Community Rebuilds

Our interview with Rikki Epperson, the Executive Director at Community Rebuilds, in January 2024 served as a reminder that sincere community-oriented innovation unfolds slowly, step-by-step, without the luxury and comfort of stubborn principles. 

Organization Name: Community Rebuilds 
Located in Moab, Utah | Founded in 2010

Over the past few decades, Moab, Utah – the “Adventure Capital of the West” – has seen a dramatic rise in new, luxury developments. According to local newspaper The Times-Independent, as of late 2023, about a third of Moab’s residential units had been claimed as second homes. And this comes as no surprise, given Moab is home to only about 5,000 permanent residents, in contrast to the estimated three to five million tourists it hosts every year. 

Pictured: Luxury housing development mockup (above) and house listing (below) from Lionsback Resort in Moab. As advertised, the property is zoned to allow for short term rentals, giving owners flexibility to rent when they are not in residence.

And the housing crisis is not new to Moab, where the shortage of affordable housing has been a prominent issue since uranium was discovered there shortly after World War II. 

Nor is it a unique phenomenon in the U.S., where home prices have increased by about 60 percent just over the past decade (adjusted for inflation), according to an article in the New York Times this March.

“One thing most people agree on is that America has too few homes. According to Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giant, the nation is short about four million units. The deficit is particularly acute in both low-cost rentals and the entry-level starter homes favored by first-time buyers.”

“[People from out of town are buying up houses], or they’re turning them into short-term rentals, like Airbnbs,” says Rikki Epperson, Executive Director at Community Rebuilds. “All those things are great, but when it's lopsided to the point where there is nowhere for the workers to live, your community is clearly going to have problems.”

Rikki adds, “Not just schools and hospitals, but every single building is understaffed. How can you have quality of life if you can’t have quality of work, or success in your workplace, or have great customer service, or the resources that you need in your community?”

Community Rebuilds’ primary goal is to build reliable, affordable housing in Moab. 

The organization has so far helped build over 73 homes across 5 counties and keeps its costs at about half that of conventional construction in the region. The houses are not only affordable to build, but cost-efficient throughout the lifetime of the home as a result of intelligent, eco-cooperative design decisions.

Context in Moab, Utah

Shortly after the Second World War, Moab experienced a uranium mining boom, bringing a wave of temporary housing to its neighborhoods. 

In 1955, Archie M. Swenson, Moab chief of police, summarized the developments of the town when he said, “Most of us are aware by now that the ‘city of the Red Rock Country’ is no longer the quiet little cowtown of yesteryear. Once the crossroads of cattle trails, it is now a throbbing thruway for tourists, and of late an artery of the uranium country.”

The dramatic changes in Moab's population, economy, and demography caused by the uranium mining industry called for vast alterations in Moab's infrastructure. Housing, water supply and sewer facilities, phone lines, schools, and medical facilities—all these needs and more were the challenges brought to this tiny community as the need for uranium made its sudden and far-reaching impact.

"Housing is Moab's number one problem," the Times-Independent proclaimed in 1955. 

Bill McDougall, a geologist who later served on the city council and as Moab's mayor, recalled that "People lived all over the place. Every space in town was used. Trailers were scattered all over."…

The housing shortage quickly developed into a crisis…Because of the housing shortage, many families lived in hotel rooms, trailers, tents, or even in their cars. June Stilson, a Moab resident, commented that the banks of Mill Creek looked very similar to the way they do now in the summer, when many tourists and mountain bikers camp along it. Sam and Raymond Taylor described the situation in their book Uranium Fever:

“The length of a man's stay at Moab could be told by a glance at his trailer. At first it sat there among the peach trees just as it had been pulled off the road. After awhile he jacked it up on piers and took the wheels off. Next thing, he built a cinder block foundation under it. Then he began nailing on lean-to's. Some of the old residents, men who'd been there a year or more, had expanded their trailers into dwellings of four or five rooms.”

Excerpted from Utah Historical Society’s Quarterly, 2001 (no bolded text in original)

The prominence of trailer homes is inextricably linked to Moab’s decades-old housing crisis. As inherently temporary housing, trailers are not reliable over time and significantly depreciate in value while surrounding real estate skyrockets. 

As of 2010, many of Moab’s workforce still lived in these old, dilapidated trailer homes, which were built prior to modern building codes, because they were all that was affordable. 

History of Community Rebuilds

As the story goes, Emily Niehaus, founder of Community Rebuilds, was working as a caseworker and saw how badly the housing situation in Moab affected mental health stability. Inspired by this complex issue, she went on to learn all about loan processing and became a loan officer. 

And in that role, it became clear to her that these pre-1976 trailers were not assets, but liabilities because they were considered condemned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  

Homeowners couldn’t take a home equity line of credit nor could potential buyers easily secure financing to buy them, making it virtually impossible to sell. This would prolong the housing crisis, allowing little to no financial mobility to local, working households. 

The low-quality trailers needed to be replaced by high-quality, permanent housing while keeping the costs low. So, Emily set about to answer the question, “What’s the cheapest way to rebuild these trailers?”

Pictured: Emily Niehaus; photo by Murice Miller, courtesy of Community Rebuilds

As fate would have it, Emily was active in Moab’s theater scene and happened to be in a play at the time with Doni Kiffmeyer, a local thespian who had, coincidentally, freshly co-authored the book, Earthbag Building: The Tools, Tricks and Techniques. 

As Rikki told us with a smile, Emily picked his brain backstage, asking, “How do I build the cheapest house on the block?” and he answered, “Why, of course, with straw and clay!”

Having bought into the prospect of ‘naturally building’ these homes – specifically, building with straw bale, which is suitable to the local climate – Emily was then faced with two issues: naturally built houses would require a lot of labor, and well, nobody knew how to build them.

So, a natural building school was born.

Community Rebuilds would train interns to build this “dirt cheap home” and also supply labor through the training program, enabling it to build more housing that is not only affordable but also better for the Earth.  

The organization came in, at first, to replace temporary trailer home properties with reliable, permanent low-cost homes - hence the name “Rebuilds” - before broadening its vision to build more affordable, reliable housing generally, even where trailer homes were not previously available. Most recently, the organization partnered the Moab Community Land Trust to grow the affordable housing stock in the area.

Community Rebuilds didn’t reinvent the wheel with its natural, energy-efficient building techniques - which are, in fact, indigenous to the region and had been used by the local peoples for centuries - but it continues to explore and train aspiring youth in the lost art of constructing such housing in a way that is tailored to local challenges.

How does it work?

This solution to the local housing crisis is enabled by a government-backed mutual self-help program focused on rural development.  

Community Rebuilds is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and a grantee of the USDA Rural Development Mutual Self-Help program, which “provides grants to qualified organizations to help them carry out local self-help housing construction projects,” as outlined on the USDA Rural Development website. 

The mutual self-help program is accompanied by a loan product, the USDA Rural Development Loan, for which homeowners may apply to significantly improve their ability to afford a home.

“It’s called the 502 Direct Loan, the best loan in the entire world. We’ve looked and looked and looked…there’s nothing like this 502 Direct Loan. That’s the most valuable resource in our entire program,” says Rikki.  

The mutual self-help program works roughly like this (read top to bottom):

The trick, then, is in keeping the cost of building the house low and making the process as efficient as possible to help set the homeowners up for success. That’s where Community Rebuilds’ unique approach comes into play. 

At its core, Community Rebuilds is a ‘natural building’ training program. It provides training, supplemental labor, oversight, and to some degree, a supply chain for the necessary materials so that the homeowners are supported throughout their building process and successful in obtaining a reliable home they can afford. 

Photo courtesy of Community Rebuilds

Impact 

Since 2010, Community Rebuilds has worked with over 600 interns, gradually ramping up its capacity for home construction. As of 2020, it set a goal of constructing 12 homes annually. 

The cost of its homes benefits from cheaper material, running at around $70 per square foot today, a fraction of the standard cost of construction in a region where housing costs are elevated by lack of supply. And not only are they affordable to build, but they make cost-efficiency possible throughout the lifetime of the home as a result of intelligent, eco-cooperative design decisions. 

For example, houses combine both passive and active solar design with highly insulating straw bale wall systems, light colored roofs, and large, south-facing windows, significantly decreasing future energy costs related to temperature control. 

“[The houses] usually don’t get below 60 or above 80 [degrees], just from the way they’re built. Even with no heating or cooling components, just working with the environment. It looks weird…houses are facing different directions or have light colored roofs. But like you’ll save 1000 dollars per year if you have a light roof,” says Rikki. 

Images courtesy of Community Rebuilds. See more pictures of the homes they’ve built on their website.

Community Rebuilds also reserves at least half of its volunteer positions in every batch for those who identify as female, aiming to balance out the 9% female representation in the broader building sector through its education program. 

In stark contrast to the average building site, Community Rebuilds often works with a 90% female or non-cisgender team, empowering new people to carry forward sustainable construction skills with every project, and bringing diversity into the country’s building workforce. 

The organization is also focused on empowering local indigenous groups to access low-income housing in a self-sustaining manner through collaboration and knowledge sharing and prioritizes accommodation of indigenous youth in its programs.  

In 2015, Community Rebuilds partnered with Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture to support them in replicating its student education program so that they could similarly build homes for low-income families on the Hopi Reservation. Community Rebuilds continues to collaborate with local reservations, trying to make the sustainable building practices that were indigenous to the region accessible again. 

Embracing the Imperfect  

Joyful and innovative as the project is, Community Rebuilds’ work isn’t picture perfect - practical solutions seldom are. 

Sustainability Principles 

Rikki explained to us that Moab is prone to soil issues brought on by high gypsum content, which can make the soil collapsible. While Community Rebuilds often uses earthen floors in their construction, the soil’s behavior may result in shifting or cracking in the foundation, putting the house at risk of suffering severe damages. 

In such instances, the engineer will suggest putting in a floating concrete slab -- and Rikki adds, while that’s generally considered a bummer for natural building, it’s ultimately a good call. 

“So is mud everywhere? No. That’s not important to us anymore. Counting our carbon and making sure we’re storing as much as possible in our home is the responsible way to build moving forward,” says Rikki. 

Rather than reaching for the tempting “all-natural” label, Community Rebuilds remains focused on maximum positive impact possible, by whatever means are reasonable at a given time - in this case, by thinking in terms of net carbon.

“The house becomes like a storage unit for carbon to keep it from getting burned in some other process, and that’s how you compensate for the carbon you're burning in the concrete and stuff that you use. And that is the practical way of doing net zero – rather than doing ‘all-natural’ and the house suffers.”

Typically, the lead instructor on a given home has the creative and strategic freedom to determine which materials and techniques are used in the building process, taking transportation, materials harvesting, scrap availability, nuances of the location, etc. into consideration. 

Sometimes, sourcing some materials from abroad actually ends up being better carbon-wise than the options nearby, despite more energy-intensive transportation. 

These decisions are ultimately subjective, with each leader weighing various factors with their knowledge at the time and following their intuition.

Compared to an average house, which is considered to be 100% over carbon neutral – that is, primarily releasing carbon and not storing it – one of Community Rebuilds’ recent carbon storage-focused homes was estimated by the organization to be around 25% over neutral in embodied carbon, meaning more carbon was still released than stored.

“We made so much effort, and that was our most groovy project, and it was still 25%. But you’re 75% better than the houses next door,” says Rikki. 

Community Rebuilds also recently helped to start a land trust and built twenty-four homes on that trust in the past two years. 

And while the organization continues to evaluate its overall strategy, their focus is on the unique experience of building each individual home.

On-Site Experience

Beyond the case-by-case construction planning that lead instructors undertake, Rikki explains that for every home, navigating the relationship with the homeowners is a delicate process.

“They always say buying a house is one of the hardest things you’ll do – try building it. Especially when you don’t even know how to build.”

Homeowners are required to work 100 hours a month while maintaining their jobs, often resulting in elevated stress and anxiety.

“It’s just a really hard process, and some people find a lot of closeness and gratitude within that, and some people are resentful,” says Rikki. “You might have homeowners having trauma from that for years to come, maybe forever. And you might have homeowners that bounce right back that end up working or joining the Board of Community Rebuilds.”

Building locations typically have around 35 people on site on any given day, including homeowners, staff, students, and service workers.

As Rikki described to us, and as many volunteer blog posts illustrate (see further reading below), the days begin with stretch circles, team building exercises, jokes and the like - and the building team, including the homeowners, often grow quite close, allowing them to be there for one another and offer the tailored emotional support needed day-to-day. 

At the end of the day, this effort paves a path to financial freedom, keeping working people off the streets, and the on-site experience is made to be as supportive as possible to the best of the team’s capacity.

Author Perspective 

I was recently talking with a friend about selflessness – what it really is, what it looks like and what it must feel like. There’s the obvious catch: to what degree is aiming to be selfless driven by selfishness? And can we imagine a selfless yet serious form of ambition? Can you still be ambitious? Well, you must still be an engaged individual, right? Selfless people are rarely inactive…

We went in circles talking for a while, and eventually landed ourselves at this conclusion: 

Being selflessly active must look like this: being oriented towards an ideal, and making every reasonable effort in its direction, without being greedy for it, without needing the idea of its achievement to label oneself or one’s efforts. It’s to try one’s best, understanding that may be perfectly mediocre, without the itch for recognition and felicitation even from oneself.

Community Rebuilds, to my wonder, expresses this quality. They seem to be not even nearly as concerned with perfection, let alone optics, as they are with meaningful impact – representing an incredibly mature, well-meaning and genuinely sustainable orientation. 

They don’t seem eager to put impressive numbers on paper, to boast that “we never use concrete, ever”, or firmly commit to a particular manner of sourcing materials, or achieve net zero carbon at any cost, or any of the other so-called principles many flashy, sustainability-oriented companies and initiatives commonly amplify today.  

Nor did Rikki try to paint their “build your own home” program as some kind of fantasy (which is how I had originally imagined it), because it is, in fact, an incredibly labor-intensive, strenuous process for many homeowners.

While several factors of Community Rebuilds work remain (rightfully) short of picture-perfect, they manage that with grace and unfaltering effort. Rather than being driven by an anxiety to resolve those factors, we discovered a focus only on building as many affordable homes as they could handle, as best as possible, for as many people as possible. 

From my perspective, Community Rebuilds keeps it simple, and does its best. That’s valiant.  

Further Reading

• A detailed breakdown of Community Rebuilds’ model here by Kenny Fallon Jr. for The Last Straw
• Collected testimonies of volunteers and homeowners here
• Additional very recent volunteer testimony here and a self-help participant testimony here
• More information on Community Rebuilds’ work with The Moab Area Community Land Trust (MACLT) here
• Book Build Beyond Zero about carbon storage here
• Details on working with Community Rebuilds here 

Note that Community Rebuilds is 100% funded by grants and donations. If you would like to support their mission to teach sustainable building practices and create healthy affordable homes, donations are accepted here: https://www.communityrebuilds.org/make-a-donation. 

Community Rebuilds acknowledges “the land we currently identify as the Moab Valley to be the traditional and ancestral lands of bands of the Nuutsui (Ute) and clans of Ancestral Pueblo People.”

This article was not sponsored by Community Rebuilds or any affiliated organization. All opinions expressed here are solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s employer.