Posted on 04/12/2016 4:25:50 PM PDT by maine-iac7
For over a decade, architecture students at Rural Studio, Auburn University's design-build program in a tiny town in West Alabama, have worked on a nearly impossible problem. How do you design a home that someone living below the poverty line can afford, but that anyone would wantwhile also providing a living wage for the local construction team that builds it?
In January, after years of building prototypes, the team finished their first pilot project in the real world. Partnering with a commercial developer outside Atlanta, in a tiny community called Serenbe, they built two one-bedroom houses, with materials that cost just $14,000 each.
(Excerpt) Read more at fastcoexist.com ...
I live in the country too.
Monster trucks and ATVs go roaring down the roads.
One of my neighbors has a nice Camaro with open headers, gets drunk and take a midnight ride on occasion.
Farm Equipment, Loggers, some HS brat broke in one of my cars and vandalized it.
Yep, shore is peaceful and quiet out here in the sticks.
I can make any manner of things cheap - by just failing to include all of the costs.
No HVAC system - that means electric resistance heating under the floor; no air circulation.
Gravel driveway - not long before that churns up mud.
Exposed wood unpainted.
As a school project, no sales tax on materials.
I guarantee you the lot and site work costs more than the stated price. Of course the way the game is played is you get the developer to “donate” all that. “Donate” in this context means: either you donate or you don’t get a building permit for your rich folks’ houses.
Today’s residential builders pretty much can account for every nail they use - thanks to computers. Competition (not pie in the sky gubermint programs) forces builders to perform efficiently.
Still I would NOT move back to the cities.
This is Utopia in comparison.
That’s a beautiful place that I would be proud to live in.
Too bad you had to put so much effort into the red tape.
I have a ‘safety’ in both that doesn’t require locking.
It’s called ‘the meanest little dog in town” - and he can be if you take any action towards me.
in a listing of 100 breeds by Nat Geo - from the closest to the wolf being No 1 - and so on.
He’s No, One ;)
I know. I just keep seeing, sometimes (on TV), horrific crimes that could have been stopped by a simple locked door.
These container house are beautiful.
I forgot about them. there are THOUSANDS of them sitting in huge piles around the country - going to waste. They would be perfect - and less even then the houses in this article...
Don’t try to build this in any city, you will never get a building permit.
Anywhere there is earthquake laws or storm damage laws, forget it.
Goofy.
Our vets are committing suicide at the rate of 22-23 a DAY, FOLKS! And it isn’t just from PTSD from horrors they experienced on the battlefield - BUT FROM THE TREATMENT OF THE VA.
________________
Most of the vets who make up that stat are not recent vets. Instead they are men who make up the largest cohort of suicides : Men over age 55. Vet or not, this is the largest suicide cohort. And many of those men from those generations were military.
$1 billion would build 50,000 of these things. At that scale you could probably build more.
Enjoy!
Best to you!
When we started working on this place of 5 acres I told a friend that I was not sure if I owned it or it owned me.
He called me an idiot. then said I should have dug a 5 acre hole, filled it with water, put a houseboat on it and go fishing.
You can buy a helleva boat for 20K.
I know too many names of Vets who committed suicides - including from Afghanistan - I know the Vets who are doing everything they to network and keep constant touch with their brothers from the ‘ghan - and who have stopped suicides.
The VA is USELESS in this. They even have VOICE MAIL on the VA suicide hotline....and it has cost lives
I imagine what you are saying is true, many young men die, but the stats are bumped way up by the cohort in their 50s and 60s
I want 2, please send plans.
That’s the smartest thing you’ve said in weeks. I wouldn’t mind doing what you did.
This isn’t a $20k home. It’s a $20k house.
Building materials: $14k. That means the other $6k was labor costs, permits, and other misc expenses. Little bit of profit.
So now we just have the cost of the land. Which is going to be quite a bit more than just $20k, especially an entire acre in a neighborhood full of millionaires. There aren’t going to be $20k anything being sold in most nicer places, unless you go way out in the middle of nowhere. Land is generally the most expensive part of decent housing.
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