4.5. Rural Studio Model: Capita and Auburn University’s School of Architecture

In the U.S., in 2012, there were approximately 4 million home-based early care and education providers who cared for over 7 million children (birth through age 5) [189]. Family and friends who do not get paid for the care they provide to children make up the largest share of home-based providers (2.7 million). Unregistered providers who receive payments for the care they provide comprise the next largest group of home-based providers (919,000). Paid licensed providers are the smallest group of home-based providers (118,000).

In 2018, Capita [190], an innovation lab for early childhood based in South Carolina, partnered up the Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) Rural Studio to develop a prototype of a house specially designed to meet the needs of in-home child care providers in rural communities, specifically the rural South. The new housing product is called the “Child Care Home” [191]. The CADC Rural Studio was founded with the goal of addressing affordable housing issues in low-income communities in western AL.

The Capita-CADC Rural Studio partnership seeks to build houses that are affordable, durable and efficient with the ultimate goal of elevating the quality of the care and the at-home child care profession. Joe Walters, Capita’s founder, believes that the “Child Care Home” could change people’s perspectives about at-home providers from gig workers to a valued profession [192]. Walters also sees Wonderschool as a fit for the new housing product and believes that his company “could provide the hardware, and Wonderschool, the software.”

West Virginia could implement such project under the leadership of groups like the North Central West Virginia Housing Group (NCWVHG), which focuses on housing affordability issues in North Central, West Virginia, mainly on the I-79 corridor. The main purposes of NCWVHG are to market North Central West Virginia, provide housing opportunities to expand economic development in the region and grow the economy by focusing on housing. The Group’s membership includes city planners, government representatives, local businesses, real estate developers and others. The NCWVHG also focuses on attracting young and older adults to the region. According to a recent report commissioned by the Group, millennials constitute the fastest growing demographic in the region. For these reasons and based on the NCWVHG’s mission and membership, this or similar groups could potentially lead efforts to build the West Virginia version of the “Child Care Home” to test this idea and ideally meet the needs of young professionals with children and working parents moving to the region, and, potentially, other parts of the state.