AFFORDABLE HOUSING

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In the United Kingdom, as with other countries, the cost of establishing a home is moving further away from first time buyers and others on a low income or those just looking for a holiday home.  Is there an alternative to struggling for 20 years to own a home of your own - in the process paying a mortgage several times the value of the house itself, in interest payments alone?  What if we were to tell you you we could install a luxury timber cabin for around £50,000, fitted.  This includes 2 good sized bedrooms, plus a fitted kitchen, a bathroom, and ample living space ready for you to move in. Se below for a definition of AFFORDABLE.

I'd like to see quality affordable housing for everyone

Whether you're looking for a holiday home or just alternative living accommodation, MOBILE HOMES UK transportable homes offer big advantages for site owners and developers as well as private owners

OTHER ADVANTAGES

MOBILE HOMES UK's transportable homes are treated as mobile homes for Planning purposes. The advantages are enormous, because an old caravan, for example, can be replaced with a luxurious transportable home with all the modern conveniences. Being that our transportable homes are also VAT free, this alone  can save thousands from your budget.

Our design is suitable as a replacement to any existing mobile home as an upgrade.  Hence, if you are a farmer looking for supplementary income or you might run a game farm, holiday park or other business, this may be the upgrade you are looking for.  Indeed, you may be considering setting up a holiday home in another location.  Our mobile homes are considerably less expensive than equivalent imported log cabin designs.  Should you already have a quote, why not let us beat it for you.

All you need is a plot of land with planning permission for a mobile home. Or, if you do not yet have planning permission, but own, or are thinking of purchasing a suitable plot, please contact us to see if our planning expert can help - also at affordable rates.  The advice we can offer at this stage, could also save you considerably.

Our unique design of mobile home is approved by the DETR.  Our planning expert has overcome obstacles to planning consents in many cases in the south east of England, and now obtained consent for this design.

For tourist attractions, a log cabin can be adapted to make perfect payment kiosks, shops, changing rooms, toilet and shower blocks, ice-cream kiosks and cafes, clubhouses and sports pavilions.  With a low grassed roof, these mobile homes can really blend into a sensitive landscape.

A typical Mobile Homes UK timber design

Mobile Homes UK can organise and oversee the complete project on your behalf.  Alternatively, you may wish to run the project yourself, in which case the overall cost will reduce.  You may even be a builder and just want our help with the design of your home for compliance and to obtain planning permission. 

Whatever you decide we are waiting to hear from you and ready to assist. If you live near to Sussex, you can visit our show home.  If you are considering buying a mobile home, please be sure to speak with us before approaching your local authority. Our design is so recently confirmed, most councils will not be familiar with the approval and as our design is copyright protected, we would need to be hands on during the application stage.

CONTACTS: 

Mobile Homes UK

The Old Steam House, Herstmonceux, Sussex, BN27 1RF

Telephone: 07905 147709   Email: energy@solarnavigator.net

Fitted kitchen

FINANCE

We can even arrange finance for you for your new home.  If you are new to the housing market, you will need a fresh mortgage (subject to status) to be based on the value of the plot with permission and the mobile home installed.  You may need bridging finance for the project, until the unit is installed.  If this is the case, please ask to speak with our financial adviser when contacting us.

REFINANCING

If you have equity in your existing home, we can arrange for you to fund your holiday home by simply refinancing your existing home.  Please ask to speak with our financial adviser when contacting us.

View from lounge to bedrooms

ABOUT WOOD

Timber has been used by man for an enormous variety of purposes since pre-historic times, particularly in the construction of shelter and for artefacts used in day-to-day life.  Forests cover 30% of the earths surface.  Trees have been called "fountains of the earth" (Durrell 1993).

Today, timber and wood-based products continue to be used in construction, often in conjunction with other, man-made materials (metals, concrete, plastics). Wood is truly renewable in a relatively short time frame and can also be recycled through a succession of uses before returning to its constituent elements of carbon, water and energy.

View from kitchen to lounge

Wood plays a major role in combating climate change. Greater use of wood products will stimulate the expansion of Europe's forests and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by substituting for fossil fuel intensive products."

• Wood products act as a carbon sink throughout their life

• Wood has the lowest energy consumption and the lowest CO₂ emission of any commonly used building material

• Wood’s thermal insulation properties mean timber frame houses use less energy

• Wood is uniquely renewable

• Using wood products encourages forestry to expand, increasing the carbon sink effect and reducing the CO₂ in the atmosphere

• Wood is created by photosynthesis and can be considered an efficient way of storing solar energy

• Recovering the energy from wood products at the end of their life - as a substitute for fossil fuels - increases the CO₂ benefit of using wood.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Shorter construction time: While most homes that are built with brick and concrete can take up to and sometime exceed one year to complete, one of our homes built in 1/6 of the time. This time savings should result in a real cost benefits to you the end user.

Energy efficient: The Mobile Homes UK system is superior to traditional brick and concrete housing in that it provides for greater insulating capabilities in the walls and floors to keep the house warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. Consequently the cost of heating and cooling your home will significantly reduce. If you live in a brick and concrete house, you should already know that your home holds or retains the temperature of the season. It takes longer to heat the brick and concrete mass in the winter and it takes longer to release the heat in the summer. Moisture is also retained in a brick and concrete house resulting in the paint and plaster flaking of the walls and ceiling. A wood house "breathes", allowing excess moisture to escape naturally.

Earthquake resistant: While no structure built by man can withstand the forces of nature, one of our mobile homes are more earthquake resistant, with far less property damage compared to traditional brick and concrete houses, since timber buildings can absorb movement that would topple a brick building and spring back, virtually unaffected, in all but the worst cases. Due to the frequency of earthquakes, timber framed houses are very popular in Japan and other countries of the Pacific Rim. As a result of the deadly earthquakes that the country of Turkey experienced in 1999 the government has embraced timber houses and is actively pursuing alternative housing construction to replace their traditional construction methods.

A DEFINITION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Affordable housing is a dwelling where the total housing costs are affordable to those living in that housing unit. In the United States, a commonly accepted guideline for housing affordability is a housing cost that does not exceed 30% of a household's gross income. Housing costs considered in this guideline generally include taxes and insurance for owners, and sometimes include utility costs. When the monthly carrying costs of a home exceeds 30-35% of household income, then the housing is considered unaffordable for that household.

Where the demand for available housing exceeds supply, a large amount of the housing stock is not affordable to much of the population. Demand can be measured in terms of the costs for housing, housing type (such as apartments vs. single-family homes, or the size and configuration of units, including number of bedrooms) and location for housing (relative to commercial/employment centers, transportation infrastructure, schools and other community resources.) Such areas commonly experience income growth for middle and working class households at rates lower than the rates at which property values rise. These same areas also tend to have a limited supply of land on which new housing can be built, or an array of statutes that make it difficult or costly to generate expanded supply. The most "affordable" places in the U.S. are where there is the least demand and an adequate supply. Comprehensive data for the most affordable and least affordable places in the U.S. is published each year by an affordable housing non-profit organization, the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Consequences of affordable housing shortages

A common measure of community-wide affordablity is the number of homes that a household with a certain percentage of median income can afford. For example, a community might track the percentage of its housing that is affordable to households earning 60% of median income. In addition to the distress it causes families who cannot easily find a place to live, lack of affordable housing is considered by many urban planners to have negative effects on a community's overall health. For example, lack of affordable housing can make low-cost labor more scarce, and increase demands on transportation systems (as workers travel longer distances between jobs and affordable housing). An increasing number of studies and articles focused on US cities (Los Angeles, CA, Sarasota, FL) link the parallel trends of housing cost increases and declines in enrollment at local schools.

Policy tools to address affordable housing

Numerous policies in the U.S. and abroad have been designed to address the problem of inadequate supplies of affordable housing. Sophisticated secondary market mechanisms, inclusionary zoning, and land banking are three prominent tools, as well as tax and fiscal policies that result in reducing the cost of mortgages and the cost of borrowing. Other more recently promoted policy tools include relaxation of prohibitions against accessory dwelling units, and reduction of the amount of parking that must be built for a new structure.

Affordable housing is a controversial reality of contemporary life, for gains in affordability often result from expanding land available for housing or increasing the density of housing units in a given area. Ensuring a steady supply of affordable housing means ensuring that communities weigh real and perceived livability impacts against the sheer necessity of affordability. The process of weighing the impacts of locating affordable housing is quite contentious, and is laden with race and class implications.

Housing Subsidies

The federal government in the U.S. provides subsidies to make housing more affordable. Financial assistance is provided for homeowners through the mortgage interest tax deduction and for lower income households through housing subsidy programs. In the 1970s the federal government spent somewhat equal amounts on tax expenditures for homeowners and low income housing subsidies, however by 2005 tax expenditures had risen to $120 billion per year, representing nearly 80 percent of all federal housing assistance. (See Chart.) [1] The Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform for President Bush proposed reducing the mortgage interest tax deduction in a final report issued on November 1, 2005.

Housing assistance for lower income households can be divided into three parts:

• “Tenant based” subsidies given to an individual household, known as the Section 8 program

• “Project based” subsidies given to the owner of housing units that must be rented to lower income households at affordable rates, and

• Public Housing, which is owned and operated by the government.

“Project based” subsidies are also known by their section of the U.S. Housing Act, and include Section 236, Section 221(d)(3), Section 202 for elderly households and Section 811 for people with disabilities. There are also housing subsidies through the Section 8 program that are project based. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administers these programs, and has further information on the particular programs on agency web site. HUD programs have ceased producing large numbers of units since the 1980s. Since 1986, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program has produced a large share of the affordable units, however the affordability level in these units is less than the former HUD programs.

An overview of the housing challenges facing America was conducted by the Millennial Housing Commission in 2000, under the leadership of Conrad Egan.

LINKS:

• Burlington Busts the Affordable Housing Debate

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