The neighborhood just north of Apache Street, around S. 5th and S. 6th Streets, has historically been an affordable place to live, in terms of housing costs. The dwellings are generally mobile homes or modulars, although a few ‘nicer’ buildings have been constructed within the past decade. ‘Nicer’ meaning ‘more expensive.’
Most of the ‘nicer’ homes are close to the San Juan River. View properties, you might say. Not the kind of homes where you look out of your window and see your neighbor’s house and yard.
But maybe, the kind of home that burdens you with a large mortgage?
There’s a word for this sort of neighborhood development, where affordable homes are removed to make room for ‘nicer’ and less affordable homes. Gentrification.
Home builder Eddy Dunn purchased a vacant lot in this generally-affordable-but-now-gentrifying neighborhood in 2015, and has since built four dwelling units on the property. Affordable dwelling units. Like nearly all the parcels with the Town of Pagosa Springs, the lot measures about 1/6 acre, and is zoned R-22.
That zoning allows up to four dwelling units on a 1/6 acre lot.
Eddy Dunn is one of the few builders in Pagosa Springs who has focused on affordable dwellings. Most of our construction companies are active in the ‘upper middle class’ and ‘upper class’ housing markets. Almost no affordable housing has been built in Pagosa Springs since 2000, even though the population has increased from 10,000 to about 13,500 — and even though the tourism economy wages have been fairly stagnant, with many employees making minimum wage or close to minimum wage.
One of the ways to keep a home affordable is to make it small. No working class families can afford to buy or rent a new 2,500 square foot home — the average-size home in America in 2018. Few can afford a newly built 1,000 square foot home.
Mr. Dunn has been thinking small. Like 480 square feet. And affordable.
Affordable to rent, and affordable to heat and live in.
Last month, Daily Post contributor Cynda Green and I visited Mr. Dunn in his newest dwelling, which was built according to the 2015 International Residential Code as adopted by the Town of Pagosa Springs — with its new ‘Tiny Home’ appendix. (Archuleta County continues to use the 2006 IRC, which essentially makes it illegal to build very small homes.)
No one would describe Mr. Dunn’s home as ‘luxurious.’ But the word ‘practical’ would be very applicable.
Here in Archuleta County, the median home on the real estate market will run you about $220 per square foot (according to the Zillow real estate website.) That comes to about $440,000 for a 2,000 square foot home. Mr. Dunn is able to build his tiny homes and duplexes for about $100 per square foot. That allows him to keep his rents relatively low: about $750 a month. (I think the median rent in Pagosa Springs is around $1,000 a month.)
But there’s an additional reason for building small homes, besides the lower construction costs. (And maybe additional reasons for building smaller government facilities, as well?) Long-term efficiency, and minimal use of natural resources.
Eddy Dunn:
“We are so antiquated, here in America, in the way we look at energy efficiency and the way we design our houses. In Germany, they are doing ‘2020’ — you know, their plan to use only green energy. And if you look at a house that way — I think it was back in the late 1990s, they began to talk about homes that use only the amount of energy that the home itself can produce. Net zero.”
In spite of a growing population, Germany established a national goal of reducing its energy consumption to 40 percent below its 1990 consumption, by the year 2020. The government recently announced that they will likely miss that goal, and will probably hit a reduction of about 32 percent.
“That was the idea, to design buildings that consume only as much energy that they produce. So, with solar panels and passive solar, super-insulated. It really started that movement, that different concept. Most people are concerned mainly about the aesthetic values of their home — like Victorian, or Craftsman. But what I think about is the ‘science’ of home design.
“What I see is just the lack of education here in the US. In other countries, they start with the science. It’s very practical…
“The future is going to be where houses actually produce more energy than they consume. Your home will actually be an energy bank. You’ll have enough solar gain that you can charge your car. You’ll have fresh water and fresh air collection. To me, our concept of what a house is — here in the US — is really outdated.
“I’m pretty sure, if you look at what consumes the largest amount of energy in our country — like industry, business — I’m pretty sure it’s our houses.”
According to the US Energy Information Administration website, the residential sector is not, in fact, the largest consumer of energy. Industry consumes about 32 percent, and transportation consumes about 29 percent. Residential uses account for about 20 percent, and the commercial sector — stores, hospitals, schools, offices, churches, hotels — clock in at about 18 percent.
But Mr. Dunn has a point. If our homes could be built to use ‘Net Zero’ energy…
And if our government buildings and commercial spaces could be built upon the same idea?
Could we cut our energy use by 38 percent, nationally?
Meanwhile, a drive through most any Archuleta County neighborhood will reveal the construction of large homes. New homes that, practically speaking, will never be net zero.