100k house

I came across 100khouse through the GOOD Magazine blog - wow. Sign me up.

It's the brainchild of Postgreen, a real estate developer that specializes in modern urban green building. Working in collaboration with interface studio architects and Build it Green, they are attempting to build an environmentally astute, well designed house with two bedrooms and one and a half baths on an urban lot in North Philadelphia for around $100/square foot. The interior renderings look amazing.

Somebody - the Civic Innovation Lab, The Cleveland Foundation, Enterprise - SOMEBODY - needs to get on the phone with these people and figure out how to bring this to Cleveland.

This statement on the "About" page is so true:

"Basically $100K seems to be the “magic number” in circles of those of us seeking an affordable and modern home. "

I talk about this a lot with my friends in the city - there just is no housing purchase options for people in the middle. It's all either pricey new construction or older houses that are a nightmare to heat and need a lot of work.

It's so inspiring that someone looked at this set of problems - cost, size, location, and environmental realities - and instead of seeing impossibilities put their brains to work on creative solutions. People want to live in a well-designed space, but they don't want to mortgage their futures to pay for it. The new housing that is being constructed around Cleveland is oblivious to the fact that there is a vast, untapped market for affordable, well-designed, environmentally conscious housing - and not just locally, nationwide. Make housing cool enough and cheap enough, and people will relocate here. Then the city will really start to sing.

A good place to try this would be the area around the proposed Design District, but every neighborhood in the city, even the so-called gentrified ones, could benefit.

Clusters of tax-exempt $250k+ townhomes aren't going to be enough to turn the ship around - we need to aspire to a more revolutionary approach. Cleveland could become nationally, even internationally, renowned as a lab for housing.

Ideas, ideas!