Affordable Housing
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Minnesota Green Affordable Housing Guide The Minnesota Green Affordable Housing Guide is a web-based resource to assist designers, contractors, and housing agencies integrate affordability and sustainability for cold climate housing. It includes comparative analyses of house size and configuration to evaluate the costs, environmental impacts, and energy performance of construction components, assemblies, and systems. |
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HUD COPC: Affordable Housing Initiatives: Case Study Prototypes The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has award a multi year grant to establish a Community Outreach Partnership Center at College of Design at the University of Minnesota. The project Affordable Housing Initiatives Case Study Prototypes is a partnership between the University, the Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation, and the Wilder Foundation. The partnership has three over arching goals; create sustainable, healthy, and culturally responsive, affordable housing; explore the cost reducing potential of new technology; and educate students at the College of Design on aspects of affordable housing. |
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The Single Family Case Demonstration Project The University, in collaboration with the Wilder Foundation and the Greater Frogtown Community Development Corporation, has designed a pilot house with the goals of building an affordable, healthy, energy efficient, and sustainable home that is attractive and suitable for the occupants. A primary aspect of the pilot house project is the investigation of new technology, specifically the use of engineered wood panels that reduce material, improve indoor air quality, and lead to cost savings. |
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Green By Addition Green by Addition is a project that explores a re-calibration of the first ring suburbs with re-inhabiting of the Contractor Cape Cod house as its basic element. Issues of cultural complexity were addressed along with issues of sustainability resulting in a framework around four core areas of Material Culture, Technology Culture, Nature Culture & Community Culture. The Minnesota Sustainable Design Guide was used by the team as a generator to address some of the questions about sustainability and to look at implications at the house, block and city level. |
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Sustainable Initiatives: Nicollet Meadows Townhomes Sustainable Initiatives: Nicollet Meadows Townhomes demonstration project in St. Peter, Minnesota explored the application of sustainable design principles in a multifamily affordable housing project. The goal of this initiative was to increase energy efficiency and decrease the overall environmental impact of building without substantially increasing the total monthly cost of housing. The research focused on initiatives to reducing heating and cooling cost through water and energy efficiency; improving indoor air quality; examining the environmental impact of materials; and examining integrated ground level Solar Greenhouse technology to reduce heating and cooling loads, and improve indoor air quality. |
