Mayor promotes home remodeling

Freedom Homes, a large Westside neighborhood, is one of the oldest in the city. Many of the small, aging houses share a common floor plan with three bedrooms, one bathroom and a one-car garage or carport, which families often find inadequate, according to neighborhood resident and real estate broker Mary Fewel, who is trying to change that.

To push community members to add extra space to their houses, Fewel and Mayor Eric Bever brought the city a proposal to hire an architect to compile a book of ideas designed to fit the particular style and layout of the homes in the 830-house tract in hopes that it would encourage people to build additions.

As of Wednesday, the book is available to browse or purchase for $15 from the planning department at City Hall.

A lot of people in the neighborhood have recently started to add extra bathrooms, more space and two-car garages to fit their families, said city Principal Planner Claire Flynn, and having a set of standardized plans saves homeowners money.

“All those design costs you would pay that architect you would save if you used these plans,” Flynn said.

She has seen similar programs already at work in cities like Santa Cruz and Alameda. But Fewel said that while the program can help with expenses, its more helpful in inspiring ideas.

“There’s a mental hurdle where people think, ‘Where the heck are we going to start?’” Fewel said.

Her family owns two houses in the Freedom Homes tract, and she already remodeled the one she lives in because the one bathroom was not enough for her sons.

Fellow neighbor Debra Haynes knocked down the walls of her house in 2000 so she could make the rooms bigger, add a two-car garage and put in another bathroom. It took her and her husband about 11 years to finally make those additions, and for them the cost was more of an issue than coming up with ideas.

Even though they bought the house knowing they wanted to fix it up, it took them a while to save the money.

Still, Haynes thinks the book is a good tool.

“We get people by our home all the time looking at our house and saying they just need ideas. Some people just need ideas. They can’t think outside the box,” Haynes said.

She would have even looked herself, if the program had been in place before the family remodeled, she said.

Architect Bob Wilson, who has designed many additions for residents of Freedom Homes, created the book, which cost the city $13,000, according to Flynn.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].