The first two prototypes of the Texas Grow Homes are nearing completion in Port Arthur, TX.
The homes are the two models designed by architects Camargo and Gleason.
Posted by: John Henneberger | November 3, 2009
First two Texas Grow Home prototypes nearing completion
Posted in Construction
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 19, 2008
Is Port Arthur becoming the dumping ground for the nation’s toxic waste
As if Port Arthur does not have enough problems trying to recover from Hurricane Rita and deal with a huge unemployemnt and 25 percent overty rate the New York Times reports today that a plan s afoot to bring tons of highly toxic PCBs to the city from Mexico for disposal.
The environmental Protection agency has given preliminary approval to transport 40,000 pounds of PCBs to Port Arthur from Mexico. They would be incenerated in a plant that has been critized by environmental activists and which the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says has an “average” compliance history.
The Times has also posted an interesting short video that includes an interview with community activist Hilton Kelly.
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 15, 2008
Security considerations conflict with design
The conflict between the aesthetic and functional considerations of design and the realities of living and maintaining a house in a low income neighborhood keeps coming into play.
The latest example manifests itself in the dilemma between including lots of functional windows in the house and keeping the house safe from break-ins. When we showed the plans of one house to a potential buyer this was one of the first things he noted. His existing house has only a very few, very small windows. And those windows are located very high up on the walls. So high in fact that you cannot look out of any window while seated.
Yet he says he likes it that way. The reason: it’s hard for people to break in.
This is clearly a concern in the neighborhoods of Port Arthur that we are building in. At least one in every three houses has burglar bars on all the windows. A fire danger associated with these old fashion burglar bars makes me cringe.
So this sent us back to the drawing boards, or rather off to the Internet, to try to find some security devices that could allow for large and plentiful windows and still provide adequate protection from break-ins. So far we are weighing two options.
The first, to install special storm windows on the houses that make it essentially impossible to break the glass to gain entry. The problem with this approach is that it still does not prevent someone from prying open the windows to gain entry. The second approach is to install interior locking shutters on the windows. While the windows can still be pried or broken to gain entry the locked interior shutters should frustrate the would-be burglar. Both of these options were add considerably the price of houses. The storm windows would cost $3000-$4000 for the house and the shutters would cost at least as much. Since we are already well over our target budget this is a big consideration.
There are some less expensive security measures we are also considering adding. Five foot chain-link fencing around the yard is one option. Another option are floodlights connected to motion detectors at the corners of the house. And then finally there is the possibility of adding interior motion detectors and a security system. But the cost of maintaining a security system may be too much for the low income families.
Posted in Design | Tags: Home security
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 7, 2008
We will build in Port Arthur, Texas
We have selected Port Arthur, Texas as a location for building the prototype homes For the Texas Grow Home project. The city, located at the southeastern most part of Texas right on the Gulf of Mexico, was near Ground Zero for Hurricane Rita.
Port Arthur has seen hard economic times before the hurricane. The median family income is only about $27,000 a year and a quarter of the households in the city fall below the poverty level.
44% of the city is African-American and 32% white. There are significant Hispanic and Vietnamese populations as well.
Low median household incomes and low value homes predominately characterize African-American households in Port Arthur. The median household income for African-Americans is less than $21,000 per year and the median house value of homes occupied by African-Americans is less than $30,000.
A major part of the two thirds of the population comprised of people of color live in older wood frame homes generally constructed from the 1930s through the 1940s. Many of these homes have a significant amount of deferred maintenance prior to the hurricane. When Hurricane Rita came ashore in 2005 these older homes were extremely vulnerable to the high force winds.
While accurate numbers are not available, a very high proportion of the low income population in Port Arthur who own their homes had little or no homeowners insurance because of the high price of insurance on the Gulf Coast and the extremely low incomes of these homeowners.
Lower income neighborhoods in Port Arthur and their residence share a number of characteristics with extremely low income neighborhoods in New Orleans that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
We selected Port Arthur is the location to build the model homes because of the large extremely low income population of homeowners who had been affected by the disaster of Hurricane Rita. Also, Port Arthur was at the center of a lot of positive housing rehabilitation and reconstruction activity on the part of local churches and community organizations and national faith-based organizations. This meant that there would be organizations on the ground we could work with to identify families to participate in our housing program.
Posted in Construction, Overall project | Tags: Port Arthur
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 6, 2008
We are working to post all of the designs
I have been contacted by a lot of people who would like to see all of the designs that were submitted for the Texas Grow Home design competition. I started out telling people we would have all the designs posted online by the end of March but that deadline came and went.
The problem is that each of the design submissions was made in the form of two 20 inch by 20 inch boards. The architects also provided PDF files of the images of each board. Unfortunately these images are too large to effectively post for downloading on the Internet. For purposes of the display at the Texas Capitol an incredibly talented web designer named Adam Stoddart created an interface using Flash that we had running on touchscreen computers. It’s quite beautiful and very clever but porting this over to a web-based presentation is going to take quite a bit of time and a fair amount of money. But we are working on it.
In the meantime, to hold off those who just can’t wait we can burn a computer DVD of the presentation and mail it to folks. You need a DVD-R drive in your computer and you need a fairly fast computer in order to make the presentation work. If you just can’t wait another couple months to see all of the designs you can send us a check for $12 to offset the duplication and postage costs and we will send you a DVD. The address is: TxLIHIS, 508 Powell Street, Austin, TX 78703-5122.
For those who’ve been waiting patiently, we appreciate your patience and are doing our best to bring the presentation of all the design entries online in the next couple months.
Posted in Design
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 6, 2008
Sweating the budget
One of the most important aspects of the Texas Grow Home project is to develop a safe, comfortable and architecturally pleasing house for a very modest cost. As we get ready to put the houses out for bid we are getting nervous about the costs.
A criteria in the design competition was that the architects were to design a house which could be built in a two bedroom, one bath configuration for no more than $54,000. They were also asked to design a one bedroom, one bath addition that could be added on for no more than $23,000. These costs do not include utilities, site work, appliances and soft costs.
A budgeting assumption was that the houses could be built for less if they were built in quantities and fabricated as modular or panalized units. We have known from the beginning however that we were not going to achieve these economies of scale in building the prototypes.
The project has secured a funding commitment from the Texas Department of Housing and Community affairs for $250,000. These funds will provide the interim construction financing and permanent mortgage financing through an interest free loan.
This gives us $62,500 to build each of the four houses.
It looks like we are going to catch a little break because three of the four families we are working to qualify at this point only need two-bedroom houses.
The houses will be built to replace homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Rita. The good news is that there will be no cost to buy lots to build the prototype houses. The bad news is that we will have to pay to demolish the existing dilapidated houses.
Our team members coordinating the construction tell me that they expect we’re going to exceed our budget once we get the bids in and we total up all of the other costs of construction and demolition. How much we go over budget is the first thing we’re worried about. Where we come up with the extra funds is the second.
When we began this project and secured funding from the state to build prototype houses we intended to only build three. But given the excitement of the judges for the four designs and the compelling needs of the families we have encountered in Port Arthur we felt compelled to try to squeeze in fourth house to test another design and to help another needy family.
Posted in Construction, Design | Tags: Construction budget, House design
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 6, 2008
Bringing folks up to date
Here is a little background on what’s happened so far to bring you up-to-date.
We began work o this project back in the Summer of 2007 with the idea of doing a design competition and building some prototype houses to be used as models for alternatives to FEMA trailers. The “Katrina Cottage” concept was out there and we were big fans of the idea. But as advocates for low-income Texas families and their housing needs we had become concerned with the direction of the FEMA sponsored Katrina Cottage demonstration program designed to prove up the concept. One of our biggest concerns was the failure to tailor the program to meet the needs of the poor and the lack of consultation with low incomes survivors over the program design.
Besides, we were narrowly focused of poor families who really needed a long term housing solution and who were never really going to have the assets to build onto a small Katrina cottage to make it a permanent home. So we develop some criteria and sponsored a design competition to come up with a “post-Katrina Cottage” model. Our design considerations are outlined on the page you can get to by clicking the “about” tab above.
A prominent Austin architect, Tom Hatch, who has long been a champion of affordable housing in Texas took the proposal for a design competition before the Texas Society of Architects Board of Directors to ask them to cosponsor the design competition. The Pohlad Foundation in Minnesota had already sought us out and provided a small amount of funding to cover expenses. The community banker, Linda McMahon, of Chase Bank pledged the funds to provide awards for the winning architects. Michael Gerber, executive director of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs took a proposal to his board of directors to provide mortgage funding to finance the prototype houses from the Texas housing trust fund. The Houston Endowment generously provided a modest grant to cover my time in working on the project through the first year. Gretchen Schartle and Standish Mecham became key promoters of the project. Most importantly, the remarkable Stephen Fairfield, executive director of the faith-based group, Covenant Community Capital of Houston committed to oversee the construction of the winning designs.
On January 8 thirteen judges assembled at the Texas Capitol to review 83 designs submitted by teams of architects from across Texas. The judges included people whose homes were destroyed by hurricane Rita, the mayor of Port Arthur, some of the most prominent Texas architects and national experts in affordable housing design. The judges picked before winning designs. I’ll discuss in each in separate postings later.
Working with a dedicated staff at Lutheran Social Services Disaster Relief in Port Arthur we are now busy identifying families to match to each of the four winning designs.
Posted in Overall project | Tags: Texas Grow Home project
Posted by: John Henneberger | June 6, 2008
An open invitation to give us a hand
I woke up this morning and realized that we needed help.
It is not that I think we are not managing this project well but the need to get this right, the design of the houses, the fabrication approaches, the design of the program to meet the needs of really poor families all demand that we have some more folks joining us to make sure we have though through the best solutions.
For the better part of a year a small handful of us have been on a mission to make sure that the next time disaster strikes a low-income community as did Hurricanes Katrina and Rita we will be better prepared to help low-income people recover their homes. That is the purpose of this project.
Over the course of the past year I have learned just how unprepared we as a society, and in particular our government is to deal with the needs of the poor in a disaster. The news in the days following Hurricane Katrina showed us all this, but for those of us who have followed and been involved in the rebuilding effort for what is now almost three years we know that little has been done to make sure this does not happen again.
The heros of the rebuilding efforts are the faith based organizations and volunteers who have not waited for a governmental response but have rolled up their sleeves and help people patch up and rebuild. But the immensity of the Katrina and Rita disasters have meant that even this heroic effort has fallen far short of meeting the needs.
Our Texas Grow Home Project is not a solution to the past disasters but is our effort to design a better future response to make sure this never happens again. You can click on the “About” tab in the header and read about the project.
I remember following a blog in the New York Times where some people were designing and building their dream vacation house in Florida. Thousands wrote comments advising about design, contracting and construction.
This may well be naive but I am starting this blog to share our experience with this project publicly in the hopes that other folks will see the value of the idea behind this project and will offer their advice, wisdom and support as we work through the construction of the prototype homes and move on to refine the prototypes and design a better disaster response next time low-income folks are impacted by natural disaster.
Please post your comments under any of the entries.
Posted in Overall project | Tags: housing rebuilding, Hurricane Rita
