Homestead mailing list

[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

keith bellinger wrote:

> I hate tract housing, it's boring to build it and more boring to live 
> in it. I suppose if I was the owner it might have been different. I 
> know one contractor I worked for made a killing from me and my crew. 
> On the plus side, we got better and faster as the houses went up until 
> the miserly per square foot price we got made a little sense.
>
>
> tvoivozhd wrote:
>
> > I really liked tract-building---got the same emotional lift from it 
> > as I got from growing corn on the farm (another destructive enterprise).
tvoivozhd---a big enough tract makes it possible to build in 
neighborhood amenities such as parks, greenway-pedestrian and bike 
paths, off-street parking, joint gardening tracts upon which 
house-clusters impinge, small shopping areas, schools, libraries, 
clinics---can't do this on scatter-lots.  Scatter-lot houses tend to be 
more interesting, but the award-winning Godfrey and Farmer tract housing 
in Phoenix back in the 1950's had interchangeable modules for esthetic 
differences---according to the FHA, best houses---and unbeatable 
price---$6500 to $7500, including the usual quarter acre lot---and Felix 
Lobo built a livable house in Puerto Rico for $4500.  Smaller lot and 
concrete walls poured in steel forms---hell for strong but monotonous as 
far as appearance was concerned.