My updating has not kept up with the progress on The Trace. This is the 28-house Habitat for Humanity neighborhood that Kristen, Sam, Nadene, and I worked on from August through November of last year.
Thanks to the effort Habitat has put in over the last nine months, the neighborhood is nearly complete. All it needs is some landscaping work and, of course, people! The certificates of occupancy have been delayed while Habitat waits for the City of Long Beach to approve the neighborhood plat, so nobody has moved in yet, but twelve families have already been selected for houses and the rest will soon be filled.
Here’s a look down the newly landscaped street (“Thrivent Lane,” after the main sponsor, Thrivent Financial).
Ten different house plans, each named after trees, make a typologically diverse neighborhood. Here is the “Sycamore”:
In my opinion, the neighborhood is turning out extremely well. Habitat and Thrivent are both very pleased; Habitat has already begun using these house plans in another large project in Gulfport, and they’ve made other changes to the way they design houses and neighborhoods as well, which I’ll touch on in a later article. For now, see more photos of the nearly finished neighborhood on Flickr.
