$20k basic housing

Interesting website, but it ate up 90-100% of my CPU and ran my disk continuously filling the cache - not sure I'd trust it.

I go to al.com almost everyday and hadn't noticed anything, possibly I already have everything cached.

basilisk

I thought this was interesting, I wish they had told more about the construction and materials used. No doubt it is bottom of the line everything.

These are primarily intended to house resident of Alabama's southern regions known as the black belt(after a soil type).

Most of southern Alabama is very poor unlike the nothern half that fairs much better.

basilisk

I bought a newly built house in 1957. 2 bedroom, large living room, utility room, kitchen and bath (no shower) Wired 120/240. Had well and septic system. 1/3 acre. Forced air heat. Well insulated. (Colorado). Added storage shed and total fencing. House cost me $7500.00 Lived in it for 10 years. Sold for$ 10,000.00.. Checked tax valuation of it about 5 years ago.

A 1957 dollar is $8.33 today (2013). Even at that rate the value of the house had appreciated more than 3 times inflation five years ago.

Wonder what it's appraised at today?

Interesting, which is guaranteed to piss Lew off, is that gasoline was an average of .31/gallon in 1957.

Today that same gallon would be .36/gallon in 1957 dollars. ($2.99/gal

IOW, gasoline today does not yet cost all that much more (what, roughly

That does not seem right. I started driving in 1961. Gas was about

I can't remember when it hit $1. Many of the gas pumps could not handle the price increase

Depends on where you are at. I recall paying .199 during a gas war in

-------------------------------------------------------- The only thing about the price of gas that pisses me off is that it doesn't include the cost of cleaning up the pollution it creates.

What does truly piss me off is that the minimum wage ($1/hr in 1957) hasn't kept pace except here in CA where it will be $10/hr next year.

Lew

Interesting but I'm kinda confused. They talk about the Black Belt of Alabama but Newburn is in the far Northeast, a long throw from Auburn (rar East-Central).

No problems here. I was very fast, in fact.

Well, I was in the gas pumping business in the late '60s and againnin the late '70s. In 1969 regular gas in Ontario sold for about $0.45 a gallon for regular. Sometimes a bit less. I pumped a LOT of gas for $0.456 to $0.459. Some short "gas wars" knocked it WAY down - I remember a nickel a gallon a few times. Then I went to Zambia where I paid $1.65 per liter for what was supposed to be 87 octane. Came back and for a while the price was under a dollar a gallon, but around 1978 it went over the dollar a gallon, so we set the pumps to half price and doubled it. Gas was $1.06 per gallon, pump said $0.503. That was solved when, in January

It didn't in 1957, either, and it created a *lot* more pollution. Where's the beef?

It pisses me off that there *is* a minimum wage.

I remember stations in the US doing the same thing -thought that was quite a sale the first time I saw it :-).

If obamacare gets its' claws into all of us the middle class and poor will be damn lucky to be able to afford a $20K house.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

~Winston Churchill

I guess there could be two Newberns, the one they are referring to is in Hale county in west central AL. The blackbelt is narrow around Auburn, but gets wider and more Notherly in west AL. That leaves the question as to why Auburn University would have a studio and project clear across the state.

basilisk

It's on the Internet, it's gotta be true, right?

Gas prices have always been regional, varying from neighborhood to neighborhood, much less city to city/state to state. As we speak there is a .20/gal spread from here to the Interstate, five miles away.

That said, in 1957 I was 14 and bought a 1949 Willy's Jeepster for $200. I distinctly remember paying .25/gal for regular, leaded gas, as I was making .50/hr working at a landscape company and it really cut into my weekly paycheck to fill it up, to the point that I would use the last few drops at the pump to fill my Zippo lighter, instead of buying lighter fluid (yep, I started smoking at 14 ... hell I had a car, a job, a girlfriend who put out, and I was a MAN, right!). Yeah, right! ;)

Therefore, I don't think that an average of .31/gal, considering that premium was likely a nickle higher than regular, is too far off for that period, particularly for illustration purposes.

Bawn joyour ... ;)

Sorry, I was using Mapquest to find it. It found NewbUrGH when I entered "newbUrn". NewbErn is in West-central AL, very near Tuscaloosa. It makes even less sense for AU to be working there. ;-)

Apparently the Black Belt (I lived in Auburn for a few years, recently) is a swath cut across the entire south-central part of Alabama. I had never heard the term before so it piqued my curiosity.

Thanks. Learned something else, today (went to a Woodcraft dovetail demo today, too).

In the weeks leading up to the $1plus pricing I had an extension ladder chained to the sign post - the oil company was changing the price, up and down, sometimes 3 times a day, and someone had to climb up and change the numbers every time.

With all due respect, I think the designs in the OP are overkill.

You can buy shipping container for $1000 and refit it into a durable, modern house for a lot less than $20,000