A tiny home in Martin County, Florida built by teenagers from Project Lift to provide temporary hurricane relief housing. Courtesy, Project Lift
On Florida’s East Coast, Martin County has found a unique way to support displaced members of the community after intense damage from Hurricane Milton’s tornadoes. The non-profits “Project Lift” and “Save our Salerno” have enlisted the help of local teenagers to build tiny homes. The projects offer great benefits to the community by empowering youth and bolstering their skillset, all while rehoming those who lost everything to the twisters while they wait for reconstruction. Both organizations have a vested interest in the future – preserving cultural heritage and creating tangible impacts for tomorrow’s leaders and showing a glimmer of hope to Floridians after another batch of storms.
So far, two tiny homes have been built by youth aged 14-25 who are learning valuable skills to transform their own lives while they help improve others. Each home is about 426 square feet, allowing for two bedrooms complete with plumbing, electrical work, and delivery of the home out to the property. While the price tag may be upwards of $100,000, it is fundamental to rebuilding the community.
“We thought we were just going to do some scholarships and some fun events, but it turned into a pretty major effort,” said Casey Cass, president and CEO of Save our Salerno. “Our goal is to get them moved in so that they can be here while their homes are being rebuilt. It’s a huge cost Project Lift has incurred to make it happen.”
But if you ask Robert Zaccheo, CEO of Project Lift and the enlisted teenagers, the cost is well worth it as long as the community and the kids know they have a support network – and that they can be the support network for others. “To fundamentally get a person to change, they have to understand that they’re not takers, but they’re givers,” said Zaccheo. “Those kids that worked on this building, they gave more than the typical person would ever give in their entire life by actually working on a house that was given to a family.”
The organizations are still working on continued funding to get more tiny homes online, but they have already made a profound impact on everyone involved. Leading a community effort to get those affected by the tornadoes back to a sense of normalcy has also given purpose and a new set of skills to young people across Martin County. It’s community initiatives like these that remind us of our interconnectedness and reliance on one another to navigate the world, especially in the wake of hurricanes and other disasters.
LMA Newsletter of 3-3-25
