Five years ago, Vivian and Elisa Girard found themselves frustrated with the housing industry’s inability to produce homes for working people in Dorchester, but instead of complaining, they set out to see if they could do better.

Today, they are welcoming tenants to their 14-unit micro-apartment building at 141 Westville St., which they put up without public subsidies. “We’re under $650,000 and that’s because we did so much of the labor ourselves,” said Elisa, who noted that their market rents are lower than the affordable rents.

“We’d like people to be able to move in some time in August,” said Vivian. “As for the rent prices, we are at $750 a month [for market rate]. We have outside, official affordable housing units and they are $869 a month.”

The effort the Girards put into this enterprise on a vacant, city-owned lot is nothing short of astounding. Their use of the city’s Compact Living Pilot program allowed them to build in typical three-decker style but with 14 small units, a common space, and no parking. They didn’t take out loans; instead they refinanced a property they owned to draw out cash for the Westville Street construction. The do-it-ourselves approach meant time spent scavenging for materials from the Boston Building Materials Co-op, neighbors, and even from the side of the road.

The exterior of the new home at 141 Westville St. Seth Daniel photo

“We took a chance on the land because it was not buildable as of right,” said Vivian. “The final ingredient was cheap labor – that being us – and plus we were very frugal with materials.”

While they hired subcontractors and other licensed professionals for certain tasks, they took responsibility for a lot themselves, including framing work and hanging drywall.

It was the “frugality” piece that gained them neighborhood credibility. Elisa shared that they salvaged lumber from several wooden “shacks” that occupied a then- vacant lot on Bowdoin Street where the Dorchester Food Co-op now exists.

“We deconstructed them and used all that material here,” she noted. “It was stacked up behind the building for a long time.” Several pieces of the shacks now give a rustic-look to the shelving in the kitchens.

At an open house to display their housing handiwork (and to celebrate Elisa’s birthday), the couple used the occasion to highlight the work of dozens of artists from the neighborhood.

Neighbor Paul Losordo – who showed his photography work at the open house - noted that he had spotted some tiles he had given them years ago in a bathroom. It was a full circle moment for him, as he recalled them talking about the idea as far back as eight years ago when Vivian and Elisa were co-owners of home.stead café in Fields Corner.

Part of the artist highlights was Tam Le, an owner of Pho Hoa Restaurant, who was a talented painter in his college years. Here, he displays a larger-than-life painting he did of his father – a South Vietnamese soldier during the war. Seth Daniel photo

He said he had learned not to doubt their plans, especially after he saw a model unit the couple had built in a rental trailer before embarking on the Westville St. effort.

“We had accumulated a lot of tile and doors through the years of renovating our home in Dorchester, and we ended up giving them to Vivian,” said Losordo. “The other day we got to see our tiles in a couple of the bathrooms and a few doors we had donated installed in the apartment units.

“I think it is amazing that two people, through their vision, focus on community, and determined work, brought this first proof of concept from vision to rentable units.”

But the Girards aren’t confident that what they have done can be repeated, given increasingly onerous additions to the building and energy code, and the hesitance to eliminate high-cost requirements in effect for decades.

“The building code is always ratcheting things up,” said Vivian. “The gains in terms of safety and energy efficiency are often marginal, but the increase in total development cost is not. Design, engineering, and consultant fees can exceed the hard construction cost. It is pricing affordable housing out of existence to the point where no developer in Boston can build a basic two-bedroom home for less than $600,000.”

He is an advocate of eliminating the so-called second egress requirement, known as a “single stair” entry point that allows for building cost-effective and attractive buildings. Meanwhile, some redefinition of codes allows new ideas to flourish, as happened with the Westville Street experiment.

“Relaxing excessive rules is what allows for innovation and housing that can be built more affordably without public funding,” he said. “This allowed us to build the most affordable unsubsidized housing in the city.”

Several neighbors, including Mike Ritter and Lorenzo Whitter, take a look at a kitchen setup in the model unit. Seth Daniel photo