Green Building: Building Homes For The Working Poor

Can you imagine having a recycled house? I mean, I’m talking about a house that’s almost completely built using recycled, salvaged materials. It’s green building at its finest.

Just let me give you a few images here…imagine a floor made completely out of wine bottle corks. Imagine having windows that are made of old pickle plates. Imagine having a ceiling made out of cast-off picture frame samples. Fun, unique, quirky AND affordable…everything that today’s behemoth McMansions are not.

Can you picture it?

I admit, it might be a stretch for some people. But, this new green building movement is catching on in a big way. How? Well, thanks in part to efforts from organizations like The Phoenix Commotion.

Building Green Houses For The Working Poor

The goals of The Phoenix Commotion are very simple: build affordable homes for the working poor using recycled and reclaimed materials.

Before I go into what The Phoenix Commotion is doing, let’s take a quick look at that word for a moment. Affordable.

What is affordable? Well, if you’re in the stable middle class, “affordable” means $210,000. That’s about the average cost of a house in this country.

If you’re part of the working poor, making minimum wage and barely getting by, the dream of home ownership is completely out of reach. After all, the powers that be in this country seem to think that a home selling for $140,000 is affordable to pretty much everyone.

Tell that to someone making $7.50/hr. To them, $140,000 is just as expensive, and just out of reach, as a $210,000 home.

What we need is truly affordable housing. Housing that anyone can afford. Houses that cost $25,000 or $50,000. Not four times that.

This was the vision of Dan and Marsha Phillips. They founded the Phoenix Commotion to help address three key issues.

What are they doing? They’re building affordable homes for the working poor. Simple. But, each house is built using reclaimed and recycled material. And, we’re not talking some scrap wood here, an old door there. Dan’s goal is to use 80% recycled material in every home.

This not only makes homes affordable, but it also helps keep this good material out of landfills. It’s green building that has the double impact of helping people who really need it.

Another amazing thing about Dan’s homes is that they’re built using unskilled labor. He trains workers to build homes, which enables them to go on to bigger and better things once they’re done. And in case you’re wondering, unskilled doesn’t mean Dan’s recycled homes are trashy (no pun intended) or thrown together. Each one is completely sound, and built to code.

Here’s their mission statement from their site:

• Reduction of Landfill Burden- While an exact percentage is difficult to achieve, a reasonable estimate would be that 10% of the average landfill waste-stream consists of usable building material. Reclamation is practically impossible once these materials reach the landfill, because of the immense liability involved. Municipal lawsuits tend to be large, and last for years. Most municipalities have simply forbidden salvage activity, to avoid possible lawsuits. There are, however, strategies for reclamation of materials before reaching such finality.

• Low Income Housing Everyone must live somewhere. However, when a family owns its home, there is a conspicuous increase in overall self-esteem of its members and general family well being, which ultimately leads to positive social results. The venues available to low-income families are rental property, public housing, or sheer luck. Purchase of a home is often out of reach for a low-income family because of the down-payment barrier. Further, low-income families typically have very little positive credit history.

• Trained Unskilled Labor All workers on after-market houses are hired as unskilled laborers, at minimum wage. Since one minimum wage crew does all aspects of the construction, workers accumulate many marketable skills after a year on such a crew. They are then able to compete for higher-paying jobs. An unskilled crew does not mean “ineffective”, however. New skills come quickly with very little tutelage.

Pretty cool, right? I mean, this organization is building green homes with reusable materials for people who really need them, and they’re training people for better careers in the process. It’s so simple!

Green Building Designs

Dan Philips is way more than a builder; he’s a true artist. His design sense is amazing, and his homes just glow with love and grace. Take a look at some of these images.

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Photo courtesy of The Phoenix Commotion

Again, Dan is a sheer genius when it comes to finding creative, artistic solutions for reusing these materials. He’s amazing. I’d love to have a house as visually exciting as this one! Did you notice the wine cork flooring? The wine bottle window? The picture frame ceiling?

It’s amazing to realize that all of this stuff would have been thrown away in a landfill.

Who Gets A Green Home?

Dan helps anyone who has a job, and good or no credit. That’s it. There are no hoops to jump through, and no other eligibility requirements.

There is a wonderful YouTube video on The Phoenix Commotion site that you should check out. The tv journalist is interviewing a man who is working with Dan on his future house.

He describes working with Dan like planting seeds. Dan has planted this seed of goodness in him. Dan’s teaching him the skills to build his home. And this man, in turn, is going to help others with his knowledge.

It’s planting seeds, which bear fruit, that can be used to plant more seeds. It’s how the world changes.

Where To Find Reusable Building Material

On the Phoenix Commotion website there is a wonderfully thorough listing of where you can find reusable building material for your own projects. Here is the list, in its entirety:

Readily available sources for free and salvage material
• Flea markets and junk shops
• Garage sales
• Classified ads (one can peruse ads for materials offered, or take out an ad requesting materials)
• Antique shops (hardware often is available at antique shops for a fraction of market cost)
• Building sites – Simply talk to the contractor.
• Salvage yards serving demolition contractors. Especially near larger cities, demolition salvage yards have a smorgasbord of building appointments. Search the Internet with “salvage” as the keyword.
• Auto-salvage yards – Don’t overlook possibilities in auto-salvage yards. License plates make great shingles, for instance.
• Landfills – These days landfills do not allow reclamation. But occasionally there is one where scavenging is allowed.
• Dumpsters – Seek out dumpsters that have the best likelihood of usable material, those near building sites, at lumber companies, and institutional dumpsters who would not otherwise have a use for building materials (schools, for instance).
• Lumber companies and home-improvement centers – All large companies that market building material -wholesale or retail – always have culls, mismatches and cutoffs. Often simply contacting them will provide more material than can be used.
• Manufacturing industries. Industrial activity usually produces byproducts. Byproducts can range from core-samples, 55-gallon drums and five-gallon buckets, and cribbage, to pipe trims, bales of material (paper, plastic, metal), and sludge. A quick analysis of the byproduct will lead to a decision on usefulness.
• Landscapers, tree-removal firms, and lot-clearing contractors. Most of the medium-sized firms don’t have enough refuse to market for mulch, and are thrilled to have someone take materials off of their hands. Often enough one can acquire cabinet-grade hardwoods.
• Natural materials. Mud, sticks and rocks are classic building materials. They’re in your backyard, and on the building site. Coupled with the materials that technology provides (Portland cement, modern polymers, and fasteners), natural materials are surprisingly versatile.

Networking
• Make it known that you are in the market for salvage building materials. You’d be surprised what friends and total strangers locate in their garages for you.
• Approach the editor of your local paper, and ask that they offer a “free” section in the classified section. The materials advertised would be usable, and free for the pick up. The ads are also free of charge, or minimal. Most editors will recognize the potential of increased readership that a “free” column would encourage.
• Get to know others who are in the market for salvage and free materials. Trading back and forth increases available inventory by a sizable percentage.
• Get to know remodelers and contractors. Every remodel job results in usable material left over. They are happy to have someone pick it up, so they don?t have to pay for disposal.

Recyclable garbage
• Materials that are otherwise thrown away are often quite useful for many things. Paper sacks (coupled with modern materials) make great wall and floor coverings as papier mache appointments. Glass, cans, plastic, and packaging material are available everywhere. Your imagination is your only limitation, and the resulting design does not have to look like a “Sanford and Son” achievement. It can be clean, tidy, well-designed, and free.

Search the Internet
• Many web sites cater to salvage and recycling materials acquisition. We will be adding some links to aid your search for salvage and recycling materials

How You Can Help

There are several ways you can get involved with Dan and The Phoenix Commotion.

You can contact him through his website and donate money. You can sponsor an entire build, or even donate a door knocker. You can buy groceries for one of the families he’s currently working with, or even help pay for the electrician and plumber that must be hired for each project.

Click here to access The Phoenix Commotion’s contact page.

At the very least, please go look at some of his project photos. You’ll get some great inspiration for your own home or future project!

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