affordable housing

AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Last night I was reading the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine and good ol’ Dave Duffy was writing in his editorial about an affordable house alternative. Many folks he knew were unable to afford housing out in the country in his neck of the woods. Of course, this was Oregon so that is understandable. It seems the Bolsheviks over there want to get everyone out of the country and into massed condos ( the Yankee equivalent of Soviet apartment blocks ) with mass transportation. In the Liberals wet dream of paradise we all live like rats in a cage and leave the pure Natural land untouched by unworthy human hands.
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They advocate the same lifestyle I do. Small homes, no automobiles, cheap natural food. The basic difference is that I look at it as a voluntary step to avoid financial servitude whereas they want to force everyone into their version of a sustainable future. In a way they might be correct. If Peak Oil is going to happen then it would behoove us to live in small energy efficient dwellings and take public transportation and live in the city close to work. And have our food grown locally. The problem is forcing that down other peoples throats, despite whatever merits it might have. I think a lot of ideas have merit but that doesn’t mean you can force them on to others. Let them suffer from their own folly.
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So Dave had the brilliant idea that one should get a metal building put up. You know, the ones advertised in all the self sufficiency magazines, steel buildings for several thousand bucks on up. The idea was to live in it now and then slowly add on electrical and plumbing as you could afford. The size he had in mind ran about $18,000. If you had that much it would be a debt free house. But that was only a building ( it included the foundation and labor ). You needed to buy the land and put in septic and add plumbing and blah, blah, blah. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good idea in comparison to other middle class building options. It is just that it is far from affordable. You can do a lot better for less.
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You all know, unless you are new here and should of course immediately go to my site and buy all my books to get up to speed, www.bisonpress.com , that I advocate used travel trailer living. It is very affordable, starting at under a grand for the smaller models. It is turn-key, meaning you can set it up and have it livable almost instantly. And it doesn’t have to go through building inspections. But I realize there are those of you out there that are too classy and ritzy and wouldn’t be caught dead in a trailer because your excretions don’t in any way smell and you would have been royalty had you only been born a hundred and fifty years earlier. So, okay. Fine. You won’t live in a trailer. Park a trailer on your land to live in as you build a cabin. Use the trailer for the toilet and kitchen. You can build as you can afford it, paying as you go.
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You could disguise your cabin as storage sheds and avoid any permits. My idea has always been to build an underground house under a trailer. You escape building inspectors, get a temperature stable dwelling and hide all your valuables. Perhaps an enclosed porch in the front of the trailer with a hidden trap door leading down to the underground room. A steel cargo container for under a grand could be buried and be your room. You couldn’t put too much dirt on top without reinforcing the roof as they are corner load bearing, but rebar and cement on a eight by twenty roof should be cheap. The only challenge is figuring out the stairway/entrance room leading to it. I would think this is a much cheaper way to go than a professionally erected building.
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Another option would be to set up the travel trailer and build on to it. I have seen mobile homes and travel trailers shrink to about one third of the house size as built on rooms eventually dwarfed the original structure. You pay as you go, get more than 200 square feet and should be able to escape the building inspector. If you don’t add electric or plumbing you might be able to pass off the additions as enclosed porches and storage sheds. Chances are good that you will be off the grid anyway so you can hook up a home made septic to the original trailer flush toilet and use the trailer 12v lights and for the rest of the structure use kerosene and/or propane light.
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I like the size of my thirty two foot trailer. It fits me and the wife and the cats very well. With a very small shed added to one end I could store all my junk. A shed on the other end would hold all my storage food. An enclosed porch would alleviate cabin fever. But there is only a budget to consider when considering your add on size. You can build as big or as small as you desire. Surely even your high end high maintenance wife can agree to this kind of compromise. Cheap, pay as you go, electric and flush commode, and debt free.
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Let’s see what you can get for under that $18,000. A land lot for less than $3,000 if care is taken where you buy it. $3,000 for a big trailer in very good shape. $2,000 for the first few sheds, add ons and porch. Ten thousand less. And that is spending more to satisfy the wife. In an area with utilities. You could spend $500 for a used cab over camper. $500 for a big shed. And $1,000 for a decent lot of land. Almost anyone can get two grand from a tax return. Heck, you don’t even have to live there except on vacations. The rest of the time find a poor but trustworthy person to caretake it for you. And have it as a back-up. Come the Depression the wife will be glad for a place to live, however primitive. And it will give you a project. Buy the lumber as you can and you and the guy living there can slowly but surely build on to it. It could be a retirement cabin if no collapse comes but Social Security screws you over in the end.
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