Images of the wake of the Texas hurricanes (song by The Bells of Joy).

The Texas Grow Home Project is a partnership of the following...

                    Texas Low Income Housing Information Service

                    Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs

                    Covenant Community Capital/Covenant Neighborhoods

                    Southeast Texas Interfaith Organization

                    Housing Texas

Supporters and Partners of the Texas Grow Home Design Competition include...

                    Texas Society of Architects

                    Foundation for Expanding Horizons

                    Christus Health

                    CHASE Bank

                    Marquette Financial Companies

This web site was created and is maintained by the Texas Low income Housing Information Service and the views expressed here are those of TxLIHIS and do not necessarily represent those of the other Texas Grow Home Project partners or sponsors.

The Texas Grow Home Project has several parts:

Quality design

1. A collaborative effort of the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, Covenant Community Capital, the Texas Society of Architects and Southeast Texas Interfaith, the Texas Grow Home project began with the largest statewide architectural affordable housing design competition in Texas history. The result? A fresh new design approach to disaster housing that allows a core “emergency” home to be expanded into a three-bedroom, two-bath house that families can call home over the long term.
   

Model home production

1. Hurricane Rita left thousands of homes in Port Arthur, Texas in shambles, and families broken by uncertain living conditions or homelessness. Here, with particularly acute post-disaster housing needs, three winning Grow Home designs are being built into prototypes that will become homes for Rita survivors.
   

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3. The model homes are the necessary first step in the project’s larger and more ambitious goal: to expeditiously provide quality, affordable homes for low-income families in the wake of a disaster.
   

Community involvement

1. An open house on November 20, 2009 marks the beginning of a new chapter in the Texas Grow Home project: community input to perfect the models. By testing the designs against the realities of real world construction costs, and gathering input from local governments, church groups, nonprofit organizations, housing developers, and concerned citizens, and most importantly the residents of the home, we can adjust the Grow Home model to prepare for large-scale production. It is a simple formula of home prototype modeling plus public input that historically has not been applied to the development of disaster recovery programs.
   

A new disaster recovery program for Texas

1. The Texas Grow Home Project is a multifaceted approach to a multifaceted problem. FEMA's disaster recovery programs fail to accommodate the unique needs of persons with low incomes. The Texas Grow Home project literally builds a foundation for addressing these needs, and for turning a vision of quality home design into a far-reaching programmatic solution of which we can all be proud.
   

The Texas Grow Homes Project is an effort to revolutionize post-disaster housing by creating housing that is affordable, well designed, energy-efficient and easily deployed in the wake of a disaster. This initiative seeks to not just build homes, but to replace the failed status quo that has left disaster survivors poorly housed, and communities broken. It is about developing a permanent housing solution, rather than continuing the failed quick-fix approach of FEMA trailers and temporary rent subsidies. It is about everyone working together — disaster survivors, policy makers, architects and housing providers — to make this bold solution work.

Texas Grow Home Project