Innovative Housing Solutions

Resident-Owned Communities

In Resident-Owned Communities, member-homeowners determine the future of the place they call home. Group decisions foster leadership and consensus, ownership stability promotes peace of mind, and money generated from fees goes right back into the community.

Tanglewood Park Coop

The Tanglewood Park Coop is a Resident-Owned Community in Keene, NH.

NH Community Loan Fund

The NH Community Loan Fund provides financial and leadership resources and works with ROC USA to build strong Resident-Owned Communities.

Financing
Resident-Owned Community

Sticker shock: the feeling of when a housing solution is way more expensive than expected. This hurdle can be a real barrier to people trying to finance housing solutions. Luckily, financial tools are available.

NH Housing

NH Housing provides financial resources to homebuyers, renters, and people struggling to find appropriate housing.

NH Community Loan Fund

The NH Community Loan Fund provides loans, coaching, and resources to marginalized people and communities.

Contoocook Housing Trust

Contoocook Housing Trust provides homebuyer loan assistance and rental programs for low-middle income renters.

Savings Bank of Walpole

Savings Bank of Walpole provides a variety of housing loan programs designed to fit the customer’s individual project.

Lighthouse (previously Northeast) Credit Union

Lighthouse Credit Union continues to provide Northeast Credit Union’s designated Home Renovation Loans that can be used for additions, ADUs, and other upgrades.

Service Credit Union

Service Credit Union offers ADU-specific financing for residents of Dover, NH.

ADUs and Infill Housing
An ADU.

Imagine doubling the housing stock in your community without even knowing it. This is what is possible with Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). ADUs are small, self-sufficient dwellings on single-family plots. Whether these structures are new or adapted, detached or attached, or within the home or outside, ADUs are designed to blend into existing neighborhoods. As of 2017, ADUs are allowed in some capacity on every single-family plot in New Hampshire. This legislation empowers individual homeowners to create housing on their own property while also keeping their neighborhood’s “feel.” Infill housing – like ADUs – helps to increase a community’s housing density without needing to develop new land.

Monadnock Region Accessory Dwelling Unit Design Challenge

The Monadnock Region ADU Design Challenge aims to connect interested homeowners with architects, students, and building professionals who can provide design services and help homeowners imagine how an ADU could take shape on their property.

ADUSearch

ADUSearch is a platform that finds local ADU ordinance information for Canadian residents.

Cottage Courts and Pocket Homes

Community is important, especially with your next-door neighbors. Neighborhood is often a critical factor in choosing where to live. But despite sprawling suburbs with big yards and cul-de-sacs, many homeowners feel increasingly disconnected to their neighbors. Cottage Courts aim to foster community by clustering smaller houses around a shared green space with cars and utilities placed outside of these clusters. The close proximity of front porches, shared walkways, and group living spaces encourages neighbors to get to know each other and build strong social bonds.

Concord Riverwalk

The Concord Riverwalk community is located outside of Boston in a cottage court style neighborhood.

Rhode Island “Pocket Neighborhood”

Castle Street Cottages on Rope Walk Hill was named the 2019 Community of the Year in the Best in American Living™ Awards by the National Association of Home Builders.

Cottages at Back River Road

The Cottages at Back River Road in Dover is a first-of-its-kind project in the Seacoast NH region.

Shared Housing

Whether it’s a group of twenty-somethings, a pair of senior citizens, or a handful of strangers-turned-housemates, shared living can provide community where living alone could not. Housemates build a special kind of community that is only built by people living under the same roof. Shared housing decreases the need for individual units, fights loneliness and boosts health, and requires fewer resources per capita. Community living spaces invite conversation and collaboration while individual rooms provide privacy.

HomeShare Vermont

HomeShare Vermont has worked to create community and compatible matches for over 40 years.

Sharing Housing

Sharing Housing has two sites: one for resources such as books, videos, blogs, and worksheets, and another for the organization itself.

Shared Housing Institute

The Shared Housing Institute has resources for housemates and community organizers.

Adaptive Reuse and Innovative Materials

Adaptive reuse and prefabricated elements seem like they should be on opposite ends of the housing materials spectrum. Adaptive reuse prioritizes using existing structures and materials while “prefab” construction relies on building elements assembled offsite. But, while one method focuses on the old and the other focuses on the new, both methods aim for efficiency. Efficiency can be in many forms: timeliness; affordability; energy consumption; materials use, extraction, and disposal; labor; land development; climate resilience; and more. For example, adaptively reusing a building reduces the amount of raw material, carbon emissions, and land use in comparison to traditional construction. Alternately, prefabricated structures save time, labor, and material waste because elements are designed for replicability and built offsite. Even though these processes are vastly different, both are paths to a shared goal: housing.

BuildUP

Students at the BuildUP school in Birmingham, AL are taught construction skills as they remodel blighted homes which they have the option to move in to and eventually buy.

The Bluebird Project

The Bluebird Project was started by two teachers who decided to do something about the housing crisis in Conway, NH.

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