$20,000 Homes Created By Students Could Help Fix Rural America’s Affordable Housing Crisis

Students at Auburn University may be turning their home-building expertise into real-world housing market solutions.

Since 1993, the university’s Rural Studio Design Workshop has allowed students to ditch the comforts of campus and head to the state’s Black Belt region — where poverty is high and jobs are scarce — to create innovative and affordable housing projects. As City Lab reported, the program’s 20K House initiative has figured out how to build an entire home for $20,000, benefiting both the region’s poorest residents and community-oriented organizations alike.

The workshop has built the Hale County Animal Shelter, a Boys and Girls Club and park facilities in West Alabama, in addition to a series of small-budget homes for those in need.

20K v16 Michele’s House (Photo: Timothy Hursley)

As City Lab reported, the $20,000 funding goal — based off of the smallest loan amount someone living on Social Security could afford through the Department of Agriculture’s Section 502 rural housing loan program — would result in a resident paying about $100 a month for housing.

But the program is “not going to solve poverty, because architecture can’t do that” — Freear explained to Fast Company. It’s not disaster relief or charity, either. According to the workshop’s director, the 20K House project is a means to discover solutions that make economic sense for everyone.

The Huffington Post