what type of house we are talking about?

[Arturs]

hi, all 300$ housers!

may be a good idea would be to agree on a kind of “typology” of houses we are talking about; we could avoid some unnecessary confusion or argumentation. 

Just as an idea for discussion:

• emergency shelters
• ready-for-use houses
• DIY concepts

1. Emergency shelters:

a temporary solution for after-disaster areas (not meant to be a life-time solution)

Pure charity/human aid/government business. Not much interaction between the manufacturers and consumers. Harsh competition among suppliers and their patented designs.

2. Redy-for-use houses:

meant for permanent living, a real estate.

single-story (peripheral or rural) or multi-level (city) houses?

2. a. - single story houses:

cost anywhere between 1000$ and 10 000$ and more.

Heavily depends on subsidies, charity, crediting.

If someone from the top of BoP invests 5000$ - expects individuality, unless the house is given for free. It is a big challenge to satisfy individuality when aiming super-low cost mass-production. Various clever designs are competing.

Such house itself makes not much sense, alone, always comes along with land and infrastructure. Business heavily depends on real-estate developers, governments.

2.b. - multi-story houses. I have no comments here, may be somebody can add.

3. DIY solutions for self-built, incrementally developed housing.

Meant primarily for rural areas - to slow down the urbanization, urban slums.

Here is a real chance to reach costs so low to be affordable, without subsidizing. $300 seems realistic.

Local micro-finance is enough to buy components which cannot be self-made.

A few good concepts of “standard” solutions needed - to uniform components design for  mass-production. Components (panels, hardware, windows, doors, roof-cover, construction elements, isolation, electrical and plumbery elements, solar panels, ovens, furniture etc., etc.) can be mass-produced anywhere in the world, giving the priority to the local manufacturers. If any component can be produced locally (various types of solutions for walls, floors, roof-decking - made of mud, clay, timber, bamboo, straw, coconut flakes or what-ever) - they must be made locally for own consumption and for selling to a neighbor village or country. Think global network.

Do hope on brainstorming!

Arturs

[Christian]

I would like to add one more to Arturs' list:

- a "planned, integrated village": built for and with the community with affordable housing, water, sanitation, education, farming, school and clinic.  Most importantly, "micro-jobs" are built into the village ecosystem - as Ian has been saying for some time!

cheers,

C

[Pete]

C, 

By micro-jobs built into the eco-system,are u referring to  part time endeavors that generate revenue incorporated into the infrastructure .

Almost like building a village .

 Or micro-jobs as in chores my wife would say takes "no time at all"?

Although the B home has applications in most of those categories,(primarily #3)in order to b truly sustainable , we need to integrate these factors into the designs.

affordable shelter  ,water, sanitation, education, farming, school and clinic.  Most importantly, "micro-jobs" are built into the village ecosystem .

But if I may dream harder,

Can these jobs / careers b rewarding,creative and

Integrated into the community.

As much as it feels like "preaching to the choir",

It feels good to reiterate some of "our" guiding principles:

If u will indulge some open source plagiarism:

affordable shelter -

What is the most efficient and practical way to safe comfortable ,spaces equipped w renewable energy distribution , fresh clean 

water,

sanitation (what is really required to provide a decent place to crap and deal with the inevitable resources)

Where r the living laboratories that r developing and testing composting,/closed cycle effluent treatment systems?

education ( THIS is OUR future!)

If we fail to create  a literate and competent 

Populace, we will reap what we sow.

 farming. 

No brainer here

school

and clinic. -

Back to creating and maintaining a healthy well educated populace..

And if I may add one more design component :

Community - if possible incorporate a sense of belonging and accountability .

Thanks for indulging me,apologies for the rant,

Just sayin....

Peace

Pete

Sent from my iPete

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[Ankit Khandelwal]

Interesting information. 

[Ian Fraser]

 

 

Hello All,

 

If I can throw another 2 cents worth in – people who need $300 houses exist in societies that are usually in a ground-down-steady-state – it’s not a walk up, push over to bring change to such.

 

The $300 house should really be one element in a carefully thought out package of elements that aim to bring about permanent change in such groups.

 

Said another way there is always some bastard with his foot on the poor persons neck and doesn’t want it to change and inside the group there are members who are too weak or stupid and will erode the beneficial change from the inside. So go with strategies to permanently handle both.

 

I think the $300 house needs to add some other specialties – not join other groups maybe but add specialist to the house project.

 

Think $300-Job project and $300-most-importantly-ranked-change-agent-projects in that community.

 

Specialists who can create/find jobs and income is a major. And it is possible. Permit outside start-up finance or assistance but don’t design it to run on external funding or charity. Big Good bUsiness is a better supporter than incompetent government in my experience. Do a deal with big-business is better than go cap in hand to a government who brought you the problems (you are working to fix) in the first place through incompetence or worse.

 

I saw a housing project in the Philippines not long ago where  well intentioned people had built a number of houses for a community and then went off and left the inhabitants to run all themselves – quite quickly the whole thing looked sadder than before they were helped and of course the (serious amount of) money was just wasted in the long run because the houses  began to self-demolish thru abuse and neglect.

 

And don’t shoot for the stars –achieve real world permanent better life change on the most important fronts  and go for the gold after that.

 

 I live in Sydney – its driven by jobs and money – suffers obesity, pollution, wastes resources like u wouldn’t believe, crappy education, self serving politicians, greedy developers, crap supermarkets forcing farmers to be crap and on and on – we are still working on gold standard life-style

 

 Stay real with the poor people.

 

Ian F

[Christian]

Pete - what I mean by "micro-jobs" are jobs which can be created in the community so that the money made stays in the community. It could be something as simple as what Bob Freling is doing with the Solar Electric Light Fund and drip irrigation. Increased crop yields put something like $7-10 a week into the pockets of the women farmers. This little amount makes all the difference between starving and surviving in sub-Saharan Africa.

Another example of a micro-job is the jobs created by micro-factory. Check out how Sanitary Napkin Man Arunachalam Muruganantham created micro-jobs in remote villages:

http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution.html

Ian, I agree with the points you are making - cannot be hit and run... the $300 House Village, for example, has to be sustainable over time!  

"Keep it real with the poor!" = well said!

cheers, C

[Ankit Khandelwal]

Quiet agree with these fact. Well, we can take example of the micro-economic financing as a start of funding for these projects. Like  Mohammad Yunus did in Bangladesh by starting Grameen Bank. This way, savings will be encouraged and the money can be circulated in the same place without going anywhere.

My 2 cents!

Ankit

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With Best Regards / Viele Grüße / Un Saludo

Ankit Khandelwal

Msc, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
NRI Contributor- Times of India

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