Habitat for Humanity, design center team up for project
Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006
Habitat for Humanity of Washington County wants to build more than just houses. The organization wants to build a neighborhood.
To do that, it will be partnering with the University of Arkansas Community Design Center.
Together, the groups are aiming high: It is their plan to help 20-30 families find new homes; create an ecological, hydrological model of a green, low impact housing development; educate and offer practical experience to architectural students; enhance and create value for the residents and the city; and build a foundation of home ownership for a new generation.
At its Nov. 7 meeting, the Fayetteville City Council will consider selling Habitat for Humanity eight acres of ground south of Huntsville Road for $ 152, 000, or $ 19, 000 per acre.
"It's a blessing," said Patsy Brewer, executive director of Habitat for Humanity. "The ultimate benefactors are the kids."
Aaron Gabriel, project director for the CDC, said the neighborhood design will organize homes "so they add up to a sense of place."
The project has not been designed yet, but Brewer and Gabriel have ideas. They are looking to create a new habitat for families while preserving the natural habitat.
They say the homes should be attractive and the neighborhood should be safe, not on a major street where children could get hurt. There should be a sense of community and a variety of buildings.
Most likely, the houses will look toward a center green area.
"It's an ecological build with lots of green space and homes built around that," said Brewer.
Plans will take into account the Habitat for Humanity requirements, but also help control the drainage off Mount Sequoyah with bio-swales and stormwater gardens.
"The end result is the family has to be able to afford it," said Brewer. "We want to empower them to take charge of their lives."
Most families selected for Habitat for Humanity homes have never lived in their own homes, Brewer said. It's one of the reasons Habitat for Humanity is so important for the children of the families it serves.
The families for the neighborhood project will have to meet all the usual requirements of the single-home projects built by Habitat for Humanity. These include financial and housing need; ability to pay; and classes in home ownership; but also require 300 hours of volunteer work (sweat equity ) on their own and other Habitat for Humanity homes.
Completed houses are sold to the families with individualized mortgages. Habitat for Humanity serves as the mortgage lender.
"We want them to succeed, we don't want the houses back," said Brewer.
Those goals, over the years, have led the organization to what some would call design limitations. Brewer calls them constraints.
For example, Habitat for Humanity homes tend to be "very basic and simple shelter"according to Brewer. The organization doesn't build garages. Donations and volunteer labor go for rooms for people, Brewer said.
They also have space requirements: a four-bedroom home tops out at 1, 230 square feet.
Habitat for Humanity prefers standard construction elements and techniques to facilitate volunteer skills and corporate donations.
The CDC students and staff will honor those constraints while looking at ways to preserve the natural habitat and create a "green"development.
Another group of students, working with CDC staff, did just that for Habitat for Humanity of Benton County, winning planning and design awards for Arkansas' first green neighborhood. Construction on the first house began this weekend.
The Rogers project has a park in the middle and a wet meadow that handles stormwater overflows.
The fourth- and fifthyear architectural students working on the Washington County project will learn from the Benton County project, but the design will be based on topography and elements specific to the Fayetteville site.
"It's not a beautification technique and it's not a pure conservation technique. It goes into ecological services, as well as social and environmental services," said Gabriel.
One site factor that will get their attention is water.
Gabriel expects it to be a big factor in any design. The site has a "very active hydrological pattern "including drainage running across it and a pond.
He wants to find a way to work with the water, even to the point of cleansing the urban stormwater from nearby streets and neighborhoods.
"Our design strategy for water is to create an amenity rather than treat it as a waste system," he said.
"All of our stormwater is handled through a natural and biological system. We don't pipe everything to one location. Of course, when you pipe it, you increase velocity, so when it comes out of that pipe, it carries more sediment, carries more pollutants," Gabriel explained.
It has to do with creative, solution-driven design.
Any project or model developed by the CDC, an outreach research design and education center of the School of Architecture, has to respect what Gabriel calls the triple bottom line.
"Everything you do has to respect environmental, social and economic factors together," he said.
One example is a "green"street without curbs and gutters that sheds water to pervious parking areas and to bio-swales, which are planted swales that absorb and filter the water.
Reduced street width and the materials used in the street also help that natural control of water. The strategy is to handle infrastructure ecologically instead of as a civil engineering solution, Gabriel said. "Another green strategy is clustering the homes to reduce the development footprint and to allow more open space and usable public space," he said. In the Rogers project, sewer and water lines were pushed out into the lawns and the streets.
"That enables us to put trees in the front yard," Gabriel said. "Simple coordination of infrastructure and streets helps to encourage a better place. "The Habitat for Humanity of Washington County project will go through regular city building requirements process, most likely as a planned zoning district, according to Gabriel.
He said the project will proceed with or without an ecological grant to improve the watershed for which the CDC has applied.
Moving forward rests first on acquiring the property from the city. If that is approved Tuesday, Habitat for Humanity will go forward with the real estate contract and then contract with CDC for design services.
"Homes should add up. If you put 10 houses together, they should make something for the city. They should give back to their environment," said Gabriel.
"It's exciting to develop a neighborhood. It's a new concept but it benefits everybody," said Brewer.
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