Bella Carmelita Carriker’s research project and Masters thesis at MIT based upon the oral histories of single mothers in her life who have experienced housing insecurity in New York— illustrating the fragments which make up the feeling of home, the ways that architectural detail can reflect motherhood, the need to inherently examine both domesticity and labor. These spatial fragments, in conjunction with research on existing zoning, planning, development, and affordable housing pathways, informed architectural possibilities for collective housing across three neighborhoods in New York City, including Gowanus.

One in three children in the United States live in a single parent household; yet, the most likely demographic to experience eviction in the U.S. is low-income single mothers. This project proposes a framework for thinking about communal family structures, housing security, and intimate domestic space, through the lens of designing for single mother households in New York City. The housing crisis in cities across the country specifically affects single mothers and children, yet these identities are rarely explicitly designed for; economically, systemically and architecturally.