madison, wisconsin’s housing cooperatives appeal to residents for their sense of community and affordable rent. but they also serve as an example of how housing can become more sustainable, according to damontae january, membership coordinator of madison community cooperative.

mcc operates 11 cooperatives that currently house a total of 142 members, according to january. the group provides logistical assistance and a financial safety net for expenses such as maintenance and renovation. members vote on policies for their individual buildings and participate in mcc-wide decisions. depending on which mcc house a member lives in, rent and utilities combined cost between $360 and $710 per month.

in a housing co-op, members live in separate rooms in the same building, sharing utilities and common spaces such as kitchens. according to claire oleksiak, the executive director of madison environmental nonprofit sustain dane, more dense housing like apartments and cooperatives are generally more energy-efficient than single-family homes, producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions per person.

recent gas and electricity use data wasn’t available for three of mcc’s buildings. out of the eight others, madison gas & electric data show that all use less natural gas and most use less electricity per person than the madison average for all forms of housing.

building back better

zoe bayliss cooperative, madison’s largest co-op with 47 student members, will move into an mcc building on langdon street this summer. 

the university of wisconsin-madison will demolish the building zoe bayliss has rented from the university for decades after this academic year. after frustrating uncertainty about the future of the co-op, angela maloney, a uw-madison senior and zoe bayliss board member, said the move into mcc’s building “feels more like we are joining a partnership.”

zoe bayliss’ new location on langdon street has the potential to become uniquely efficient even among mcc co-ops, according to january. mcc will replace the building’s damaged steam boiler system with a new, all-electric heating and cooling system, reducing its reliance on fossil fuels. 

heat and air conditioning are some of the largest contributors to household natural gas and electricity usage, according to valora gutierrez, sustain dane’s efficiency navigator and naturally occurring affordable housing outreach specialist.

improvements like those planned for zoe bayliss can be costly – january said the more efficient heating and cooling system and the electrical upgrades necessary to support it will cost $750,000.

for the project, mcc received financial and logistical assistance from sustain dane and elevate, a chicago-based nonprofit that aims to make utilities cleaner and more affordable. the organizations helped mcc secure a grant to cover $288,000 of the new system’s installation.

sustain dane and elevate assist with similar — though typically smaller — projects through their efficiency navigator program, which aims to make energy and resource-efficient upgrades to affordable multifamily rental housing more accessible.

“we, throughout the process, hold their hand and coordinate the contractors for them, coordinate the contractor bids and set up all the necessary logistics,” gutierrez said.

gutierrez said the program also helps affordable housing stay affordable by directly funding upgrades to old buildings, helping owners keep rents low. upgrades such as more efficient insulation and window sealing can also reduce gas and electric bills for renters.

january expects the replacement and other renovations to be complete by the end of may, allowing members of zoe bayliss to move in for the next academic year.

january said mcc also encourages member houses to improve insulation, particularly in the winter. “those smaller things, that can have a big impact,” january said.

location, location, location

while older buildings often require renovations to increase efficiency and drive down energy costs, sustain dane’s oleksiak said renovations have a smaller environmental footprint than constructing homes from scratch.

“think of all the materials that go into building a house. the concrete to pour the foundation, the wood and drywall,” oleksiak said. “reusing an existing building can be a benefit to the environment.”

housing co-ops typically occupy large, old houses downtown. many, including zoe bayliss’ future building, inhabit former fraternity or sorority houses. 

january said older houses are often either rented out to students as-is or occasionally demolished to make way for new construction. but he said converting them into co-ops can accommodate more people and still “keep the whole house out of the landfill.”

converting old buildings in the city into more densely populated cooperatives also allows co-op members to take shorter commutes to downtown jobs. according to a city presentation on building sustainability, residential buildings create 17% of madison’s greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation creates 41%. 

steve vig, a member of mcc’s hypatia cooperative, said being part of a community also reduces members’ transportation needs and waste compared to living in separate apartments or houses.

“i make one shopping trip a week and do the food shopping for 14 people,” vig said, adding that other members are responsible for recycling and composting. “if we weren’t all living together and organizing it together, probably not all of us would do that wherever we were living.”

rejenerate housing cooperative aims to further reduce its emissions from transportation by installing charging stations for three shared electric vehicles, according to the co-op’s website. members may opt-in to use those vehicles instead of owning their own car.

rejenerate should house 25 units in two adjacent houses on jenifer street once ongoing renovations are complete in the spring, according to abby davidson, one of rejenerate’s developers and a former member of an mcc co-op house.

while making housing less harmful to the environment may be a burden on homeowners and out of the control of many renters, january said madison’s housing cooperatives show sustainability doesn’t have to be a solo project.

“as we look at how our changing climate is going to start affecting how people live, where they live, i think co-ops can be at the forefront,” january said.

they said they were inspired to come to standing rock to help create permanent winterized structures for the water protectors opposing the dakota access pipeline, while also demonstrating sustainable alternatives to modern building.

“we tried to build a school using no cement and as few conventional building materials as possible, which generate a lot of waste and use a lot of oil to transport,” said wade farrel lucas, one of the builders on site.

situated on land at the sacred stones camp, the school is being built using an old technique called straw-bale building. to form the walls, straw bales were stacked and woven together with baling twine, tied down to the ground with steel rods then covered completely with a natural clay-based plaster to prevent moisture and rotting.

first developed by early pioneers trying to withstand winter out on the american plains, the concept shares its general principles and reliance on local and earth-based material with a whole family of ancient natural building techniques including cob, earth bag, and adobe. the bales create thick, super-insulated walls — perfect for north dakota winters, which can see temperatures as low as -40 degrees fahrenheit.

a straw-bale house can be as durable as a conventional house and is also easy to construct without relying on expensive or imported materials. for the standing rock school, the clay earth used to make the plaster was sourced essentially on site from the river wash of the nearby cannonball river. the straw bales were donations, and the only non-local materials were the two-by-fours, sheet metal, and plywood used for the roof.

“a lot of people don’t know the resources that are available to them right here, right now,” lucas said. “this is a step forward from our current petrochemical industry.”

the sentiment was echoed by other members of the building team as well.

“i’m here to fight oil not just the pipeline,” said william haliburton, who helps runs the kitchen for the building crew. “this whole [sacred stones] camp is run on propane. we’re trying to make a model that shows by example that we’re not needing those things.”

for heating, the structure relies entirely on a single large rocket mass heater built directly into one of the walls. unlike conventional wood stoves, a rocket mass heater is designed to burn wood at extremely high temperatures by insulating the combustion chamber and chimney.

in this case, the stove and chimney were built out of cob, a mixture of clay and loose straw fiber, which act as the insulant and also as a thermal mass, capturing the heat produced. as a result, lucas said the stove requires 25% less wood than a regular fireplace would need to produce the same amount of heat.

another unique feature of the stove is that the chimney draft pipe runs back down through a large cob bench that protrudes from the wall.

“all the heat gets absorbed in the bench. you can feel it, it’s warm right now,” lucas said, gesturing to the smooth, rounded structure.

as the protest camps grew in size over the fall and early winter months, air quality issues arose due to the smoke from all of the individual camp and cooking fire. but the complete combustion process of the rocket mass heater also has positive implications for air pollution.

“it actually doesn’t produce smoke; when it comes out of the chimney pipe it’s just water and co2,” lucas said.

for lucas, the sacred stones school is only the latest in a series of trips to different areas of the u.s. to help construct earth homes and cob rocket heaters and help educate people about their benefits. it was while attending a natural building colloquium near santa barbara, california, in october that he joined a group of fellow builders interested in going to help support the standing rock movement.

whatever the outcome of the broader fight against dakota access pipeline, the school will likely remain to serve families at camp and on the reservation. unlike some of the larger camps which are on legally contested land, the sacred stones camp is situated partly on a tribal land trust and on private land owned by ladonna bravebull allard, an early leader of the standing rock movement. the school is part of a larger plan by allard to have the sacred stones camp become a permanent self-sustainable eco-community for tribal youth. informal classes have already been held showcasing indigenous and traditional skills.

“someone came to teach basket-weaving and we had a woman here the other day teaching drop-spinning [with] wool,” haliburton said.

lucas also hopes that the school will become a permaculture learning center in the future. for now, however, the building is home and bunk for the dozen or so members of the building crew as temperatures plummet and blizzards howl outside the thick stucco walls.

“we were really glad that we got this up before winter so that people can see how resilient and how comfortable these buildings are,” lucas said. “hopefully, this can be an example for future building projects at the standing rock reservation.”

who is the customer? affordable housing in the price points of this consideration.the north american real estate market has been in a down turn for over two years. the only price points that remain selling by all re statistics shows the 25k to 125k is the largest share of the market. we have marketed this concept to reia association here in central florida. these prototypes can in some instances be the perfect match for empty lots, tear downs and burnouts as they are low enough price points that make them less expensive than a reo or short sale purchase to rehab and either sell or hold and rent out. kits for export to all emerging markets fob port of miami. two complete homes with solar in five containers. 

what is the customer pain we are solving? it stands to reason the home with little to no electric bill will sell faster or rent and stay rented longer than the same priced home in same market without these extras. low cost solar housing is less expensive to build and less expensive to live in with the co-generation systems making them. homes with little to no electric bill. of the top three concerns of all major metropolitan areas in north america. one of these is always not enough low cost housing. this is a common sense approach to an otherwise overwhelming problem.

what is the target market? low income, community redevelopment, emerging markets, disaster relief (haiti & chile), export kits and investor real estate market (for build hold and rent outs). the export of easy to assemble kits could be a windfall for the manufacture of these units by emerging market governments.

how can we do it and at what price? first these are two words normally not found in the same sentence “low cost and “anything solar” but with the industry pricing falling dramatically in the last two years it is possible to mix alternative energy methods with built-in modular in the original construction rather that retro-fitting. it just makes sense to go this direction. have non-solar low cost modular platform already built on slabs like conventional home in dade county miami, fl and in the orlando, fl area these modular exceeded the staunchest hurricane codes in usa.