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 want—while 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 ...
We need some billionaires to build some of these tiny, private homes, on a minimum of 1 acre pieces, for Vets.
- For those that, by some miracle, have managed to get their benefits started, they could pay back ownership with a very low % mortgage rate. They would be empowered - a great step to rebuilding their lives. For those who are still being strung out for their benefits by the VA - let them live in the house while also funding a good attorney for them to go after the VA.
Once they get their benefits, they could also buy towards ownership...some could buy outright with back benefits award. .................
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.
The benefits are supposed to be ready when they separate from service. (the separation process goes on the last 6 months of a soldiers active service.) - then they would not end up homeless - and jobless (try to get a job when you have no address, no phone) -
They live from couch to couch, sleeping in cars, under overpasses, a shelter now and then.
Added to everything else, they fall into deep despondence with increasing lack of self worth. ... The gov't wouldn't let this happen to illegals or 'refugees'.
The gov't's excuse? "They have the VA"........ BUT NO ONE is making the VA step up. Vets are often waiting for their benefits after 3 years..............Picture where YOU would be with 3 years of NO INCOME. Be honest. with yourself. (Have you, at the least, called YOUR reps and demanded action for our vets?)
Not that this would do any good for years to come. ....the vets need help NOW - NOW, understand?
Nice. Good enough for me. Especially these days.
I was thinking the same thing, especially if I can have the separate house and the rest of the family takes the other one.
I have to say a big War Eagle to that.
That’s a mighty good looking house. If you plopped it down in my neck of the woods, it would be worth around $400,000.
:)
Wonder what it would take to add a couple add’l bedrooms?
Maybe another $10,000?
Moved back to rural America. Bought one Victorian house for 12k, my mom bought the one next door for 20k (everyone thought she paid too much), bought a third across the street for 10k and a 3 story brick school for 10k. All in fine shape and fairly large and in good condition, low crime area, but its small town America.
Nice. Good for you. Someday I might want to know the city and state. Sounds pretty cool. (FReepmail if you wish to share - I’ll keep it private).
Serenbe...gag. It’s a way overpriced Lefty-Yuppy enclave down around the Chattahoochee Hill Country. A “sustainable” neighborhood where you’re not allowed to build a garage for your $500k 2100 sq ft bungaloid, and the “Thoughtful Food Shoppe” sells mason jars of $12.00 gezpatcho. Last time we drove thru there the May Pole was still out from May Day festivities.
If they can get something good for vets out of this, great, but I wouldn’t depend on these folks. They are reality-impaired.
In San Francisco it would fetch a couple millions.
Yeah, there is the matter of building lots for the houses and location, location, location.
The show that they are really Luddites in the article:
“They’ve rejected the idea of using factory-made prefab parts (something that a related project in the area does), because one of the main goals is to also provide jobs. Still, whatever the final cost, it will be cheap.”
While they are at it, maybe they should require that the workmen wear homspun, only use man powered tools, and dig the foundations and sewer system/hookups by hand.
That will create low-paid, low productive jobs.
Factories are how we raised the standard of living.
1 acre is a lot of land to take care of, trust me if u come from row house philly it’s big, real big.
I’m a vet, if disabled and housing was what I needed I’d want condo type with no outside responsibilities
If you found a lot to plop it on, how much would you have tin the property, $220K?
Bookmark
The article contained a lot of words but none that couldn’t have been said in one paragraph. It never did explain why the houses were unique or show pictures. A whole lot of nothing.
That was what I was thinking too.
Build Your First Home On Mars (Click Pic to read article)
Economist Milton Friedman told a story about visiting a jobs program in a foreign country.
He watched a group of workers hand-digging a trench with shovels. He asked the manager why they were not using power tools. The manager told him “Jobs!”
Dr. Friedman asked, “Then why don’t they just use teaspoons?”
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