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It started with a renewable energy competition. It ended with a shanty town.

The city of Denver had planned to use homes built for a solar decathlon for affordable housing. About that ...

KUSA — Remember how neat it was when it snowed in Denver during a solar home competition?

A dozen teams built temporary homes during the 10-day competition in October 2017 as part of the U.S. Department of Energy solar decathlon.

Thirteen months later, the field next to the A Line stop at 61st Avenue and Pena Boulevard looked more like a solar shanty town.

Four of the homes were still standing, but boarded up and surrounded by fencing and tarps.

One of those four homes was built in part by students at the University of Denver, which teamed up with students from the University of California at Berkeley. It took third place. And then continued to take up space in the field.

On Friday, however, the home was divided into two pieces and hoisted onto flatbed trucks to be moved.

"It is going to be placed in the College View neighborhood in southwest Denver," said Marianne Pascoe, construction supervisor for Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. "We have an existing neighborhood there, and we are going to be adapting the house to fit into the neighborhood."

The solar-powered home will go to a family and work much like it did during the competition.

"From what I've heard from our electricians, the solar is going to be able to run pretty much all the energy in the house," Pascoe said.

The home will be trucked on Saturday morning from its location near DIA to its new foundation near Federal Boulevard and Evans Avenue.

The other three homes are still not spoken for.

Those homes were built by teams from:

• University of California at Davis

• Missouri S&T

• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Daytona State College

It's not those schools' responsibility to move the homes because they sold them since the competition.

Who owns them?

The city of Denver.

Denver bought the three homes for $445,000, as part of the city's affordable housing program, according to a city spokeswoman.

The city then put out a request for affordable housing providers to buy the homes to put them into their portfolio.

"This ultimately did not lead to a bid on the homes," a spokeswoman for Denver's Office of Economic Development said in an email. "Currently, the city is actively exploring other partnerships with the goal of using these homes as permanent affordable for-sale housing."

Until then, the city is working on a plan to move the homes temporarily.

According to Habitat for Humanity, the crane they used for the DU/Cal Berkeley home cost more than $30,000, which is still less than half of what it would cost to build a home from scratch.

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