Self-Help Housing (Pennsylvania)

Self-help Housing is just as it sounds: families helping each other to build their own housing. This federal program part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, allows for families earning as low as $12,000 per year, but who have earned sufficient credit and payment ratings, qualify for a 30-year mortgage and pay 30% of their income towards the housing expenses. Unlike Habitat for Humanity, 65% of the labor comes from the families themselves. And, unlike Habitat, Design Corps deals with each family individually to define and address their unique qualities and living patterns through a careful allocation of these hard earned opportunity of owning a home. The following examples for the Velazquez, the Dillon, and the Sosna families, describe the unique home design for each.

Velazquez House

Jorge Velazquez is a cherry picker in Adams County, Penn. The massing of this design reflects the process of collecting cherries, which involves two inverted tarps positioned around each tree to collect the falling cherries. The Velazquez House also reflects a public/private use of residential space that is more typical in the Mexican house. This lack of hierarchy between public and private is typical in Mexico, and illustrates the type of cultural differences in the use of space that can exist. One of the questions we ask in our design questionnaire during the design process is: Are there private areas in your house or is a guest welcome throughout? The most common answer is: “Mi casa as us casa,” which means that a guest is welcome into areas considered off limits in U.S. families.

Dillon House

Theresa Dillon was born in Mexico and has worked in farmwork and traveled the migrant stream since the age of 13. She is a single mother that left the migrant stream in 1994, after it became it harder and harder to find housing for herself and a girl and a boy. She describes her own situation:

I came to work and like I said, I ran into a little bit of problems to where I would go and ask the farmers for a job and they did not want to hire a single woman with a family. The year that I came out [of farmwork], I only had one son left at home, which I still have and they did not want to hire me because they would have to give me a whole room for me and my son. Because they can’t now put us with the women. Before they could. If you accepted it, fine, but now they can’t. I’d be taking up a lot of space that they could put several men. So that became a problem and I ended with no place to live, and my son had to go to school.

Sosna House

Robert and Sajal Sosna are practicing Muslims. The choice of their site allowed a northeast orientation towards the kibla for their prayers, which they say five times daily. The front door is at a forty-five degree diagonal and faces east, since the first prayer of each day must be completed before sunrise. Other religious practices such as the yearly fast are also based on the sunrise. However, the front door is also traditional entry common in the Pennsylvania context. The slat pattern of the front porch and back entry allows Robert to hang his orchid collection on display.

TUCCA Community Center (Taylor, Alabama)

Adapted from “Communication” by Andrea Dietz, a 2000-2001 AmeriCorps VISTA member with Design Corps (Good Deeds, Good Design)

“We must tear down the walls that divide and build anew walls that unite.” These words are from a sermon had inspired a handful of people to begin an effort of empowering and organizing their community. TUCCA purchased 45 acres of raw land and engaged Design Corps to help them transform the land into their vision.

There were a series of projects that helped build a working relationship with Design Corps as well as faith that change could indeed occur. Design Corps was able to help organize the site into a community plan of 22 houses, and gain necessary approvals to create a dam and lack in the center of a common space. A team of seven from Design Corps helped the community first build an information board for postings from the whole community and a barbeque pavilion for the annual TUCCA picnic.

Design Corps met with TUCCA in a series of design meetings to come up with drawings and models of a community center which included spaces for: computer training, a library, a daycare center, a barbershop and restaurant, a basketball court, and a swimming pool. The financial reality attached to this wish list required more than designing a building to house these activities. But, through the visuals and design left with them, TUCCA is one step closer to the realization of their community center; they have a tool with which to seek grant funding, should they decide to pursue the next step. Ideally, they even have a little something about which to dream.

Migrant Housing (Adams County, Pennsylvania)
Unit I (for singles) and Unit II (for families)

This manufactured “camp” is intended for use by four single male workers who come to Pennsylvania to pick apples, peaches, and cherries from August through October. Migrancy is not assumed to be negative; many workers come to make some income through hard work, and then return home. Mobility is intentionally expressed to convey this aspect and value or the lifestyle.

Each unit is designed for north-south orientation, as are most rows of apple trees. Multiple units can be arranged in a “shotgun house” manner, creating a side yard off the porch to the east, which acts as a mudroom and has a pesticides sink. The unit is 650 square feet, is 13’-6,” a dimension which allows for road travel as well as effective natural cooling. Hinged shutters, like those of Pennsylvania tobacco barns, face west and create privacy. They can provide shade in hotter months, can slide open for heat gain during cooler months, and they can be shut down and latched during the off-season.

The benefit of manufactured housing is in its efficiency of production. It was important in the design to consider constraints of the manufacturing industry so Design Corps worked with the manufacturers to capitalize on industry strengths without compromising architectural aesthetic.

Funding for this project came from a public/private partnership. HOME funds from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development covered 70% of construction and services costs. Growers provided the remaining 30% of costs, plus land for the project. The manufacturer was Penn Lyon Homes. Design Corps will continue to submit applications for HOME funds as long as growers express a need for this housing.

Migrant Housing (Virginia)
The Pink House with Green House

This housing is designed for “guest workers” (U.S. Department of Labor H2A Program) for the Sunnyside organic farm in Little Washington, Va. The farm also demonstrates the process of growing organic food to visitors, and these visitors will stay in the houses during the off-season.

The house expresses the people, place, and time involved in several ways:

The construction is exposed through translucent siding (Lexan greenhouse type). This shows the visitors what sustainable design has been included in the design. Note that the pink fiberglass has been replaced with recycled blue jean insulation (and is now renamed as the “Blue House with Green House”).

The greenhouse on the front of the living area acts as a porch. Fragrant ginger lilies will be grown here for sale to the nearby bed and breakfast. The workers will enjoy the fragrance and beauty of these flowers. Since there are no pesticides, the adjacent product is safe.

For neighbors who fear residential sprawl, the greenhouse expressed on the front is an agricultural look. In fact, without workers, the farm could not survive and this open green space would not be economically feasible to maintain in an area where residential development threatens rural traditions.

The local problem with septic capacity is addressed by using the gray water from each unit for irrigating the flowers of the adjacent greenhouse. Even the sewerage becomes an expressive part of the housing.

Over $700,000 in funding was secured for this project by Design Corps through the U.S. HUD Rural Housing & Economic Development program and HUD HOME funds through the Virginia Department of Housing & Community Development.

Migrant Bath House Prototype / Program (North Carolina)

Conversations with farmworkers, government regulators and service agencies led Design Corps to recognize a need for improved bathroom facilities at labor camps.  From direct interviews with local workers about their needs, students from NC Sate University’s College of Design prepared preliminary designs. A design was finalized after critique from community members, and the 14 students were able to build the unit after an anonymous donor generously financed construction costs.  The cost for a project of this size is reasonable enough for a farmer to make the investment.  In addition, civic and religious groups who want to improve farmworker housing conditions could do so by financially sponsoring and helping build a unit at a site in need without the need for code research, design, or pricing a unit.

An estimated 12,474 migrant workers in North Carolina live in housing without complete plumbing. (Complete plumbing facilities include hot and cold piped water, a flush toilet, and a bathtub or shower.) Due to the unsanitary conditions of their housing, agricultural workers are 40-times more likely to have Tuberculosis, 35-times more likely to have parasites.  Furthermore, pollution of groundwater from improper septic systems poses health risks to the entire community.  Almost half the reported water disease outbreaks in the U.S. every year are due to contaminated groundwater, and outbreaks of typhoid fever, infectious hepatitis and gastrointestinal infections have all been linked to faulty septic systems.  The implementation of new bathroom units not only improves conditions for the workers who use them but also affects health interests of the entire community. 

The Migrant Farmworker Bath House Prototype is an economical and high-quality solution which includes 2 showers, a pesticide sink, a laundry sink, 2 hand washing sinks, 2 toilets, and 8 lockers for a migrant labor camp that did not meet minimum health standards. With design work and cost finalized, an application has been submitted to US Department of Housing and Urban Development for funding to build five more bath houses based on the prototype.

Seaboard Community-Design Studio (Seaboard, North Carolina)

Planning and Architecture can transform the dreams of a community into a physical reality.  Design, derived from clear community-defined goals, will accommodate residents in their day-to-day lives.  The results can add greatly to the quality of life and to the sense of place and pride in a community. 

The Community-Design Studio is intended to enrich communities by enhancing the quality of life as well as addressing specific needs of their physical environment.   Through sharing expertise, the community is able to make decisions that will shape the future of residents’ lives. At the same time, design students participating in the studio benefit from a more comprehensive and integrated education.

Like many small rural towns across the United States, the town of Seaboard, North Carolina, has faced economic decline and instability over the last twenty years. But unlike many towns, Seaboard has taken the pro-active step in self-determination by completing a community revitalization plan for the next twenty years.

Using a context-based educational model directed by faculty member Bryan Bell, nineteen graduate-level students in the North Carolina State College of Architecture provided graphic and three-dimension proposals to respond to these specific goals. 

The NC State team worked with the leaders of Seaboard and the Citizen Development Committees (suggested under “Intended Plan to Carry Out Goals and Policies”) to define the ways that built forms can address the needs as the community has clearly defined them.

The visioning process was then able to move to an implementation phase, which has been funded in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts.