On the nook of a tree-lined road in northeast Omaha, Nebraska, two trendy and minimalist residences are resetting the usual of what a brand new home ought to appear to be. Their daring orange and navy blue exteriors and spare, geometric types set them other than the extra standard gabled homes down the road. The largest distinction, although, is their measurement. At simply 802 and 618 sq. toes, the 2 homes are considerably smaller than the common new American dwelling, which has a median space of more than 2,100 square feet.
The homes are the primary two iterations of OurStory, a housing system envisioned as a replicable, accessible, and above all inexpensive method to constructing houses. Utilizing hyper-efficient spatial layouts and shortly manufactured prefab elements, the homes are designed to be constructed quick and inexpensively for something from an age-in-place ceaselessly dwelling to a yard accent dwelling unit (ADU) to a remarkably attractive possibility for a first-time homebuyer. They’re resetting the usual for starter houses within the U.S.
The OurStory homes are a collaboration between the nonprofit Partners for Livable Omaha and the College of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Structure’s FACT studio, which engaged structure college students to design and construct the primary two houses. Development is predicted to wrap up by August. The bigger home has already bought for simply $190,000—$90,000 lower than the median sale price of houses within the metropolis. The smaller home will doubtless be much more inexpensive.
Not simply extra housing, extra selection
Omaha, like many cities, has a scarcity of inexpensive housing. Town estimates that it wants 30,000 new homes for low- and middle-income residents by the tip of the last decade. The OurStory venture was launched partly to fill that hole, but additionally to handle one other form of housing scarcity: the low number of housing varieties available on the market. Of the 48 building permits issued for single household houses within the final month in Omaha and surrounding Douglas County, solely six are smaller than 2,000 sq. toes, and none are smaller than 1,000 sq. toes.
Jessica Scheuerman, govt director of Companions for Livable Omaha, says there’s a necessity for a wider vary of housing varieties, from smaller footprints to houses designed for growing older in place. Scheuerman realized the extent of the necessity after seeing her mom battle to seek out acceptable housing on a set earnings, and thought there must be an even bigger vary of choices. “If you design and plan for the growing older neighborhood, all people advantages,” she says.
In 2024, she reached out to architect Jeffrey Day, a training architect and professor on the College of Nebraska–Lincoln School of Structure, to consider what an answer may appear to be. The 2 had labored collectively earlier than on different initiatives, and so they agreed {that a} modest aging-ready home could possibly be an excellent project for the college’s design-build college students. The venture may even have legs.
“The aim has all the time been to consider this venture as a prototype that could possibly be replicated a number of instances, and in several configurations,” Day says.
For Scheuerman, making the homes appropriate for growing older in place was one precedence. Earlier than founding Companions for Livable Omaha in 2020, she’s been a longtime vp of Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington D.C.–based mostly nonprofit that has labored for almost 50 years to enhance city planning and design to create locations the place individuals can thrive. Getting older in place is certainly one of its fundamental focus areas. So when the design of the OurStory homes received began, Scheuerman careworn the necessity for the design to incorporate a few of the primary tenets of aging-ready housing, from a zero-step entrance to wheelchair accessible hallways and doorways. “We have to cease treating older adults like they’re invisible and the constructed surroundings shouldn’t be for them,” she says.
A versatile equipment of elements
These goals have been simply the beginning. Underneath the steering of Day, who runs his personal Omaha-based structure follow, Actual Architecture Company, the College of Nebraska design-build college students expanded on the transient to show the venture right into a shape-shifting and extremely refined model of a small dwelling. The workforce additionally determined the homes must be designed utilizing a equipment of elements, with prefabricated structural insulated panels making up the partitions of the houses to hurry up the development timeline and convey down prices.
Inside, the scholars dialed in on the least versatile elements of a home, the kitchen and loo. Requiring a number of plumbing and electrical work, these rooms could make up a major quantity of the price of building relying on the place they’re positioned. So the scholars positioned the areas proper subsequent to one another, sharing a wall the place all that infrastructure could possibly be concentrated. “It has a number of {the electrical} and all of the plumbing in that one 10-foot wall,” Day says.
This wall, together with the home exterior partitions and room dividers, can all be in-built a manufacturing facility, and college students are actually doing a few of that prefab building work themselves. “Somebody could possibly be placing a basis in whereas the inside parts are being fabricated in a store,” Day says. “Every part comes collectively on the property to scale back building time, and subsequently value.”
Taking this method lent flexibility to the home design, which advanced in a serious method from its earliest inklings. Initially deliberate as a single home for that nook lot in northeastern Omaha, the venture received an sudden alteration when a visiting official from the town’s planning division recommended subdividing the lot and making it into two homes. “And we’re like, ‘I didn’t know you’d let me try this,’” Scheuerman says. “Like, ‘you’re gonna let me try this?’”
Now a two-house venture, the scholars used their kitchen-bathroom wall because the central level of the designs and labored their method out from there. The bigger home grew to become a two bed room, and the smaller a one bed room. One has a peaked roof and the opposite a single slant, with further room in a loft space. “The system has sure parts that may be configured in several methods,” Day says.
Meaning the design might be extra than simply the aging-in-place housing Scheuerman initially got down to create. “Everybody places an overlay on it,” she says. “Folks see this product, and so they see artist housing, or they see rental earnings with an ADU. Or they see an answer for an issue that they’ve.”
Scheuerman envisions the primary two homes as prototypes however in addition they show that this method is financially viable. The houses have been partly funded via philanthropy, together with from the Lozier Basis, materials donations from window and door producer Pella, and grants from the state of Nebraska’s Middle Income Workforce Housing Investment Fund. The native nonprofit neighborhood financial institution Spark Capital offered financing to finish building, with as much as $100,000 in forgiveness for nonprofit builders like Companions for Livable Omaha.
Scheuerman says the whole value to construct each houses will likely be about $540,000. That exceeds their complete gross sales costs however nonetheless manages to pencil out as a result of mortgage forgiveness and grants that helped offset land and growth prices. With out taking these offsets under consideration, the houses are nonetheless extra inexpensive than the median dwelling within the metropolis. Scheuerman says future builds will doubtless be cheaper, based mostly on classes realized with these first two houses.
“On the finish of the day, this venture is pointless if the numbers don’t work,” Scheuerman says. “So we needed to spend a ton of time being educated by the lending neighborhood, and by the appraisal neighborhood, and by the mortgage neighborhood. They usually had some notes for the scholars, which in the end made the design higher.”
Into the developer’s seat
Scheuerman says proceeds from the sale of the 2 homes will likely be reinvested in land to construct extra. However she doesn’t wish to construct alone. Getting others to comply with the mannequin is a central a part of the venture, based on Scheuerman, and she or he says the mixture of small measurement and prefabricated building places these homes at a value level the place they are often feasibly financed by a variety of individuals.
“There’s a section of the inhabitants that may come to market proper now. They’ve excessive dwelling fairness or money available,” she says. “We all know individuals are able to go, and we wish to meet that market.”
To open that door, Day’s college students are creating a catalog of various designs utilizing this method, providing them up as pro-bono plans for individuals to use to their very own small home growth initiatives. Funding from the American Institute of Architects and AARP helped begin that work, and the Nebraska Division of Financial Improvement’s Nebraska Inexpensive Housing Belief Fund is supporting the catalog’s ongoing growth. It must be accessible on-line this summer time, and Scheuerman says will probably be like a modern-day model of the housing that after appeared within the Sears catalog: inexpensive to construct and simply accessible.
“Actual property growth is our shared duty, and communities should be empowered to get into the developer’s seat,” Scheuerman says. In lower than two years, the OurStory homes have gone from thought to just about accomplished houses. It’s a scalable method that would begin to chip away on the housing shortages plaguing Omaha and cities prefer it. “I double canine, triple canine dare you to construct one,” she says. “That’s how simple we’re making an attempt to make it.”
