Operation Fresh Start
Madison, Wisconsin

Re-building...

Operation Fresh Start (OFS) is a program that trains young people to re-build small houses that are typically candidates for demolition, while helping them achieve job readiness and their high school diploma. Sometimes the kids are in the legal system, or simply not suceeding in school. When they are finished with a house, OFS sells it to a low-income family. The kids, the houses and the new homeowners all get a fresh start. Between the early 1970's and the mid-1980's, Design Coalition designed over two dozen of these major home re-buildings. OFS is still working today.

Above: Interior of an Operation Fresh Start home and one of the new owners.

	In the late 1980s, Design Coalition designed, and OFS built, the first insulated Trombe-wall solar homes in the state. The silvery window treatments are high-tech, retractable, self-inflating curtains. left: Hughes Street, in Madison, Wisconsin below: rural home in Mazomanie, Wisconsin