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- HomeStart, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to ending homelessness, is launching a project called INVERSE to help families on the brink of eviction by selling digital apartments in the metaverse. The price of the apartments starts at one Ethereum (ETH), which is around $3000, and approximately what it costs to halt an eviction and provide 12 months of support for a family in a major city in the United States.

In 2020, nearly 600,000 Americans were regularly unhoused (source: National Alliance to End Homelessness) and today there are double the number of households who are behind on their rent and at risk of eviction than before the COVID-19 pandemic, due to surging housing costs (source: OECD Forum).

HomeStart is partnering with Cornerstone, the first photorealistic metaverse, to build an apartment complex in its new virtual world. HomeStart was given early access to Cornerstone for this project, and people who buy apartments will be some of the first who can enter the virtual world. Cornerstone is being created by ZOAN, a virtual studio based in Helsinki, Finland, and is set to open at the end of 2022.

"One of HomeStart's strategies is to prevent homelessness before it starts by helping high-risk households maintain their housing and avoid going to shelters or the street," said Matt Pritchard, President and Executive Director at HomeStart. "Just as we identify and incubate innovative solutions to homelessness, HomeStart is always looking for innovative ways to engage more community members to help prevent homelessness. INVERSE is an ambitious project that brings purpose to the metaverse, creating a never-seen-before connection between the virtual and physical worlds that we hope raises awareness to a crisis that has ready-made solutions." 

The building is designed by the award-winning Boston-based architecture firm ICON. Each apartment will be a unique non-fungible token (NFT), and purchasing the NFT will make the buyer the owner of that apartment. There will be a total of 49 NFTs or units for sale and investors can choose between eight floor plans. Prices will range between one and five ETH, which roughly translates to the cost of protecting one to five families from eviction, based on current rates.

Sales of the NFT apartments commenced on Tuesday 3 May, 2022 with 100% of profits from the original sale and 10% of all resales going to HomeStart. The NFTs can be purchased at https://www.inverseapartments.com/.

INVERSE is built on the Ethereum blockchain as individual NFTs, specifically ERC-721 tokens, so users can easily verify the ownership and transaction history of each NFT. TBWA, Cornerstone and ICON worked with Unreal Engine, to ensure real-time rendering of the high-quality graphics and photorealistic designs.

The building will also have two community floors for future brand partnerships.

Bringing purpose to the metaverse  

While the prospect of exploring what virtual worlds have to offer is exciting, companies preparing for Web3 have been met with questions around sustainability, diversity and their values. INVERSE aims to solve a real world problem, so it was crucial to choose a metaverse that lives up to the purpose and ambition of the project. In Cornerstone, creators and landowners (Cornerstonians) have the freedom to express themselves by creating what they want. At the same time, the platform creators have set principles for the community based on inclusivity, freedom of self expression and diversity, and are also including measures to help people monitor their screen time.

"The metaverse is often cast with the stigma of excess," added Bert Marissen, Creative Director at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA. "After all, why are people investing in virtual worlds when there are so many problems to address right here on earth? But we believe we can create something that allows people to do both."

Access the press kit here.

About HomeStart
HomeStart is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness by assisting individuals and families in obtaining and stabilizing their housing situations by developing strategies to prevent homelessness before it starts. Over the course of the last 27 years, HomeStart has permanently housed more than 14,000 individuals living on the street and in shelters and has prevented more than 4,000 families from experiencing homelessness by way of nonpayment eviction. HomeStart's Renew Collaborative eviction prevention program is an economically sustainable and scalable program that prevents homelessness due to non-payment eviction. The Renew Collaborative is premised on a simple and compelling fact – the cost of a property owner executing a non-payment eviction in many places is three to five times more than the expense of stopping the eviction and preserving the tenancy. Therefore, property owners can actually save money by financially supporting eviction prevention while also supporting the health and safety of tenants and communities, and HomeStart is expanding the Renew Collaborative program now.  HomeStart's clients include single parents and their children, victims of domestic violence, veterans, and persons with disabilities.

About ZOAN
ZOAN is a virtual reality studio focused on photorealistic virtual solutions founded in Helsinki in 2010. We have lived alongside the evolution of the virtual realm unlocking ways to connect the latest technologies with high-quality graphics. During the past 12 years, we have served industry-leading brands, startups, and cultural entities to create immersive, meaningful experiences. Together, we have shaped transcendent experiences surpassing the ordinary by entering the virtual frontier. For more information about ZOAN and Cornerstone.land, visit http://www.zoan.fi. and https://cornerstone.land/.

About ICON
ICON Architecture, a 50-person Boston-based, women-owned firm focuses on sustainable urban projects that create new paradigms for city living and range from transit-oriented development to innovative adaptive reuse, and from low-rise to high-rise construction. ICON has contributed to the design and construction of over 25,000 housing units throughout New England, with 2,000 under design or in construction this year, including Modular and Passive House designs. ICON projects have been case studies for nationally distributed books on sustainable housing, published by the ULI, Harvard University Press, and Global Green, and honored by multiple national awards.

About TBWA\Chiat\Day
TBWA\Chiat\Day LA is the original Disruption® company. Shunning the conventions of Madison Avenue, Chiat\Day kick-started the West Coast ad boom in 1968 and has been disrupting for more than fifty years. As stewards of the brand, TBWA\Chiat\Day LA has spawned some of the world's most iconic brands by finding the white space through its Disruption methodology and driving dramatic business results through brave creativity. Specializing in brand strategy and creative strategy, design, social, data and analytics, multicultural, purpose, user experience and production, TBWA\Chiat\Day's client roster includes Gatorade, Discover, Jack in the Box, QuickBooks, Principal Financial, Behr Paint, The Recording Academy and more. TBWA has been named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies for the past four years and was Adweek's 2021 Global Agency of the Year.

SOURCE HomeStart