5 Beers and a Coke: Affordable Housing Ideas

The group sat down for a brainstorm, examining and addressing an issue plaguing numerous low income families in America, affordable housing. The question the group had to ask each other was how can one make housing much more affordable so that everyone would be presented with the opportunity to be homeowners themselves. After the ideas presented by the group, three were decided upon as the best as voted by our peers in the class and ourselves.

Among one of our most popular ideas were providing incentives for contractors and developers to drive down costs 20151123_201217[1]and build these smaller, more affordable homes. Housing is an expensive ordeal to fully build and furnish, and building smaller, more affordable homes, generally is not as desirable for a construction business due to the lower profit margin generally associated with them. Offering these incentives for a business to build affordable housing options into their projects is an important enticement that would hopefully increase the number of affordable homes for the people.

Another option including and favored by our group was community involvement into these homes that would help with maintenance. Not only are homes and mortgages expensive, maintenance and general upkeep can be an additional and frustrated cost that can be diminutive at first but ultimately rack up larger bills. Teaching community involvement in helping neighbors where they can possibly help in house maintenance tasks. Additional ideas include community gardens that can help reduce overall food costs as well as increase an overall quality of life in the neighborhood. These are all simpler ideas to help reduce costs of general home costs for more affordable housing.

As voted upon by our peers in the class, and one of the groups personal favorite ideas, was the idea of shared utility costs in the neighborhoods. These tied utility bills would hypothetically drive their overall prices down for the homes. Shared costs of these bills would help lower homes and their overall expense down as the bills are tied together. These driven down costs ultimately make it more readily available to own a home as it is a less expected expense on the overall home for these families. Ultimately this idea was settled upon in the group as what we felt our strongest idea was with less worries than others, as well was well received by the class in itself during the voting.

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