An architectural program at Auburn University that开发了建造负担得起住房的模型希望分享其学生和教师与政府支持的抵押贷款人民房利美（Fannie Mae）合作的国家一级学到的知识。

Rural Studio, an undergraduate program in the university’s School of Architecture, began building small, simple houses for low income people in rural western Alabama in 2005. They called the houses “20K Homes” because they were designed to be built for $20,000 in as little as three weeks.

“We looked at the omnipresent American trailer park, where homes, counterintuitively, depreciate each year they are occupied,” the authors of a关于该计划的书wrote in 2014. “We wanted to create an attractive small house that would appreciate in value while accommodating residents who are unable to qualify for credit.”

到目前为止，农村工作室的作品一直在阿拉巴马州西部的农村地区，集中在其位于黑尔县的家庭基地。但是，与房利美（Fannie Mae）建立了新的合作伙伴关系，并从奥本大学（Auburn University）获得了125万美元的现金注入，他们承诺将其信息传达给全国观众。房利美（Fannie Mae）正在与农村工作室合作为期三年，以解决国家经济适用房的短缺Duty to Serve程序那t benefits under-served housing markets,Fast Company报告。

As part of the new initiative, Rural Studio is working with a number of building industry partners around the country, spanning the design, construction and finance industries. The studio will share its designs and experience in hopes others can develop their own, equally successful programs, not necessarily clones of what it has done in Alabama.

一个舒适的房子以20000美元的价格

Rural Studio arrived at the $20,000 target by determining what someone living on a median Social Security check of $758 a month could afford. Hypothetically, the total included $12,000 for materials and $8,000 for labor. A contractor building 16 of these houses per year could earn $61,000, while three workers would make $22,000, much more than they would at minimum wage.

The first 20K Home was built in 2005. Many of the houses are built on piers, not full foundations, and while architectural styles have changed over the years the basic formula has evolved into practical one- and two-bedroom designs that include porches where people can relax, and high ceilings to make the small spaces seem spacious.

乡村工作室于1993年成立，比20K家庭倡议涵盖了更多。它的副主任Rusty Smith在电话中说，学生在过去四分之一世纪中设计并建造了200多个建筑物，不仅是房屋，而且是动物收容所，图书馆，市政厅和公园和娱乐计划的建筑物。

但是20K家庭计划已成为农村工作室的面孔。这些房屋被视为“学术实验”，并赠送给了需要房屋的人。

Students design and build a couple of new houses each year and so far have produced about 30 of them since the program began. If the original target was $20,000 in total costs, Smith admits that 13 years later that’s really not possible. The cost of materials alone has probably doubled since then.

传播这个词

Rural Studio’s work with Fannie Mae is bringing the program into contact with a variety of players in the housing industry, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Building Sciences, Habitat for Humanity, the Healthy Building Network, and the Insurance Institute for Business & and Home Safety.

The goal is to produce a model for affordable housing that can be adapted to different markets in different parts of the country. “We’re in a test and learn phase with Fannie Mae,” Smith said.

农村工作室带来的一件事是它在小型，廉价的房屋中的体验，远低于人类典型建筑的栖息地。史密斯说，栖息地的典型房屋现在在100,000至200,000美元之间，可能拥有多达四间卧室，而农村工作室模型则倾向于一间或两居室或两居室，一台一层楼的模型不到1,000平方英尺。

At the end of the three-year collaboration with Fannie Mae, Smith said the result should be a comprehensive set of documents that organizations around the country can use to produce affordable homes in their own service areas. The documentation will include much more than construction drawings that can be turned over to builders or non profits.

史密斯说：“传统的建筑沟通文件显示承包商要建造什么，但它们不一定显示如何构建它，或者为什么它是这样构建的。在某些方面，这是负担能力和性能的重大障碍。”

比看起来更复杂

史密斯说，随着20K房屋计划的发展，很明显，建造穷人可以负担的房屋有许多障碍，而专注于最初的建筑成本只是看图片的一部分。

“There’s that old saying, whenever you have a hammer in your hand everything in the world is a nail,” Smith said. “When you’re an architect, you think every solution in the world is just how you design a building. A lot of issues about affordable housing can be addressed by architects. But by and large, there are broad-based, systemic barriers to affordable home ownership that are really not brick and mortar problems.”

其中包括信贷，分区，沟通，能源成本，保险和维护问题。他说：“这是一个非常复杂的问题。”

One of the most important benchmarks, however, is the monthly cost of living in the house. Lower monthly energy costs mean homeowners can spend more on the house upfront without inflating their mortgage payments. Reducing energy costs by just $25 a month translates into an extra $5,000 for construction, Smith said, while making the house a better risk for the mortgage lender.

Rural Studio is working with Habitat for Humanity on a new house in Alabama built to the Passive House standard. Energy bills will add up to an estimated $20 to $35 per month, rather than the $125 to $135 that a built-to-code house would cost the owner. Just down the street, they plan a similar house that will be built to the零能源准备就绪performance standard of the U.S. Department of Energy. Designers will be able to compare first costs vs. the costs to the homeowners on the back end.

Smith emphasizes the interconnected nature of the issues that Rural Studio and its partners are trying to address. For example, building to the强化房屋业务和家庭安全保险研究所的标准是指较低的保险付款和更高的价值，这是房主和贷方的优势。居住更健康的房屋可能会减少意外的医疗费用，这些费用可以弄清家庭的月度预算并制造

史密斯说：“房屋的成本是一个很好的问题，但是当您钻取该问题时，我们真正想找出的是每月的费用。”“我们真正了解的是房主在后端负担得起的负担。这就是我们必须解决的问题。”