Introduction to Community Development and Affordable Housing

Think Workshop

Presenter: Ian McComb

Suitable for: All ages

This will be a broad overview of some of the elements that can contribute to sustainable, affordable community housing. We’ll look at the benefits of developing at community scale for affordability, three approaches to achieve affordable housing; using pre-fabricated material, kit-sets and yurts, development and a brief introduction to engineering services, and planning with the council.

This workshop aims to:
1) give participants an introduction to the topic,
2) inspire people that they could form a healthy, affordable housing community
3) The aims of the affordable housing aspects are to educate and inspire people that are not DIY types that they can have a quality, affordable home.
Specific topics that will be covered are:
– The advantages of going small and simple with individual houses, yet larger in terms of community scale developments
– Prefabrication technology
– Passive solar vs passivhaus
– Why yurts are a serious option

Presenter Bio:

Ian is a professional engineer who is now developing communities of small, affordable houses in New Zealand (and probably Australia), he has presented workshops for community co-operatives, and ecovillages, professional engineering conferences, local councils, co-housing groups, private clients.

Introduction to Community Development and Affordable Housing