Home, Alternatives

Life is getting scarier and scarier. The younger generation is wondering if they'll ever be able to have their own home, or even keep their job. The cost of a house is outrageous, even now. At least to me. We own our own land and have the house built and paid for. But our daughter still lives with us. It's doubtful she can ever make enough money to move out. That's not her fault, it's the economy. I lost my job, so her helping out is a godsend. It's not fair to her though.

So I started researching alternative housing. I came across some interesting things on my search. I found ecovillages around the USA. These people want to live in a sustainable culture, where they're only dependant on each other within the community. They do allow more people to join, with skill sets to add to the community. I also found house building variations that allow a house to be built costing a lot less than normal. Only you can say what you wish to do, or learn.

I like studying the websites of the ecovillages, I learn so many other ways of doing things that lower our bills right now. You can also visit these places to see what the building variations will look like. They have online tours as well, and they aren't as energy deprived as the Amish. You can get hands on experience at building some of these house types as well. Read on to find out more.

Some alternative housing to consider are earthbags. There is a book called "Sandbag Shelter and Ecovillage: How to Build Your Own With Superadobe/Earth-bag" by Nadir Khalili. The book teaches how to use sandbags and barbed wire to create a shelter/home. Models were constructed and tested at Hesperia, Ca between 1993 and 1996. It passed California building codes. See www.calearth.org/ and click on "Emergency Sandbag Shelter" to get a detailed training guide online and to see what the finished product can look like.

If you go to www.earthbagbuilding.wordpress.com/ they give other links as well as a very useful explanation. Check out Resources to be able to order a DVD produced by Kelly Hart. It details the construction,and what worked and didn't work in building it. There are more books on how-to build these that are reviewed there as well.
http://www.naturalhomes.org/ --you can sign up to experience a workshop. Learn with your hands, see what the various kinds of alternative housing looks like after being built.
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/ has questions and answers about earthbag building. It's a lot of information about various kinds of building materials( not just earthbag), building codes, financial aspects and much more.
www.dreamgreenhomes.com/index.htm This has all sorts of house plans, all using natural materials. These are sorted by style, materials you want to use, and what sort of function you want the building to perform (home, studio, greenhouse, doghouse, etc.) It's a companion website of greenhomebuilding.

www.dancingrabbit.org/ is the website for an ecovillage in northeastern Missouri. You can apply for hands on experience if you want. The Earthbag Dome Work Exchange is building an earthbag dome. These are incredibly cheap house-types that take labor, but one can finish quite quickly.
Natural Building Internship will teach you to master a variety of natural building methods and principles.
Dan's Work Exchange--you will help build a small, passive, solar, strawbale house, and tend an organic garden. This is all according to their website. Go there and check it out.

If you're interested in learning more about other communities like this and how they manage sustainability, go to these sites:
Abundant Dawn--Floyd, VA www.abundantdawn.org/
Earthhaven--Asheville, NC www.earthaven.org/
Lost Valley--Eugene, OR www.lostvalley.org/
Sirius--Shutesbury, MA www.siriuscommunity.org/
Twin Oaks--Central, VA www.twinoaks.org/
Sandhill Farm--Northeast Missouri www.sandhillfarm.org/

There are many other links on the Dancing Rabbit site and the others leading to information on just about anything you'd like to know about using natural resources for power. You don't have to join any community to avail yourself of the information to use now.

I wanted to share my research with everyone else who has an adult child in the same fix we are. Or who needs a home but can't afford the prices now. These are all alternatives that I think the world needs to be paying attention to. It's a lot cheaper just buying the land and building one of these affordable houses. I also like the idea of the ecovillage. We sort of have a start on that, except it's just us and our neighbors, 6 people in all. Not enough to be called a village, nor are we sustainable. We live cheaper than most everyone around us, by saving on meat and growing gardens and hunting. But we're not self-sufficient from everyone around us.