SFU City: Affordability by Design Public lecture: The Perfect $100,000 House - A Search for Great Affordable Housing October 19, 2006

October 19th, 7 pm
Venue: SFU Harbour Centre
Admission is free. Reservations advised:
Call 604-291-5100 or e-mail cs_hc at sfu dot ca

It doesn’t get much more American than this: Karrie Jacobs went on the road, looking for happiness in a thousand square feet. She went in search of “The Perfect $100,000 House.'’ After traversing 14,000 miles, meeting with dozens of architects and builders, she wrote a book about it. Imagine Jack Kerouac with a real-estate licence.

As the editor in chief of Dwell, a shelter magazine based in San Francisco, and a contributor to the New York Times, Metropolis and Travel & Leisure, she knew a lot of the territory south of the 49th. But the City Program figured, if she hadn’t been to Vancouver in awhile, she might be interested to see what you can get in Lotus Land for a thousand grand, plus 10-per-cent exchange.

More importantly, there was a lot we could learn from the real purpose of her trip: could architects, developers and contractors meet the challenge of $100 a square foot? What, in short, is the hope for affordable housing?

She will explore how the idea of home has been upended by the intensity of the current real-estate boom, how the populist spirit that once drove the Modernist movement has been eclipsed by the current obsession with excess, and how that populism re-emerges.

Her talk will combine a whirlwind version of the roadtrip and an argument for a more pragmatic and modest approach to homebuilding.

NOTE: A $100 full day workshop / conference follows on Friday, October 20th, entitled: Affordability by Design. Advanced registration required. See http://www.sfu.ca/city/course7popup.htm for more information.

Official Website: http://www.sfu.ca/city/fpl.htm