Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Comm. Land Trusts at Affordable Cohousing conf.

[Brian Bartholomew (bartholomew.brian]

 Fred H Olson <fholson [at] cohousing.org> writes:

> Clearly our current system with the price set by supply/demand is
> disfunctional and unsustainable.

Our current housing market does not have the minimum price set by
supply/demand. Instead, the minimum price is set by legislation which
requires minimum sizes and features. This arrangement is functional
for boomers who voted for it, dysfunctional for millennials who didn't
vote for it, and unsustainable.

> Markets are created by humans / society and could be changed.

Currency inflation, bank licenses, and minimum house size laws are all
created by humans, and could be changed. The expected trend of house
prices in a system of supply/demand is forever downward, as building
and repairing houses gets cheaper due to technological innovation
which reduces material and labor inputs.

> Cohousing-L post from From: Rebecca Lane
> Affordable home ownership models Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013
> http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousing-L/msg36094.html
>
> In each of these models, someone other than the resident pays the
> full cost of construction.

One model omitted from that list is housing that is cheap enough to
build the occupant can afford it, possibly with short-term labor from
their community. Are there readers in income-sharing communities with
farms who could talk about barn raisings, kits for steel buildings and
structural insulated panel houses? Once there was a SIP panel kit
house factory in Florida who sold a 1,500 SF house kit for $45K, had a
140 MPH wind rating and some level of LEED certification. After a
slab was poured and a ridge box beam welded, one person with a
forklift could assemble the shell in a week. Factory had an on-staff
GC who would hold the liability for building completion, this allowed
ordinary mortgage lenders to lend to self-builders. Of course the
city and county would not allow the self-builder to live onsite in an
RV, they had to waste a rental payment on housing elsewhere.

Brian