GreenMobile® Interview (2006)

Interview by Jim Villette @ Healthy Building Network (GreenRelief Website)

Posted: April 24, 2007

Prof. Michael Berk and Kimberly Brown
Introducing the GreenMobile™
of Mississippi State University
February 10th, 2006
Jim Villette

The GreenMobile(TM) Housing Unit. Ultra-affordable, ecologically-minded, factory-built housing. Recently selected by FEMA Alternative Housing Pilot Program. (Service-marked, Trade-Marked, and copyrighted w/ US Patent Office)

Introduction
Mississippi State University is a hotbed of vision and action for ultra-affordable and environmentally friendly housing. The School of Architecture and the Carl Small Town Center are leading designers of sustainable buildings and communities.
In the weeks after Katrina tore through Mississippi, they proposed “to rapidly produce a new type of mobile housing for Gulf Coast residents.” [1]
These units, designed by Professor of Architecture Michael Berk, could serve areas with no utilities. They could remain permanent and healthy homes, or they could be disassembled and moved to other areas in need.
The project has a grand construct that draws from local natural systems: the building materials, heating and cooling cycles, and energy production and consumption. It even comes with a kit for planting deciduous trees, to provide more shade in places like the wide-open Mississippi Delta. This kind of housing bears little relationship to the dreary and artificial shelters that FEMA buys for relief, except for the economies of scale that come from building in a factory rather than on-site.
GreenRelief investigator Jim Vallette visited with Prof. Berk and Kimberly Brown, director of the Carl Small Town Center [2] in Starkville, Miss., and learned more about their sustainable housing venture that goes by the name of GreenMobile™.

Prof. Michael Berk: The GreenMobile™ project is based upon the traditional low-priced strategy of the single-wide mobile home. It is not redefining the industrial model, but, expanding the concept to seriously address issues of equity and sustainability. It’s still based upon a single unit, but has multiple components that can plug into it, to expand its use.
The hope is that it will be ultimately entirely green, that all the materials in it will be sustainable and local. As it stands now, we are using off-the-shelf products. Some of those products aren’t quite there, yet. We’re not going to wait for those products. We’re going to go ahead and make it the best we can, and keep revising it, refining it as those products come on line.
Kimberly Brown: Material manufacturers, as well: we’re really hoping they will come on board and make the appropriate pieces for the home.
MB: Vinyl certainly would not fall into the green category. That’s one product that we certainly will not be using. We’re hoping not to use drywall material. We’re hoping to use almost exclusively locally and sustainably harvested wood. That includes all wood finishes in the interior. It’s certainly going to be more durable and won’t require painting.
KB: It will require teaching the clients to learn how at what times of day to open the windows, day and night, how to use the daily thermal cycles.
MB: The hope is that a simple manual, no more than a couple pages, would enlighten an owner the best way to maximize the passive conditions of the building.
Jim Vallette: One of the exciting things you are doing is relying on local materials and labor – much more so than what FEMA is doing, shipping these trailers in from Indiana. Do you see a place for factories along the Gulf Coast as part of the rebuilding process?
MB: That possibility would be an amazing thing. You could put people to work, as well as build these units locally.
KB: And you would cut down of transportation costs.
MB: We’re a wood state. There’s a huge amount of plantation wood. Not a lot of it is sustainably harvested. Nonetheless, there are huge amounts available as a local resource. We hope to change that, and get plantation farming to be more environmentally responsible. In the meantime, that’s what is here and it would be good for the local economy, as well as reducing shipping costs.

Ultra-Affordability
MB: We’ve talked to U.S. Department of Agriculture people about giving low interest loans to people who qualify for the ultra-affordable housing marketplace. They’ve said they would even consider 35 and 40 year mortgages. That’s a pretty interesting thing. Now somebody who could only have afforded a single-wide trailer in the past with a 15-year chattel mortgage actually is going to pay less money to own a really well-built product.
From the standpoint of disaster relief housing, we have a permanent foundation system that has the ability to unhook itself. FEMA could put these down temporarily and then relocate them to another spot. Or FEMA could put them down and somebody could say, ‘you know what, I’m going to keep this.’ And then they could purchase it from FEMA.
KB: And then start adding on to it.
JV: That’s kind of like what Pliny Fisk’s after with the GoHome™ and GroHome™. [3]
MB: That’s exactly right, the idea that this could be even more stripped down. There are certain things that have to be on this single-wide in order for it to perform environmentally. We have plug-ins. His is a much more flexible, and more open, system. This one’s a lot more determinate to start with.
JV: You were saying that your target price is way lower than what FEMA’s paying now for 18 months of shelter.
MB: Significantly lower, yes. The emphasis of our project all along has been ultra-affordable housing. It’s costing FEMA $57,000 for 18 months use of a trailer – that’s $3,000 to $4,000 a month. We’re shooting for a target price for sale in the $50,000 to $60,000 price range. That would be for a two-bedroom, one-bath, or a three-bedroom, one-bath -- we’re still working on those numbers. The difficulty right now is with all the re-construction going on at the coast, our construction costs are going out of sight right now in this region. It’s going to be hard to get a real accurate number until a manufacturer comes in and looks at what they can do.

Development Plans
MB: We’ve been working on this for a few years. It’s kind of frustrating: we have identified clients but, before Katrina, nobody was interested in making it. Now a catastrophic event comes along, and this project starts to look good with respect to disaster relief housing.
Disaster relief, sad as it might be, might be the entrée to getting the Greenmobile™ production viable and in demand. I don’t think there’s a limit on disaster relief housing right now.
Last September, the USDA came through with a Rural Business Enterprise Grant to do a feasibility study on how to start a plant in an economically depressed city. When we received the grant, they cut out the prototype. Now we’re back to square one, but we aim to build the prototype by late summer or early fall. An entrepreneur is looking to start up a company a little north of here. If that goes ahead, he would be making this product for a certain region, which is yet to be determined.
KB: We do have plant space available.
MB: We’re trying to get somebody big to so something. If we had a wish, it would be that an enlightened manufactured housing company will see this as something of serious value, and begin to collaborate with us and bring it to fruition. It could be somebody like Warren Buffett [who owns Clayton Homes, the largest manufactured housing company]. If anybody might be interested in making this in a certain region, please contact us at the university. We’re looking for collaborators now.

Graphics courtesy of Prof. Michael Berk, Mississippi State Univ.
Video stills by Jim Vallette/Healthy Building Network, 2006.

Endnotes
[1] “A Letter from Dean West,” Fall 2005 Newsletter, College of Architecture, Art & Design, Mississippi State University. Available at:
[2] The Carl Small Town Center is a community design center located in the School of Architecture at Mississippi State University. It works with faculty, architects, intern architects, and students. The Greenmobile™ project is run through the Center, which is looking for additional funding.
[3] For more information on the GoHome™ and GroHome™ buildings, visit the home page of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, and read Sam Martin, “Pliny Fisk III / Gail Vittori Architecture,” Metropolis Magazine, December 19, 2005.
Additional Links
Overview of Sustainable Mobile Home project at Mississippi State University
Ari Shapiro, “Emergency Housing Need Sparks Creative Designs,” National Public Radio, October 25, 2005.
Kira L. Gould, “Experts Focus on How to Rebuild Low-Income Housing, McGraw-Hill Construction,
November 16, 2005
Jim Vallette, “Manufactured Housing: Blessing or Curse For Katrina Survivors?,” Healthy Building News, January 23, 2006

Related Files: