Last year, Kolten Conan was scrolling through his Facebook page, and he hap- pened upon photos of a house under con- struction. He already knew a thing or two about building homes: he’s now 21 and when he was just a little boy, he had scam- pered among laborers at construction sites around his hometown of Wasilla, fetching boards and helping out with seasonal work. He has been mowing lawns since he was nine years old. The housing photos especially intrigued him because he was looking to own a home someday. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that the photos were of homes built by a community of families helping one another toward affordable home own- ership. He contacted the friend who had posted the photos to find out more. He learned that the house was part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Devel- opment Mutual Self-Help Housing project, whereby several families work together to provide at least 700 hours of “sweat equity” to construct their homes in exchange for an affordable mortgage. Participating families are generally low-income and unable to qualify for traditional mortgages. He applied to the Alaska Community De- velopment Corporation (CDC), which re- ceived its first Mutual Self-Help Housing grant in 2000. The organization is dedicat- ed to ensuring decent and energy-efficient housing for low- and moderate-income Alaskans. The focus is on energy conserva- tion, weatherization, retrofitting, rehabili- tation, construction and financing. In November 2016, Conan and six other families were accepted into the program. Work got underway in February 2017, and the families moved into their new homes in spring 2018. Since Alaska CDC started operating the Mutual Self-Help Housing Program in 2001, participating families have built 77 Self-help housing provides home ownership opportunities for low-income Alaska residents energy-efficient homes that meet Alaska’s most stringent energy efficiency standards, said Patrick Shiflea, executive director of the Alaska CDC. Under the USDA contract, RCAC assists grantees in the western United States to successfully complete single-family hous- ing financed through the program. RCAC has worked with Alaska CDC for nearly 20 years, says Angela Sisco, RCAC rural de- velopment specialist, who has worked with the agency during the past decade. “They really stretch themselves to build green beautiful homes,” Sisco says. In Alaska, with its notoriously long and fierce winters—it can stay below zero de- grees for weeks—construction is no easy feat. “The best way to get around home construc- tion work in the winter is to start construc- tion in the spring,” Shiflea explained. “That is, however, not always possible because of Wasilla, Alaska 4