JUDY WOODRUFF: But
first: Discussions about
affordable housing often
focus on big, expensive
cities, like San
Francisco and New York.
But what about rural America,
home to about one-fifth
of the U.S. population?
John Yang reports on a
program improving housing
in a remote town in Alabama.
It's part of our ongoing
series on poverty and
opportunity, Chasing the Dream.
MARGARET "REE" ZINNERMAN,
Rural Studio Client:
Welcome to my house.
JOHN YANG: Ree Zinnerman was
born in this tiny West Alabama
town of Newbern, and, for
her, it will always be home.
MARGARET "REE" ZINNERMAN: It's
a peaceful place, and I just
like sitting here watching
it and listening to the quiet.
JOHN YANG: Soon, for the
first time, she will move
into a real house of her own.
For more than 40 years,
she lived in a mobile home.
MARGARET "REE" ZINNERMAN:
That's what I was living in.
JOHN YANG: Zinnerman's house
comes courtesy of architecture
students in Auburn University's
Rural Studio program.
MARGARET "REE" ZINNERMAN:
Words can't describe it.
I couldn't believe it.
After all these years,
something I have always
wanted was a house.
And I was going to be blessed
with the house of my own.
JOHN YANG: Since 1993, Rural
Studio students and faculty
have been working, studying and
living in Hale County, Alabama.
Some call it a lesson in social
design, using architecture
to serve the greater good.
Rural Studio's director
is Andrew Freear.
ANDREW FREEAR, Director, Rural
Studio: There's this sort of
feeling that everybody deserves
good design, and whether
they're rich, poor, black,
white, pink, or green.
JOHN YANG: Zinnerman's house
is part of the studio's 20K
Project, launched in 2005, with
the goal of producing
residences that would cost
$20,000 to build, 20K.
More than two dozen
different homes have been
designed, constructed
and given to residents.
Most are one-bedroom,
about 500 square feet.
Each design is named
for the recipient.
There's Johnnie Mae's House,
Buster's house, and next to
Ree's House, Geraldine's House.
That's Zinnerman's younger
sister, Geraldine Braxton.
GERALDINE BRAXTON, Rural Studio
Client: The day he gave me the
keys to the door, I couldn't
even open the door,
I was shaking so.
I was happy.
JOHN YANG: Braxton has
lived here for two years.
The retired school cafeteria
worker loves her kitchen
GERALDINE BRAXTON: I
like everything about
it, the way it's set up.
I like my island in the
center of the kitchen.
JOHN YANG: Braxton's new
energy-efficient house puts
less strain on her wallet.
Her previous home was poorly
insulated, it cost her hundreds
of dollars a month to keep
cool in the summer and
warm in the winter.
GERALDINE BRAXTON: I was
spending like about $350 on
gas in the winter every month.
JOHN YANG: Three hundred
fifty dollars a month?
GERALDINE BRAXTON:
Every month for gas.
JOHN YANG: While Rural Studios
is helping improve the lives
of local residents, the
main focus is on training a
new generation of architects
whose social consciences are
as strong as their aesthetics.
ANDREW FREEAR: What we're trying
to do is design a home that
is easily built, and, again,
easily maintained.
You know, our goal is to offer
it up at some scale down the
road, but we're determined
to do it quietly and
slowly and carefully.
JOHN YANG: The idea is to give
students a hands-on experience
working with an underserved
community in the heart of
the South's Black Belt.
Hale County is one of
the poorest in the state
- - 24 percent of all
residents live below
the poverty line, compared with
about 13 percent nationwide.
For African-Americans in
the county, the rate is even
higher, more than 35 percent.
And in an area short on jobs,
the population is dwindling,
dropping 6 percent from 2010
to 2017.
Since the students live
full-time in Newbern,
some 140 miles from
Auburn's main campus,
they're seen not as outsiders.
They're seen as neighbors.
MARGARET "REE" ZINNERMAN:
I think it makes a
difference by them being
part of the community,
because they have
really improved it.
JOHN YANG: And they ask
their neighbors to suggest
who could use a new house.
GWEN MELTON, Mail Carrier: And
it was just sad for anybody to
be living in those conditions
in these days and times.
JOHN YANG: Who better to ask
than Gwen Melton, who delivers
mail to 483 homes in the Newbern
area every day?
For 10 years, she's
quietly suggested potential
clients to Rural Studio.
And how does it make you feel
when you go deliver the mail
to that new house, knowing
what they had lived before?
GWEN MELTON: Makes
me feel great.
JOHN YANG: The 20K Project
began with lofty goals.
Rural Studio associate
director Rusty Smith
oversees the project.
RUSTY SMITH, Rural Studio:
We thought we were going
to work for a year or
two or maybe three,
and it would solve
all the problems of
housing affordability
in the United States.
JOHN YANG: It didn't take them
long to realize the hurdles
to doing it on a bigger scale.
RUSTY SMITH: We're in charge
of the financing, and we're in
this place where we live, and
we have got student labor to do
it and the faculty oversight.
The challenges to scale, to
kind of do this outside of our
kind of operational footprint,
are many.
JOHN YANG: Still, they want
the project to focus attention
on the issues facing rural
areas, not just in America,
but around the world.
ANDREW FREEAR: It's absolutely
a Trojan horse for a whole bunch
of issues about rural living
that we're very interested
in challenging and
being a voice for.
JOHN YANG: For instance,
cell service in Newbern
area is spotty.
The town's new library, designed
by the Rural Studio, is the
only place high-speed Internet
is available to the public.
BARBARA WILLIAMS, Librarian:
It makes you feel real good
to be able to say that we have
a library.
JOHN YANG: Librarian Barbara
Williams says that when the
nearby high school closed five
years ago, the town
lost a community hub.
BARBARA WILLIAMS: What the
library is trying to do is to
try to meet some of the needs
of the community that are being
left, I guess left unmet with
the closing of the high school.
JOHN YANG: Across the street
is Newbern's fire station.
Built by the Rural Studio in
2004, it was the first new
public building in the town
in a century.
Pat Braxton lost his job in
2013 when the factory where
he worked the next town over
went out of business.
Now he's a volunteer firefighter
and Newbern's handyman.
Before, the nearest fire
station was 15 minutes away.
PATRICK BRAXTON, Handyman: By
having this truck right here
in Newbern, we saved a lot
of houses.
We saved a lot of
people's lives.
JOHN YANG: And saved Newbern
homeowners a lot of money,
reducing insurance premiums.
Like all of Rural Studio's
projects, style also
has function: There
are no fire hydrants
in Newbern, so the fire trucks
carry their own water, and
have to be kept from freezing
in the winter.
ANDREW FREEAR: It's not just it
looks funky and it look cool.
It's very much about making
sure that those fire trucks
don't freeze and that that space
is temperate
throughout the year.
JOHN YANG: Ree Zinnerman gave
students free rein to design her
house, except for one detail.
MARGARET "REE"
ZINNERMAN: A red door.
And my momma always loved red.
JOHN YANG: For Zinnerman, the
greatest relief is simply having
a well-designed, well-built
house to live in.
For Rural Studio, it's
about more than just
solving a housing problem.
RUSTY SMITH: Solving problems
sort of imagines the future as
broken and it needs to be fixed.
I don't think there's
anything broken here.
But there's some really
significant purposes
that need to be served.
JOHN YANG: A lesson for
students in helping an
underserved community
and helping the community
learn how to better
serve itself.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm
John Yang in Newbern, Alabama.