What if you want a house but can't afford it? Most of us in this boat are renting. But what if you had a morgage payment of around $60 a month?
The concept of the $20K house was featured in this month's Metropolitan Home. It is an interesting article about a design program in Alabama where students and others are working to design prototypes of homes that cost $20,000 to construct: $10,000 in materials and $10,000 in labor.
Like many good ideas, this concept came out of an idea to solve a problem, in this case one observed in rural Alabama:
Eventually Dorr (the organizer of the program) discovered that some of the widows had, in fact, applied to Rural Development, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program, for loans to help them buy a new house. "Their applications were getting approved," says Dorr. "There was a stack of them in our local office. And they were just sitting there." The problem, Dorr learned, was that although the women were deemed good credit risks, their incomes were so low — typically, $637 a month from Social Security — that they could afford to repay only a $20,000 loan. And everyone knows that there's no such thing as a $20,000 house. "Well, there wasn't at the time," Dorr says with a laugh.
Most of the houses are between 300-600 square feet and while this trend may be on the extreme thrift end, it does make you think about the possible ways we can make housing more affordable for everyone.
Check out the original article "The 20K House" in Metropolitan Home…
Check out the Rural Studio website…
Check out the Rural Studio blog..
This is like my house, except mine is about 100 years old, (600 sq. ft., excluding the garage). It once housed a family of 7 as well! Kinda makes you think about the way people are somehow reverting back to a simpler (and closer) way of living.
Or you could just move to Detroit where houses that have been repossessed by the banks are going for $1,100. No joke.
I can’t believe someone didn’t act on this before. Architects are already working in cities on cheap ways to build low-income housing… why can’t they expand it to all types of buildings?!
By the way, Jeremy mentioned Breaking even today in his blog wwww.basiceating.blogspot.com.
I just had to let you know 🙂
Robby, I didn’t know your house was 600 sq feet! It’s a great size… maybe not for seven people though.
Sarah, I thought of your brother in architecture school when I saw this article!
I’m claustrophobic and have way too much stuff, so I’d have to seriously de-clutter my life before this option would be feasible for me. However, I see the value and think it’s about time. Now they need to get back to cutting the restaurant portions and get rid of the big, ridiculous vehicles we don’t need to be driving around (i.e. HUMMERS!)