Emily Niehaus says she “founded Community Rebuilds to address an affordable housing need in my rural community with the larger goal of shifting the existing construction paradigm to have a lighter impact...It began as a simple idea to replace old, dilapidated housing (like singlewide trailers built prior to 1976) with homes that cost less to build and less to heat and cool for working families. The premise is to use volunteers to offset the cost of construction, utilize federal financing to offer participants a low interest rate and a reasonable payment plan, and build with sustainable materials that are dirt-cheap…literally build affordable, energy-efficient homes out of straw, sand, clay, and wood.”
We continue our series of programs on sustainable housing with a discussion of straw bale houses and natural and green building, with Emily Niehuas, Founder and Executive Director of Community Rebuilds; Roslynn Brain, Assistant Professor, Sustainable Communities Extension Specialist in the Department of Environment and Society, College of Natural Resources at Utah State University; and Dan McCann, who works for EcoLogic in Moab.
We’ll also get an update from Macy Miller in her Tiny House in Boise, Idaho. Miller says on her blog “I started building my 196 square foot tiny home Dec 2011, in the process I met a boy, James. 18 months after starting my house we moved in and started our family which includes our daughter, Hazel and our Great Dane, Denver.” Macy Miller now has a son, and has expanded her house to 232 square feet.
