Overview
The New Family House is the theme of Housing
Technology Demonstration Park, a joint venture project of
the Center for Architecture & Building Science Research
at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the New Jersey
Department of Community Affairs (NJDCA). Supported by the
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), CRDA,
Atlantic County and the State of New Jersey, the project is
a government-industry partnership to develop improved affordable
housing for New Jersey and the nation beyond.
The Housing Technology Demonstration Park was
initiated to improve the affordable housing delivered in New
Jersey. The project targets such issues as: 1) Performance
and life-cycle cost as the basis of affordability; 2) Designs
that address the major unmet housing needs of families who
qualify for affordable housing throughout the state3) Code
approval for new building methods.
The Demonstration Park showcases six competitive
construction methods. These 1,200 square foot, three-bedroom,
affordable housing prototypes were selected through an evaluation
of technical merit and life-cycle cost. The Demonstration
Park provides affordable housing developers and buyers with
the opportunity to inspect and evaluate a range of state-of-the-art
houses for use in their projects.
The History
The Housing Technology Demonstration Park is
part of the State of New Jersey's commitment to expand the
production of affordable housing in the state. Prompted by
the 1975 and 1983 Mount Laurel court decisions, the New Jersey
Fair Housing Act of 1985 established a comprehensive strategy
by which the state could address its affordable housing needs.
The Act established the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH)
to set obligations for the production of affordable housing
for each of the state's 567 municipalities. For its second
six-year cycle, 1993-99, COAH has calculated the statewide
need to total 83,317 units and allocated it among the municipalities.
At the municipal level, Fair Housing Plans have
been developed which outline local strategies to meet the
COAH obligations and identify sites for new construction.
Housing authorities, private and non-profit sponsors and developers
then develop the individual projects within the plan, securing
financing and state subsidies, retaining consultants, obtaining
approvals and ultimately hiring contractors.
The Market
The target market for affordable housing consists
of households whose income is below 80 percent of the median
income for the region in which the housing exists. For this
market, the three-bedroom, one- or two-family dwelling is
both highly appropriate and critically undersupplied. By finding
ways to both lower and predict the cost of this housing type,
the Demonstration Park Project can help many families who
now require subsidies to purchase houses at market-rates,
thus redirecting public subsidy moneys to help an even greater
number of families achieve the goal of home ownership.
The Houses
Working under the sponsorship of HUD, the NJ Department of
Community Affairs in Atlantic City's CRDA the Center's Peter
Kastl has organized a demonstration of the full range of market-ready
construction technologies available to affordable homebuilders.
These new methods promise to speed construction, increase
energy efficiency and control the cost of buying and living
in these houses.
Twelve three-bedroom/ two-bath
houses built at the site on Massachusetts Avenue. One of the
first, shown here, uses Insulating Concrete Forms for
the exterior walls, providing greater strength and insulation
value than conventional construction.
This
two-family home is being produced by Nehemian Construction
of Egg Harbor Township, NJ using:
- Blue Max" Insulating Concrete Forms
from AAB Building Systems for exterior walls and foundation
walls.
- Vinyl siding and polymer stucco applied directly
to the forms.
- Prefabricated wood trusses and engineered
wood joists.
- Double-glazed plastic-framed windows.
- High-efficiency air conditioning and gas
heating.
Other construction technologies being demonstrated
in homes include light steel frame, structural insulated panels,
factory produced panels and modular units.
