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  • From: tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Rediscovering low cost tract housing
  • Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:59:25 -0500

There is big money in building really low-cost houses. Can't do it the old 1950's way when a builder could turn almost any raw land into cheap, usable lots in ninety days, complete with roads, water, sewage and electrical utilities. My finished lot cost never exceeded $1800---$50,000 is more common now.

Where and how to do it now? In the bombed-out, tax-foreclosed inner cities, where there are thousands of already-surveyed, building lots, with roads, water, sewage and electric utilities already in place. You would have to get the cooperation of a city government---no big problem, these lots yield no revenue, soak up a lot of taxes better spent on other purposes, so the lots would be either free or ridiculously low-cost to the builder as compared to the lot-cost of building anyplace else. You might have to hop around a little to satisfy municipal authorities, but a large number of the foreclosed lots would be contiguous---a great side-effect being that a builder could set up onsite jigs, fixtures and other aids to mass-production that efficient builders employed in the 1950's---and no longer do.

Gets around that secret, nagging conscience too---builders eating up good agricultural land are the locusts of our time.

Housebuilding is not for everybody---including Keith Bellinger there were only two on the Homestead List, and a lot of one-time housebuilders have opted for home improvements to simplify their working lives---like my next-door neighbor Chris Bedard, a French-Canadian immigrant who is a licensed general contractor, electrician and plumber up to his ears in business. He is planning a long trip by road to Alaska in June---a contractor who built homes would find that hard to do.

I really liked tract-building---got the same emotional lift from it as I got from growing corn on the farm (another destructive enterprise).







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