In this era of exponential global population grow, there is far too many people find it difficult to find a good home they can afford for themselves and their family.
If you own or are getting an empty home for free, would you like to share it with those who need it for free? Community Sharing is such a gift for the body, mind and spiritual enrichment. Tell us your story, and share with us your concern and even fear. Hugs!
Australia's first tiny home project approved for NSW homeless
Tiny Homes Foundation (THF) has received DA approval to build what is believed to be Australia’s first tiny house project for homeless women, men, youth and the elderly. The pilot project next to Gosford Hospital on the NSW Central Coast will consist of four tiny homes, a common lounge, a common laundry/workshop and community vegetable gardens.
“A home is not just a roof overhead it is a springboard under your feet.” David Wooldridge, THF Co-founder and CEO.
THF’s model is based on a ‘housing-first' solution supported by a network of training, employment and social support services. “We believe in ‘housing first’ not housing only. It provides a great foundation to build on.” THF has collaborated with like minded partners who are leading practitioners within their field, such as Clayton Utz (lawyers),NBRSArchitecture (architects), Chase Burke & Harvey (surveyors) Wilson Planning (town planning), The Skills Generator (employment & training), TAFE Outreach (education) andPacific Link (social housing providers).
As the latest strategy to increase the availability of ‘affordable housing’ each 14sq.m home has a finished cost of less than $30,000 includes full bathroom and kitchen, embraces solar efficient design and is easily assembled and disassembled.
However, building tiny houses is one thing but what makes the THF initiative groundbreaking is the fact that it is council approved, low cost, replicable and features Australia’s first “equity participation scheme for tenants” whereby accommodation payments not applied to the cost and maintenance of the project will be available to THF tenants as needed for future housing related expenditure creating a pathway from homelessness to self support.
“Solving homelessness is a question of will. Will we do it or won’t we? It can happen within the next 3-5 years – if we all really want it to.”
And as an incentive to get others to join the effort to solve homelessness THF will be making all its plans, documentation, process etc. “free access” to others who are able to replicate the project in their state or region.
You Can Sleep In This Underwater Bedroom Surrounded By Sharks
Consider our 'jaws' dropped.
Airbnb has
listed accommodations in trees, boathouses and even one that boasts the
'Netflix and Chill' theme. But its most recent listing is even more
out-of-this-world than all the previous ones combined.
Image via BGR Netflix and Chill,
anyone?
The listing is a large cylindrical underwater bedroom surrounded by 35 sharks!
Image via Airbnb
Transparent walls surround the bedroom, so you'll be able see your neighbours
and their teeths clearly. You'll be sleeping 10 metres underwater with a 360
degree view of the pool, which contains more than three million litres of
water.
This one-of-a-kind underwater bedroom is located in the iconic Aquarium de
Paris
Image via CNN
Opened in 1867 and located in front of the iconic Eiffel Tower, the Aquarium de
Paris was the first built anywhere in the world.
The best part? You and a friend could enjoy a one-night stay at this awesome
listing for FREE!
Image via Airbnb
But first, you have to win a contest!
Submit up to 550 words about why you belong with the sharks for a night by 3
April 2016 here. Winners will stay
there on 11, 12 and 13 April 2016.
The contest is open to everyone in the world. If you win, Airbnb will fly you
into Paris from anywhere in the world!
The stay will be hosted by Fred Buyle, a world record-breaking freediver, shark
lover and underwater photographer
Image via Tribord
Fred Buyle started freediving at the young age of 10. By 19, he was teaching
the sport. Between 1995 and 2000, based in the south of France, he set four
world records including diving through a 100m reef in a single breathe.
Aside from the stay, you can also enjoy a dinner inside the aquarium and an informational
session about sharks with the host
Image via Airbnb
Buyle and a marine biologist will guide you on a tour through the aquarium, and
provide an exclusive behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of sharks: how
they live, why they’re so misunderstood, and their importance to the ocean’s
ecosystem.
Like other Airbnb listings, there are some rules that come with staying here
including... No selfies with sharks :(
Image via Airbnb
No selfies after dark. Remember, sharks are sensitive to light. Avoid seeing
Jaws before your sleepover and no sleepwalking or night swimming.airbnb.co.uk
Sounds like something you would go for? [edited]The contest is ended at 3 April, 2016.
All the best, guys! Published by
John Lim — 31 Mar 2016, 05:56 PM
If you wish to login to Airbnb with €18 as
gift, join here.
FYI, Meinfernbus-flixbus app offered Euro 9.99 for almost every connecting cities in Europe. You have to book it today only 13 Feb, 2016, and travel between 13 Feb - 17 March, and booking discount only valid via their Apps.
I have booked mine. So it is confirmed true.
You may refund even one minutes before travel through their website, so book early and you may regret just before travel and get a refund in form of voucher, for next booking. Here is the refund link.
Tiziana Fabi—AFP/Getty ImagesA man walks in the center of the village of Gangi, 120 kms from Palermo, on August 14, 2014
But there's a catch (naturally)
In a move straight out of your European daydreams, the Sicilian mountain village of Gangi is giving away for free or at a steep discount many of the houses that line its ancient stone streets.
But there’s a catch, the New York Times reports. Anyone who takes the 13th century village up on its offer of a house has only a few years to restore it, and the buildings are often long abandoned and in advanced states of decay, requiring extremely costly renovations in order to become habitable.
Starting in the 1890s, Gangi experienced mass emigration, with much of its population leaving for the U.S. or Argentina. In the 1950s, the village had 16,000 residents, the town’s Mayor Giuseppe Ferrarello told the Times. Today the population is less than half that.
The result was a glut of empty homes, many of them traditional structures that hosted farm animals on the bottom floors and the family on the top.Their history and charm has lured interest from as close as Palermo and as far as Abu Dhabi.
There’s now a lengthy waiting list, allowing the village to choose applicants that will add something to the town. One Florence-based company, for example, acquired two free houses, and bought seven more. It plans on joining them together to make a hotel with historical character.
It’s all for the love of the town and its future. “We want our children to stay here and not leave,” Ferrarello said.
The historic center of Gangi, a Sicilian town where abandoned houses are being given away. Its population, once about 16,000, is down to about 7,000.CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times
GANGI, Sicily — Looking for a home? One Sicilian town is making an offer that is hard to refuse: It is giving away houses.
There is a catch, naturally. The properties in Gangi, a picturesque central town that straddles the Madonie Mountains, are generally dilapidated, some abandoned generations ago.
The structures give new meaning to the term “fixer-upper,” and anyone who acquires one of the properties has just four years to restore it and make it livable.
But the offer has already lured dozens of holiday home hunters from around the world, and Gangi’s novel approach to revival has brought fresh opportunities to local builders and tradesmen while energizing tourism.
“For our Sicilian mentality, Gangi was considered to be too far from the sea” to be attractive for tourism, said Giuseppe Ferrarello, the mayor of the town, which lies on a windy, stomach-rattling road between Palermo and Catania.
The housing initiative, he said, instead “set in motion a mechanism that was previously unthinkable for a city in the center of Sicily,” where towns have shrunk in tandem with the region’s dwindling economic prospects.
Gangi, Italy
Carrega Ligure
CROATIA
UMBRIA
Rome
ITALY
SARDINIA
Tyrrhenian Sea
Gangi
Palermo
Salemi
Catania
SICILY
TUNISIA
200 KM
Mediterranean Sea
100 miles
Gangi had a population of about 16,000 in the 1950s, the mayor said. Today it is home to about 7,000.
Periodic waves of emigration from Gangi began at the end of the 19th century, driven less by economic hardship, which “was endemic to the Madonie Mountains,” than by agents for trans-Atlantic ocean liners selling the prospects of a better life in America, said Marcello Saija, the director of a network of emigration museums in Sicily.
In the 1890s, a town near Gangi had no fewer than three agents representing various shipping companies “pushing for emigration,” Mr. Saija said. “Not that the economic situation was florid, on the contrary. But what determined their departure was the lure of the American dream.”
Ellis Island records show that about 1,700 Gangi residents landed in New York between 1892 and 1924, he said. Starting in the 1930s and 1940s, Argentina became the preferred destination.
Many family homes left behind were the so-called pagglialore typical of this town. The squat, tower-like structures housed donkeys on the ground floor with the paglia, or straw. Chickens and goats were kept on the middle floor. The farmer’s family lived on top.
These structures are now among those that the city has made available, with the local government acting as real estate broker of sorts, facilitating the convergence of the town’s considerable supply of abandoned dwellings and the growing demand. Some have been given away, others sold for a nominal price. The owners decide.
The community has gone one crucial step further, radically streamlining the intricate and often convoluted bureaucracy that accompanies buying and renovating a home in Italy.
“The bureaucracy is what worries people most, but we don’t sell a house and leave people alone,” said Alessandro Cilibrasi, a local real estate agent who assists the municipality in the initiative.
A website for British investors, shelteroffshore.com, advises would-be buyers to get advice from English-speaking or non-Italian lawyers well versed in Sicilian legislation; if property has been handed down through generations, “the path of ownership is not clear,” and there may be outstanding taxes, or debts and loans.
Building and renovation costs can be high. “Sicily is not for everyone,” the website warns.
Yet so far, Gangi’s answer to depopulation has been more successful than recent plans of other places. More than 100 houses have been given away or sold for less than market prices.
A few years ago, the Sicilian town of Salemi announced to great fanfare that it would sell buildings destroyed in a 1968 earthquake for one euro each. But it never followed through, said the current mayor, Domenico Venuti, who wants to revive the project. “But we don’t want to make any official announcements until we have something to offer,” he added.
Photo
The new owner of a property is given four years to restore it, and the initiative is funneling work to local workers. The renovation costs can be high.CreditGianni Cipriano for The New York Times
Carrega Ligure, a town in the Piedmont region that saw its population shrink by two-thirds to 900 during the last century, also tried to cede abandoned buildings to repopulate itself, “and also raise some money through taxes,” said a former mayor, Guido Gozzano.
But those efforts were stymied by “enormous bureaucratic problems,” he said, noting that
once a municipal administration gained possession of a building, by law it could be sold only at competitive market values. The initiative quickly sank.
Gangi has sidestepped that by not buying any of the homes outright, acting only as a mediator between owners and buyers.
About half of the new owners in Gangi are Sicilians looking for weekend homes, like Michele Di Marco, a Palermo entrepreneur who was attracted by the town’s relaxed rhythms that hark back to a less frenetic time.
“I am a lover of these towns that personify what was best about Sicily in days gone by,” he said. Financial incentives offered by the regional and national governments helped to cover the costs, he said.
The remaining new homeowners are primarily Italian, though there are also buyers from several European countries, and one from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
There is a sizable waiting list for the remaining 200 houses, which means City Hall can be choosier about its residents.
“We don’t want people just because they have money,” Mr. Ferrarello, the mayor said. “We want to know what you’re going to do with the houses.”
Priority is given to those who want to start an economic enterprise, he said, citing Wendhers S.R.L., a Florence-based firm that received two free houses and bought another seven to create a 22-suite hotel in the historic center.
Mr. Ferrarello likes to boast that it is enough to exploit the natural and cultural beauties that the town has to offer to attract people to Gangi. “Umbria has nothing on Sicily,” he said.
But mostly, the housing initiative is about thinking ahead.
“We did this for our children, because we love our territory,” he said. “And we want our children to stay here and not leave.”
It's yours for the price of a cup of coffee - a historic house in a terracotta-tiled hill town in Italy.
In fact for the price of a full English breakfast, you could snap up half a dozen of them.
The mountain town of Gangi on the Madonie mountains in the Province of Palermo (Alamy)
A village in Sicily which has endured decades of population decline and neglect has come up with a novel, and seemingly too-good-to-refuse offer: it is selling off empty homes for just one euro each. That's 80p at today's exchange rate.
Gangi is a hill-top town set amid the rolling wheat fields and wooded valleys of central Sicily, about an hour's drive south of the picturesque holiday resort of Cefalu.
Founded in the 12th century, it boasts a castle and access to hiking trails in the surrounding countryside.
The local council wants to sell around 20 houses, many of them derelict, which were bequeathed by locals who had neither the money nor the will to renovate them.
The bargain-basement prices come with a few conditions, none of which are very onerous or particularly costly.
Gangi, with Mt Etna in the distance; the town is an hour's drive from Cefalu (Alamy)
Buyers must pay a €5,000 (£3,970) guarantee to the local council to ensure that they renovate the properties, rather than just leave them empty. The money will be redeemed once the homes are restored.
Owners have five years in which to bring the houses up to a habitable standard. Most of them are in a state of disrepair, if not derelict, with the cost of renovating them estimated at around €35,000 (£28,000).
Buyers would have to pay the legal costs associated with the purchase - estimated at around €6,000 (£4,760) per property, depending on its taxable value.
Gangi's council first launched the unusual initiative a couple of years ago, but with none of the councillors speaking English, it received barely any attention and achieved few results.
Now the village of 7,000 people has turned to Marie Wester, an English-speaking, Swedish property consultant who lives in Sicily, to help market the deal.
The Ventimiglia tower in the town of Gangi (Alamy)
Through a newsletter she sends out to clients, she has already had interest from four British couples as well as Swedes, Americans and Russians.
"The people of Gangi want to attract foreigners to the town because they want to bring in new life," Ms Wester told The Telegraph.
"Since I got involved in the sale, there has been massive interest. I think it's a good deal."
After living in Italy for seven years, Ms Wester has a shrewd idea of what local builders would charge to undertake the renovation of the properties, all of which are in the historic centre of Gangi.
"The houses need new roofs and floors, you'd need to put in electricity, water and sewerage and re-plaster them at the end of it all. I reckon it would cost about €35,000 per property.
"The only downside I can think of is that the village is not near the coast, but it a lovely medieval town, it's very clean and well-kept and the people are friendly."
Two of the houses were bought last week by an expatriate Italian businessman and his Russian wife, who are based in Abu Dhabi.
"They fell in love with our village, with the tranquillity and the clean air," said Giuseppe Ferrarello, the mayor. "We've received more than a hundred telephone calls from Italy and abroad. We are ready to welcome more people with traditional hospitality."
Gangi may be in the same province as Corleone, the town made notorious for its Mafia links by The Godfather books and films, but foreign buyers need have no fear of Cosa Nostra.
"The Mafia exists, of course, but they are operating at a different level - they are interested in multi-million euro construction projects, not restorations like this," said Ms Wester. "Some people think that if you come here you'll see them walking down the street with guns, but it's not like that."
The one-euro-a-house offer comes a month after much of a village in the Italian Alps was put on sale on eBay for €245,000 (£195,000).
Calsazio had a population of around 80 a few decades ago but emigration and the drift to the cities by young people has reduced the number of locals still living there to just eight.
See inside Gianni Versace's Miami mansion as property goes up for auction
