Through that I have discovered numerous housing methods and building materials that could be used to build your home for a lot less. The downside to these unfortunately tends to be the difficulty associated with building in metropolitan areas. That is not to say they can’t be built. It just takes a lot more effort.

Below are the options that I’ll write up separate posts on.

Options:

Shipping containers aka Intermodal Steel Building Units: You’ve seen the shipping containers going up and down the interstate on trains or trucks. They can be used as basic building blocks for housing. This video shows what can be accomplished.

Tiny Houses: I was introduced to the concept of tiny houses while researching minimum house sizes. These are usually build on a trailer of some sort in order to avoid the minimum house size restrictions. The first person in this movement whose works I devoured was Jay Shafer whose Tumbleweed Houses are worthy of a look. I have encountered many more that I will write about as time proceeds.

Strawbale houses: These take it back to the days of yore. Check this video out for an idea of what they are.

Earth Berm houses: Another trip back to the days of yore with a modern twist. This video gives you a sample of what can be achieved.

Avalution Consulting is a U.S. based firm that specializes in business continuity and IT disaster recovery consulting, outsourcing and software solutions for organizations in both the public and private sectors. Avalution is also recognized as a participant in the BSI Americas Associate Consultant Program (ACP). As a certified firm, Avalution assists in preparing organizations for BS 25999 certification as well as assessing readiness for the certification process.

Avalution also offers a completely customizable business continuity software solution based on the simplicity of Microsoft SharePoint. The Planning Portal is web-based business continuity software that delivers an easy-to-use set of tools and processes to assist in managing and executing business continuity programs, with solutions to address analysis, planning, awareness generation, exercise planning, notification, and continuous improvement.

[Avalution, 2011]

Training

The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training class training and volunteer program offers members of the public an opportunity to learn basic hands-on disaster response techniques. The program is a 20-hour class that covers:

Disaster preparedness
Fire safety
Light search and rescue
Team organization
Disaster psychology
Terrorism response
Disaster medical operations [Chicago CERT]

SocialCERT

The Chicago CERT team has SocialCERT which is unofficially affiliated with the local chapter. SocialCERT is an opportunity for preparedness minded individuals to socialize and share ideas about preparedness.