Requity Foundation Students Renovate Vacant West Baltimore Home, Learn Trades

Fifty-seven students from ten Baltimore high schools stripped a vacant West Baltimore house down to its bones and rebuilt it into what their program's co-founder calls the highest-performing home in the world, capping the project with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday.

The work, run through the Requity Foundation, put students on the roof and at every finish detail of the property sitting directly across the street from Carver Vo-Tech High School. From tearing out the old roof to installing hardware, they handled every stage of the renovation and brought the house up to passive-house energy standards, a level that far exceeds standard building code.

Requity co-founder Michael Rosenband framed the result plainly. "This house was built to passive house standards, so it's the highest performing house in the world," he said. "There's so much talent in this city, and when we pull together and we invest in something like this, this is what can happen."

The nonprofit draws students from schools across Baltimore and uses live construction sites as classrooms, with the stated aim of building pathways to industry certifications, trade apprenticeships and entry-level employment in high-demand trades. West Baltimore's deep inventory of vacant housing is both the curriculum and the raw material.

The foundation plans to rebuild four more vacant homes in the same area, keeping students on the tools and sustaining block-by-block pressure on neighborhood blight.