Affordable Housing?

Read an article the other day about a community in which there was a plan to build afforrdable housing in a resort community. As in many other similar places, homes were so expensive that the people who worked in the resort facilities, eateries and gift shops could not afford to live there. It seemed that it was time to consider some solutions...the apalling thing is that this community considered $300,000 tobe "affordable" housing.
Either these folks are leaving much bigger tips than most or they have never worked in a service job . For that matter, they could be corporate CEOs who haveno idea that the lowest paid workers in their companies make less in a month than they make in a day. These folks may mean well, but they needa lesson in real world economics. No one working a minimum wage job can afford a $300,000 mortgage. They arelucky to be able to find something to rent, especially if they are supporting a family on that income. Affordable Housing at $300,000? I don't think so.

Mutiple laundry rooms?

Just read an article that says a new and growing trend is for homes to have multiple laundry rooms. Multiple bathrooms I understand, but multiple laundry rooms are beyond me. Most of us would do better to have less clothes than more choices about where to wash them.
The rationale given is that it prevents people from having to carry laundry across the house in large homes...My response, as you can guess, is get a smaller home! My second response is that most of us need the exercise anyway.
I have seen new homes with the laundry room upstairs which I think is a good idea. Most laundry is generated upstairs in a two story house since typically that's where the majority of the bedrooms and baths are. It doesn't work as well in houses where the master bedroom is downstairs and the others upstairs but I vote for going back to laundry chutes and dumbwaiters before we start adding more laundry rooms.
Thelast thing we need to be doing right now is creating more machines and consuming more energy. It doesn't matter how energy efficient the unit is, two use more energy than one. We need to start paying attention to the embodied cost involved in manufacturing and shipping them too, not just running them.

Rio Rancho Growing Pains

One of the nice things about older, mature neighborhoods is that they are not necessarily as strongly affected by hectic growth and sudden changes in plans for growth as their new counterparts. The city fathers recently chose to fire the city manager who had been negotiating for nine months or more with a firm to build the city buildings in the new city center. That was a couple of weeks ago. Now they have terminated negotiations with that company too. That means back to the drawing board. There is a nice new road which goes to the event center that houses the hockey team, concerts and the like, through a lot of open space that will eventually become the city center.
There are several neighborhoods of very new homes in the middle of nowhere which will eventually be mature neighborhoods near the city center. For now, there is a long trek to get to a grocery store, the library, post office, a cafe, or any other service a person might want. It will now be much longer before those services arrive.
There was a lot of buying and selling of property near the proposed city center when it was believed that it was on the brink of being built--they even held a groundbreaking ceremony on the site....
Meanwhile, my cozy little neighborhood still has a community center within walking distance and a plethora of cafes, shops, grocery stores and services. One of the better things about a mature neighborhood is that pretty much, what you see is what you get. When I moved into the neighborhood, there was no Starbucks and they were just building a WalMart. There was and still is a local butcher shop and a small local hardware store that has all the older fixtures and parts you need for a 20-30 year old house. Ever try to find a part to fit the original equipment in an aging house which still works fine except for the gasket or valve or handle you need at a WalMart???
The Starbucks opened last week....I still goto the local coffee cafe a litlle farther from my house but it is locally owned, has great (dare I say better) coffee and FREE WiFi. They know what I like and how I like it. I can see friends there or do business there and I often do both.
The city center will eventually get built. The services will arrive. And those new neighborhoods will become older, mature neighborhoods in their own right.

Rio Rancho Growing Pains

As often happens in the flurry of urban growth, Rio Rancho is stumbling in its rush to grow. The city fathers fired the city manager a few weeks ago. He had been in the process of negotiating with a firm to build the actual city center complex. At the time they said that negotiations were almost completed with the firm and there would be no problem in moving forward. Now they have ended negotiations and will have to start from scratch with a new firm.
You have to understand that this complex is in the middle of nowhere at the moment. There is a recently completed event center that houses the hockey team and provides a venue for large concerts and the builders show was there this past weekend. There is a nice road that goes to the event center and skirts what is the site of the proposed city center. There are numerous residential developments between the existing city and the new city center. The University of NewMexico has begun plans to build the campus that will be a major part of the complex....but any plans for the city offices and the retail development areas are back at square one.
So what does this have to do with recycled housing? There isn't a lot of infrastructure in those new developments because they were/are dependent on the major development beingdone by the city for its buildings. There are a lot of half acre lots in the area that had increased in value...there are a lot of new homes that suddenly will not be anywhere near the city center for much longer than their builders thought. Older homes in the existing city with mature landscaping and large lots look REALLY good to a lot of people these days.

Annex the Outdoors

One of the best ways to make a small house feel larger is to connect it to the outside. Frank Lloyd Wright was a master of this techniqe. Some of his smallest designs feel like mansions because of the creative use of walls of glass, French doors patios and balconies. He would sometimes use a balcony off a small upper room to make it connect to the outside while simutaneously providing shelter for a patio beneath. He used large roof overhangs to provide shelter for decks and patios. The made the area feel part of the house since they were under roof, eventhough they did not have walls.
Today we have the advantage of much more sophisticated technology to provide weatherproof glazing appropriate to temper heat gain and loss. We have roofing materials treated to do the same. We have deck materials that reuse sawdust and old milk cartons andwe have access to recycled urban lumber. Many of us have forgotten the pleasure of sitting on the front porch with a glass of iced tea visiting with a neighbor. I have to admit that Wright did not encourage this behaviour. He tended to make the public side of his houses, the side that faced the street as closed and sheltered as possiblec reating atriums inside and vast expanses of outdoor living area on the more private sides of the house.
Wherever you decide to open your home to the outdoors, you will find that you increase your living space by much more than the actual size of the patio or deck. The feeling of openess and the visual effect is enormous. Even in cold snowy climates where you may not be able to go out into the area year round, the visual presnce of the space is powerful.

Need More Living Space?

Many of us are getting cabin fever about now and dreaming of the spring and summer to come. One way to add more living space to your current abode is to be creative about multi-use rooms. How many of us have a guest room that has a bed in it that is seldom used? Consider putting a futon or sofa bed in the guest room and using the space as a library, a sewing room, a home office (not a good idea if you have a home business and mightneed to use the office when you have company staying there) or as a meditation space or exercise room.
What about the formal dinning room that sees large numbers of people only on holidays? It could become a media center or a music room and still be put to use for those large family meals by simply moving the table and chairs into a different configuration unless you have formal dining room furniture inherited from Aunt Martha that simply can't be parted with or fit anywhere else. In that case, you can still use the table for other purposes during the rest of the year as long as you protect it adequately from any damage it might be subject to from being used as a sewing table or a craft table.
One of the best multi use spaces I have seen was a utility closet that was wallpapered inside and sliding shelves installed , one at just the right height to hold a sewing machine; it also contained a fold down ironing board and iron. made the perfect sewing spot and was right next to the laundry room.

Vintage Prefab Homes

There is a lot of buzz these days about various forms of prefab homes. There is a lot to be said for the advantages of building things in a factory. The economy of being able to buy large quantities of materials and store thm indoors away from weather damage is one. Having the shelter of the factory in which to build not only means that construction is not slowed by the weather outside but that materials are not damaged by warping or other weather related problems during the framing stage.
Things are built to a factory standard so that the fit together correctly....and if for any reason they need to be replaced later, the replacement will also fit. Things built in a factory setting cost less. They can be constructed more quickly by workers who do the same job daily and know exactly what they need to do. Measurements are accurate and consistent.
The Sears kit houses built between 1908 and 1940 were very popular. More than 100,000 were sold. They varied in size from muli-storied elaborate homes with art glass windows and French doors to simple three room houses with no bath (an outhouse was available for additional cost). These houses made it possible for people who might be able to buy the land but could not afford to have someone design and build a house for them to own a well built cozy home. There were 447 different mail order homes to choose from over the years; even then, kit homes did not necessarily mean "cookie cutter"!
Today, innovators like the folks at H-Haus are looking at the possibilities of creating a home built to be functional, beautiful and sustainable. Aaron Bohrer, one of the principles of the company is quoted in TREND magazine as saying "We wanted to design something that not only was functional but had a distinct aesthetic. H-Haus is a testament to how simple it is to build in a way that is both beautiful and concientious-an experiment to see what richness can be drawn from preexisting materials chosen for their energy efficient properties." You can check out their website at www.h-haus.com