Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: Re: Cutting Housing Costs

[Martin Tracy (mtracy]

Wow!  That was an inspiring posting, Harry!  We could do a whole thread on 
house 
size alone.  Let's see...

The American pioneer family of four lived in an 800 sq ft house.  Don Metz, in 
<New Compact House Designs>, writes:

"Despite a compelling demography of ever-smaller families, more childless 
couples, more singles and senior citizens, the average American dwelling unit 
increased in size by roughly 15 percent during the '80's, reaching a median of 
1,850 sq ft.  (In contrast, the average household in Japan in 1990 contained 
approximately 850 sq ft of living space)."

My Japanese house (900 sq ft) was a comfortable place to live for two years.  
Our current house (750 sq ft) is a little small.  We've had to make the garage 
double as a dance studio, and storage is at a premium.  But we've been fairly 
comfortable here for seven years.

At Sharingwood, we will be building a larger house, at least 1200 sq ft.  Why?  
In our interest to live more lightly on the earth, we would like to buy food 
and 
necessities in more earth-friendly containers.  These generally come in larger 
packages and need to be kept from the wee friendly beasts.  So we need a 
substantial pantry.  Instead of a garage, we will build a dance studio in the 
(daylight) basement, convertable to a guest room or a room for aging parents.

The more extensive the common house, the smaller we could build.  At 
Sharingwood, many of the houses built are quite large (I guess an average of 
2,500 sq ft) and the common house is modestly sized.

Many of the cohousing groups we've seen have one or two simply enormous houses 
(4,000 sq ft++ for one household, or even for one person).  This is one of the 
more obvious physical differences between the cohousing groups and the communes 
that we have seen.  No wonder affordability is a problem!  Not to mention local 
requirements to build houses of a generous <minimum> size.







>Here is another PROVEN way to drastically reduce construction costs while at
>the same time maintaining good quality as well as keeping the homes liveable.
>
>This solution is called the "Grow Home", which is a four year old rebirth of
>an old idea. About 7000 "Grow Homes" have been built in Canada and around the
>world in the past four years.
>
>I have spent time with the original builder/developer-he did the original
>market research  as well he built the first hundred "Grow Homes"-the first 50
>pre-sold in a week!
>
>Here is the concept:
>
>*The house sells for $70,000 Canadian (including land) - that's $50,000 US
>dollars.
>
>*The builder makes a profit of $10,000 Canadian per unit! ($7000 US).
>
>*The houses are two story, 1 1/2 bathrooms, 2 bedrooms, plus 75% finished
>insulated basement (1 or 2 more bedrooms)-"townhouse".
>
>*The houses are 1000 sq. ft. (they are now going to build 700 sq. footers).
>
>So.............if you built 700 sq. footers, and if you managed the
>construction; thereby, reducing construction costs by $5000 per unit-then you
>can have cohousing at $35,000 per unit.
>
>Put in some sweat equity and reduce the price even more.
>No its not a pipe dream-there are 7000 units up!
>
>More info needed? Contact me.
>Harry (Harry_Pasternak [at] tvo.org)
>
>



-- 
Martin Tracy, Los Angeles
mtracy [at] ix.netcom.com