Habitat is a wonderful program. In my community, they get lots of donations of used / surplus building materials. They use what they can in the new houses, but also run a store to sell what they can't use to make money for the new construction. I have volunteered a few times in the construction - I think from an energy standpoint they build good houses, but I wouldn't call them green. The put in the recommended amount of insulation, provide a good quality conventional gas water heater, a good quality but not max efficiency air conditioner, single pane glass windows. Again I am not criticizing Habitat - Their goal is to build the most homes they can for working poor, and the homes have to be a huge improvement in efficiency relative to the poor quality rental housing they replace. But, as we raise money with volunteer carbon offsets, I think an interesting use of that money would be make grants to the local Habitat groups to provide high efficiency upgrades on their construction..

I'll buy this as 'green-er' low cost housing, but not especially 'green' overall. Not that sustainability has to be expensive.

Those overhangs are awfully modest for Florida, which has some very strong, low sun angles. Window tint? Again, better than not, but not all that intriguing.

I'd like to hear a lot more about passive and fan driven natural air changes for cooling, the heat rejected by that galvalume roofing, natural humidity control...

They managed to limit impervious surfaces with the driveway pads and the entry overhang is a nice touch.

To me, building houses for poor people isn't such a bright idea. I would think it would be more efficient and cheaper to build apartments for these people, and make sure it is close to downtown or on a bus-line. It's got to be more expensive to build 20 separate houses on 20 separate pieces of land rather than one apartment building with 20 units on one piece of land. And I would say don't have any parking, make the apartment rent free and put an area for a community garden for the people in the apartment complex. That should be cheaper and then you have more money to spend on making the building even more eco-friendly. Also because they are sharing the apartment building, utilities should be more efficient and therefor cheaper for the low-income families.

@ Eric,

In theory your idea should work, but in practise it does not. I'm not sure of your geographical location, but here in the UK we refer to what you have described as "high rise flats".

To cut a long story short, dense residential area of low income families have ALWAYS led to anti-social behaviour. These places have existed here for the last 40 years, and they are in fact "hell holes", you would not go near these places at night if you knew what was good for you.

ry

Ryan, I agree with you. Low income neighborhoods built specifically as such are time-bombs waiting to become slums.

On the other hand, building up instead of out is better, but seems more challenging than getting a recycled material made house that uses less energy up in two weeks. There has to be a compromise somewhere.

And I can vouch for the Florida heat, that house should have been designed as a passive solar home AND xeriscaped.

Finally, I am bummed I didn't hear about this, Oceola county is not all that far from me. I would've helped build that house!

heh, provided I am not required to "pray" to help build habitat homes in Oceola county...

first sentence on the home page:
"The first thing Habitat asks for from any individual or group that shows an interest is to pray. Pray for the organization, the leaders who guide it, the volunteers who give of themselves and the families who are in need of simple decent housing."

Can I just send good vibes instead?

Eric, I would suggest you visit habitat.org to find out what the organization actually does before sharing your personal views about the needs of "poor people." You might be interested to learn that Habitat is not in the business of providing free or even cheap homes to people who cannot afford housing. Unlike the solutions you suggest, Habitat's programs are more likey to break the cycle of poverty in the communities that they serve.

@ Ryan
I'm sure the fact that those are bad areas is not because of the low income housing being apartments or high rises instead of single houses. I know in California there are ghetto areas just as dangerous and suffering yet there are mostly suburb type single homes. Bad neighborhoods exist usually because of bad city design (in a simplified sense). For either one to work well with low income families there should be mixed-use building (so there can be jobs nearby), and also mixed-class communities (so hopefully there can be some understanding of each other). If there is bad design in the layout of the community, then it won't matter what type of structure they use, no matter how green.

For an analogy if you take all the sick people in a city and group them together, no one there is gonna get better. Most likely it will get worse and possibly spread.

again the liberal use of the word "green" i understand the use of more preferable materials and some smart design elements but without some sort of third party verification who's word are we taking? does it have certification from Energy Star, LEED for Homes or even the new HAHB program?

what are the recycled materials used to build this houses in oceola county, does anyone know