Wall by wall

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a collaboration with potter Victoria Wolf and her exhibit “Show Me the Way to Go Home” at the Workshop in Vineyard Haven. Over the coming weeks, we are sharing the stories of Islanders and their struggles with housing, which will be highlighted at the gallery until September 30th.

From living with extreme housing insecurity to a career building homes, Abbey Kuhe has seen many versions of local lodging. She researched and built her way out of a life below the poverty line, and now her goal is to help others do the same. 

“Moving is stressful. It is physically rigorous, it is psychoemotionally rigorous,” Kuhe, a ceramic artist and co-founder of 41° North Architecture, an architecture firm in Vineyard Haven, said. “That’s not even counting the emotional tax on finding where you’re gonna go. When that has to happen every six months, it’s all-consuming.”

In a recent interview with The Times, Kuhe sat at a park in Vineyard Haven near her work office to discuss her history with housing on the Vineyard. The calm, lulling waves of Lake Tashmoo splashed in the background as she recounted nearly a dozen moves in two years — a process that, unlike the lake on that bright summer afternoon, crashed into every moment like a tidal wave of uncertainty. 

Kuhe had built a life as a full-time artist, with work in museums and galleries across the country. But five years ago, the COVID pandemic started just as her marriage was ending, and in June of 2020, she moved back to the Vineyard with her two children in search of a new life. But when she arrived, she stood on the precipice of an Island-wide housing crisis. 

Kuhe was faced with finding housing in a real-estate landscape that was rapidly changing. Properties were being purchased en masse, with seasonal residents newly working from home and settling on the Island; Kuhe’s previous experience with finding a place to live on the Vineyard wasn’t working. 

“It was a homecoming in many ways. All my oldest relationships, my oldest friendships were here,” Kuhe said. “[But] there was nothing in terms of rentals.”

Kuhe had grown up spending summers on the Island, and been a year-round resident on and off between 1997 and 2014. Her most recent rental was a year-round home in Aquinnah — the house had a water view, multiple bedrooms, and was $1,500 a month. In 2016, she moved out of that rental and relocated to New Orleans during the off-season, but still spent summers here with her family. 

But when she moved back to the Island in 2020, the options were scarce. 

“I enjoy a myriad of privileges that are not available to so many others on this Island — just having been here as a kid, and having all of my oldest relationships here, and knowing lots of people, and [finding housing] was still so hard. It was almost impossible,” Kuhe said. 

The family of three camped in a tent on a friend’s land in West Tisbury until the weather got too cold, leaving them to navigate the rental market when prices were extremely high and options were limited. 

In November of that year, Kuhe started working as a flower farm manager, and she and her family moved into a second-floor workplace housing unit the farm provided. But soon after, her son broke his femur. With a child in a wheelchair, Kuhe was left to find lodging elsewhere to accommodate the injury, so she moved back to her mother’s for a short time.

After he healed, they went back into the workplace housing, but the lease ended in May 2021, and Kuhe was apartment-searching again. She found one option in the early spring — what the landlord described as a “deal”: a $4,000-a-month home. That price was far out of Kuhe’s price range as a single mother and sole caregiver. So she decided to take matters into her own hands, and started building a yurt. 

“It took probably a month to build it; it was so hard. I had zero construction skills,” Kuhe said. She watched videos on how to construct one, received help from community members and friends, learned as she went, and eventually, she and her children moved in. “It was beautiful. I loved it. It was my favorite place to live.”

Kuhe described living close to the land; her two boys were outside constantly, running around, catching insects and experiencing the closeness of nature. There was a small window — a clear cover at the top of the dome — and Kuhe and her sons would watch the moon drift slowly across every night, illuminating their living space. 

When the weather got colder, she found a winter rental in Aquinnah. It was short-term, and the knowledge that the rental wasn’t permanent made it difficult to settle in. By this time, in 2021, Kuhe and her sons had moved more than six times. 

That winter, she registered with the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority (DCRHA) in an effort to move into an affordable home. But she wasn’t making enough money to qualify. Her salary, as the sole earner for a three-person household, was far less than the required amount. 

“I did not make enough money as an architectural administrator to qualify for an apartment for three people, because according to the HUD [U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development], the AMI [Area Median Income] for a three-person family includes two earning adults. Meaning, the HUD makes normative two-parent households,” Kuhe said. She would be applying for a household of three, but two of those were children under 10. 

In 2021, the 100 percent AMI for Dukes County was $104,700. In order to qualify for an 80 percent AMI affordable apartment, a three-person household would have to make about $76,000. With ceramics as a side hustle and a job as an office administrator, she was far under the income required. 

Childcare costs were around $20 an hour and with taxes taken out of her paycheck, Kuhe saw a grim landscape — and a take-home of about $5 an hour after expenses — for her and her family if she continued on the path she was on. 

“I could have taken more hours at work so it looked like I made more money than I did, but getting paid $5 an hour to not be with my kids wasn’t the choice I was gonna make at that time. [So I] lost out on these amazing housing opportunities,” Kuhe said. 

Becoming frustrated with the lack of housing opportunities for her family, Kuhe started researching. She investigated average incomes and affordable housing opportunities, and did her own calculations. 

“This is when I took the deep dive and got laser focused. I learned everything about these metrics. I learned about living wages. I researched the economy of this Island and learned the economics of the business I was working for. I figured out that as a single mom with two kids, a living wage in [Dukes County] was $68 an hour,” Kuhe said. “I was not willing to lose time with my kids for no pay. There had to be a better way.”

Kuhe knew a new affordable-housing development — called Kuehn’s Way in Vineyard Haven — was about to open up for applicants. The income qualification was 80 percent AMI in 2022, which for a family of three was about $85,000 a year. If she wanted to qualify, something had to change. 

Kuhe asked her employer to match the salary for the requirements. “There was nothing to lose — I couldn’t afford ‘affordable housing,’” Kuhe said. When they refused, Kuhe asked her now-business partner to take a leap of faith with her: start their own company — 41° North Architecture. 

What ensued was months of calculated effort for Kuhe to create an application and proof of income that would qualify her family for a home that was meant to help people in her situation. 

Kuhe found out she had received one of the affordable apartments — a two-bedroom unit — at Kuehn’s Way a few months later, and she and her two sons moved in in December three years ago. She said the relief she felt was indescribable. 

“Getting the stable housing, the impacts have been profound. The energy that was being spent on moving every six months all went into the architectural business,” she said. “If I hadn’t had the opportunity at Kuehn’s Way, I don’t know where I would be. I was so tired. ‘Shuffle’ is such a euphemism for what this is — it is just so utterly depleting … I was preoccupied with figuring out housing for me and my kids almost constantly.”

In the past few years, Kuhe purchased land and started building her own home from the ground up. She’s working hard to ensure the price is within her range by doing work herself, buying wholesale and working with the community. She’s spending about $160 per square foot — far less than the up to a thousand dollars many locals are having to spend to build for the same footage. 

“I used my house as the experiment, the model, the proof, like, ‘Can it be done?’ … And it can,” Kuhe said. “And now it’s what I wanna do for everybody.”

Kuhe is continuing to work on architecture projects for clients Island-wide — as well as bolstering her accreditation with sustainable building practices like Living Future’s program — and started that process on her own land. Wall by wall, she’s constructing a home for her family. 

“I wanted a safe place for me and my kids so that we don’t have to leave,” Kuhe said. She talked about the beginning of her journey, when she was just starting to look for housing, and knowing how out of reach it was for her. In 2021, the fog that clouded her next steps had been nearly impossible to see through. 

“The potential for what can happen when we just get stable housing — it changed my entire life. Now I’m helping change the lives of other year-round residents. Creating affordable, safe, stable housing for year-round residents is only good. It only has positive outcomes for the individual and our community,” Kuhe continued. 

As for the home she’s building, Kuhe said she’s committed to creating opportunities for someone down the road who is navigating housing insecurity: “You better believe I put in a basement apartment … for the person I was in 2021.”