Cal Poly students to redesign housing units
SLO Tribune 4/8/07
Nearly 50 students from a construction management class are collaborating with Chorro Creek Ranch to create low-income housing units on the nine-acre communal living area just outside the Morro Bay city limits.
The housing program targets disabled, low-income and retired people who make less than $1,000 per month. Residents are often referred to the ranch by governmental agencies and churches.
Ranch director Joseph Goodwin said he contacted construction management professor Nick Watry about the possibility of his students working on redesigning the program’s housing units.
Watry, who chooses different hands-on projects every quarter, said the Chorro Creek Ranch project will prepare students for careers in construction management because they’ll inevitably be working in a multidisciplinary setting.
"We create a real-world experience for these students," Watry said.
Students with majors in architecture, economics and regional planning will make up most of the team. The diversity in expertise in the class will help Goodwin cover all aspects of designing the project, he said.
Aside from the building aspect of the project, Goodwin said he’ll use the talents of students with economics backgrounds to create a cost analysis of the project.
Students will spend the rest of the quarter collaboratively designing clusters of single- occupancy living units connected by a common living room, kitchen, dining room, library and garden.
The students won’t have a hand in the construction of the project.
Their ideas could be used beyond Chorro Creek Ranch. Goodwin said he plans to put students’ concepts into a presentation format and then take it to cities throughout the county, in the hope that they’ll adopt the plan for affordable housing units.
"I think it’s possible for someone who makes less than $1,000 to live on the Central Coast," Goodwin said.
Once design work is complete, Goodwin plans to actively raise money, seek sponsorships for the units and attempt to have one built on the Chorro Creek Ranch as a prototype.