By Destiney Dingess, The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall University students come from all over to study in Huntington. Finding a place that feels like home while being far away from family can be difficult.
Katy Spears, who graduated from Marshall in 2022, is bringing home to those students in the form of her Wildflower Homes, tiny homes that will be near campus as an alternative to dorm room living.
The idea came from Spears’ own struggles with student housing.
“My last year on campus, I lived with five other girls in my dorm room, so there were six of us, three bedrooms, one living room, two bathrooms,” Spears said.
“Sharing everything was not necessarily a nightmare. I think we got pretty lucky, but I knew that when I moved out I didn’t want to have roommates. You might have a really nice space, but you have to have all these roommates. So I wanted to find somewhere that had all these amenities that I was missing, but also didn’t have to have roommates and was affordable and nice.”
Spears said it was hard to find housing after college that was exactly what she wanted.
“So I was trying to imagine what I wanted and then put that into effect,” Spears said. “I thought it would be a perfect alternative to a dorm room. You already have a really small space, but then adding all the amenities of having your own laundry and not having to share a bathroom and stuff like that. I thought it’d be the perfect alternative to the living options around here.”
