More July blogs

The Under $20,000 House July 22, 2008 Brenda Barnes, President, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. What Is Affordable Housing or Low-Cost Housing? Finding New Terms: “The Under $20,000 House” This weekend I came back from Arizona for a few days and was so amazed at all Peter had gotten done on the fence, gates, and arbors for our house. That led us to talking about what to call this kind of low cost house, which has become a Home Grown Food Network demonstration house. All the terms we can think of for what we have done and are going to do that anyone might use to do a Google search have been co-opted. I actually saw an ad yesterday that called a $249,000 house “affordable”—in this market where houses are being auctioned with no reserve and still, since few can actually get a loan, not being sold. A family where two breadwinners make $10 an hour each or one makes that at two jobs or twice that at one job could not qualify for half of the loan on that house, so who is that house “affordable” to? Loans used to be given, when there was money to loan before it disappeared for reasons I can't discuss now, at 28-30% of gross income. The gross income from one job at $10 an hour, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, since I'm sure these people I'm referring to get sick or have to take off at least two weeks a year and don't get paid time off, is $20,000 a year. Multiply that by two for one person working two jobs or two people working one each, or one making twice that much, and that is $40,000 a year. We're not even going to discuss who raises these people's children when parents work all the time they aren't sleeping and somehow keeping themselves together to get dressed, buy and fix enough food for the family, cool the house in insufferable summer weather or heat it in freezing winter cold, and somehow pay for transportation to those jobs, plus everything else they have to pay for? The gross amount of $40,000 they make multiplied by 30% is $12,000 a year, divided by 12 months is $1,000 a month. This is if the entire purchase price were financed, as most of these people could not save for a down payment, with what we all know are costs of living. With their $40,000 a year gross (which of course they never get, since at their low-wage jobs social security and unemployment insurance taxes—only higher-wage and salaried people can avoid these--are taken out, so they end up seeing $35,000 if they are lucky), they can “afford” to pay $1,000 a month on a mortgage. How much purchase price ends up being $1,000 a month payments? Looking up amortization tables in Google will show if interest rates are 3%, $1,000 a month will pay mortgage payments for 30 years on a loan of less than $238,000. At 5% it will pay on less than $187,000. When you really figure it out this way, no wonder millions of people now can't afford payments when adjustable teaser rates they were given two years ago went up to 9% or even higher, on house prices they were told were “affordable” or even higher than $249,000. The payment on $249,000 at 9% is over $2,000 a month for 30 years! The people we're talking about are lucky if they have net income that high all together. That payment is twice what anyone ever called “affordable.” Neither are most houses for sale in America now what anyone in right mind could call “low cost.” Lately people on Home and Garden TV call $100 per square foot “low cost.” The $249,000 “affordable” home did make $100 per square foot seem low cost, since that was less than 1500 square feet, so it was over $177 per square foot. However, what is low cost is not relative. We believe it is absolutely not true that a house for a family is low in cost if it is not affordable to 30 million people. The main reason $100 per square foot is now called “low cost” is people are talking only about purchased houses, not owner-built ones. Even using new materials and paying for building permits and other government taxes like school fees every step of the way, which both are much higher cost than the alternatives of recycled materials and additions or modifications that do not count as permit requiring changes, houses can still be owner-built for half that cost. “Low cost” has to be avoiding the high costs of labor and other people's profits, so has to be owner-built. Compared to this, we bought our house for $7,500 and have spent under $1,000 in materials costs on making it the beautiful, almost 1,500 square feet under roof of living space we have now, plus over 1,000 square feet of gardens, gazebo, and courtyard space we live in outdoors under shade, cool and heat our house, and grow food. Our around $5 per square foot has got to be low cost using anyone's definition. It was also very affordable for us and for most people. Therefore, we were quite in a quandary discussing what we should call it. The way we paid this cost was $2,000 down and $1,000 a paycheck twice a month until we paid for it, back when we were limousine liberals making lots of money. The materials we have paid for $5-20 at a time as we had it. No one finances such a small amount for 30 years, but just to provide what amortization payments would be if there were financing, to compare to figures I have given above, the payments on $7,500 would be less than $32 a month at 3%, $41 at 5%, and $61 at 9%. With payments like these, the family we are talking about could quit at least one job and maybe have enough time and energy to keep their kids from becoming gang members or committing suicide or taking drugs over not being able to figure out algebra or peer pressure. We certainly don't want people to get the trivial amounts we are talking about mixed up with what has been called “affordable” or “low cost.” We also don't want to get what we are doing mixed up in people's minds with what other charities do. I am not criticizing them—each has a niche of deserving homeless public to help, and reasons for choosing that niche. For example, looking at their publicity, the way I understand it a Habitat for Humanity house costs a chosen family in our area $80,000 with no interest, materials and labor are all donated, and Habitat for Humanity uses money paid by one family to give a loan to another. This is only $222 per month for 30 years. This really is affordable. So why are there still an estimated 30 million families who want to but never will be able to afford to own their own homes in America? Because, among other less fatal reasons, no matter how many people volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, there never will be enough volunteers to build 30 million homes. The 30 million families have to have a way to each build their own, or they never will own their own homes. That is why after this discussion last weekend we at Home Grown Food Network have decided to call what we demonstrate the “under $20,000 house.” Ours is not really that cheap, since we pay $300 per month rent for land, and at amortized values, that is the equivalent of payment on a loan of $55,000 for 30 years. However, we didn't have to qualify for such a loan, and neither does anyone else to do what we're doing. We all just have to demonstrate we can pay $300 per month rent and whatever small increases rent control allows over the years. Even Social Security or small pensions or disability payments, to say nothing of two jobs per family, can handle that. We also don't count our very high litigation costs, which by now are over $150,000 in income we have lost by fighting our landlord's attempts to evict us for doing this. The reason we don't count that is we figure this is for the 30 million people, not just us, so it is insignificant on a per-house basis. Therefore, all in all, we figure the cost of this house is like buying a seller-financed $10,000 piece of land out in the country, putting a $1,000 trailer on it to start with (I saw a freestanding old trailer twice as big as this one was when we started for $350 last week, but ours cost more because it was in a park already and ready to move in), putting in solar and wind power and water tank with composting toilet and simple shower, and growing the family's own food in natural do-nothing gardens, for a total of less than $20,000. This is not only for the home, but also covers the bonus of food-growing gardens. Besides our house not actually costing as little as it could, houses like it are also not going to house all 30 million families. Some would rather rent what they can and live in a good school district than live out in the country or fight a landlord to do this the only ways we've seen it done. Others are disabled and can't build their own house and/or wouldn't live in a trailer such as this one was until it was improved. Mostly, it is impossible to recreate what we have done because there are zoning and planning laws almost everywhere that prohibit putting a trailer on unfinished land and living there while you build this kind of house, so you have to do it the way we've done it instead, and we were limousine liberals, not poor people. However, we think that by showing how big, beautiful, cool, warm, gracious, and productive we have been able to make this house for less than the equivalent of $20,000 for us, we are contributing something not contributed any other way to discussion of how to provide housing they own to many of those 30 million homeless families. This discussion needs to be undertaken realistically, without being muddled by wrong thinking demonstrated by current use of “affordable” and “low-cost” for housing that isn't. We welcome your input. Brenda Barnes, Home Grown Food Network President July 22, 2008 This post is also published on Home Grown Food Network's Wordpress site Does Gardening help lower blood pressure? July 22, 2008 Peter Naughton, Manager, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. I love when I walk in our yard. I follow a specific route through the arbor covered with sweet potato vines, past the pepper plants and cilantro, and then along the walkway that is flanked by a profusion of tomato plants. I smell the plants and marvel at their growth in this triple digit desert heat. I admire the beauty of their leaves and I seem to catch their quiet confidence and trust in the energy of the earth. I feel calmer. I have noticed lately that all visitors to our demonstration project, especially those who are in the more mature age brackets, are similarly affected. They remark on how secluded the yard is getting, and how much easier it is to linger and appreciate the shaded calm of all the growth in it. We are continually working on improving the sense of defensible space around the site by placing a variety of fence panels along more of its boundaries. I think this intensifies the perception our visitors have of nature at work. Of course there is bountiful research showing that gardens are helpful for improving longevity. I recently came across a study done in Uppsala in Sweden in the 1990's which demonstrated the health giving benefits of being involved in the creation of a landscape. Studies since then are resoundingly clear that gardening improved the quality of life experience of seniors and thus improved their health. (more) Having a yard space that is private provides a private oasis of tranquility, safety, and personal healing and our visitors are responding more to it. Gene Gach, an 81 year old said, "when I stand in my garden I can feel the seeds under the earth, everything growing, and I have a connection to all of life." As we continue our work of creation at this site we hope to network with other gardeners like him. So does gardening lower blood pressure? As yet it is impossible to say for certain that it does but some doctors would say that a connection with nature plays a large part in increasing longevity. Medical research increasingly supports the idea that having a space to explore our affinity for nature helps us stay healthy. We are part of the natural world, we are connected to and restored by it. Naturally, scientists are discovering, looking at what we have grown rather than concrete, steel, or bare naked driveways can lower blood pressure, boost immune function, and reduce stress. At Home Grown Food Network we believe that you don't have to live in a mansion with a gardener to achieve this. All that's required is a private space to explore the instinctive love of nature we all are blessed with and a willingness to plant a few herbs, vegetables, and the occasional flower! Doing this in a trailer park setting is a down to earth demonstration of how anyone, regardless of income level, can benefit twice from having a private yard- first just to look at and then to be nourished by what grows there!. Now that makes me feel calmer just writing it! Peter Naughton Manager, Home Grown Food Network. This post is also published on Home Grown Food Network's Wordpress site The incredible lightness of gardening July 12, 2008 Peter Naughton, Manager, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. I am currently serving as, what you might call, our yard "engineer"/ "architectural mechanic"/ "laborer". In other words I am working on building arbors, fences, gates, and even walls, throughout our yard. I am in that mode where I have my mind on tools so my thoughts are focused on how to manipulate my screw gun, drill, shovel, cement mixer etc. in tight corners. But lately, whenever a leaf brushes against my body-face, hand, leg, I am aware of it more than seemingly ever before. I find myself saying "sorry beautiful plant" to the plants! Of course, my earthy Irish rural ego kicks in saying "what-what are you saying, you're a construction worker, and no self respecting construction worker, especially from your homeland, would be seen dead apologizing to a plant for disturbing it while going about his daily work. How in the world would we ever get anything done in the garden if every worker were to go around doing THAT?". I know my ancestors would at least raise a quizzical eyebrow, if not turn, in their graves, if they heard me say what I am going to say now, but every time I do talk to the plants on my work site I feel happier working on the site!. It feels as if I am a partner with the plants! And I get more screwing, drilling, building, cement mixing etc done! I found another person who has a more refined viewpoint about this relationship with nature- Masanobu Fukuoka. I very humbly bow to his greater achievements and quote from him now- "To become one with nature -- agriculture is an occupation in which a farmer adapts himself to nature. To do that, you have to gaze at a rice plant and listen to the words from the plant. If you understand what the rice says, you just adjust your heart to that of the rice plants and raise them. In reality, we do not have to raise them. They will grow. We just serve nature. A piece of advice I need to give you here. When I say gaze at a rice plant or stare at its true form, it does not mean to make an observation or to contemplate the rice plant, which makes it an object different from yourself. It is very difficult to explain in words. In a sense, it is important that you become the rice plant. Just as you, as the subject of gazing, have to disappear. If you do not understand what you should do or what I am talking about, you should be absorbed in taking care of the rice without looking aside. If you could work wholeheartedly without yourself, that is enough. Giving up your ego is the shortest way to unification with nature"(more) Home-Grown Food Network aims to bring gardeners together to share their experiences of creating edible landscapes around sustainable dwellings in low cost settings. I find that my love of working and accomplishing my projects in the yard is intensifying my commitment to expand Home-Grown Food Network. I am using every single opportunity to speak publicly about its successes. I find that every time I speak about my experiences of feeling peacefully happy at the end of my day working in triple digit heat outdoors is drawing more people into our network. That is an unexpected bonus of my new found relationship with nature. I am excited to discover that my being more aware of plants as a life form is indirectly helping people become more confident about their ability to grow more food in their yards. Peter Naughton, Manager, Home-Grown Food Network Inc This post is also published on Home Grown Food Network's Wordpress site Demonstrating Ultra Low Cost Housing: Easy, Fast, Cheap, Self-Made Junly 6, 2008 Brenda Barnes, President, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. We were new here, ... we hadn't gotten a copy of the rental agreement, but I remembered it said if you wanted to change anything on your house or in your yard you had to get approval. So I drew four pages of really detailed drawings and wrote explanations of changes we wanted to make all over the property, and turned them in to the resident manager..... She looked startled, like no one had ever done that before. I said I remembered the rental agreement said if you wanted to change anything on your house or in your yard you had to get approval. She said oh, OK, she'd give it to the owners. About a week later they said, “You can do whatever you want, as long as you get any permits you need from the County.” ...From what has happened to us since, apparently demonstrating ultra low cost housing is a revolutionary thing to do....We are involved in the third series of lawsuits in the past ten years related to this, and I am in the process of writing the second complaint for damages and other relief about our ultra low cost housing remodeling project. The landlord of the Park where our house is on rented land is trying to evict us after two years of being unsuccessful in trying to get an injunction against our supposedly violating Park rules by how we are remodeling our house and grounds, using almost all recycled materials and solely our own work. ......It's difficult to get time to build when you are being threatened with eviction every time you turn around. It's not fun to worry about where you will live if you are evicted and be spied on and have your privacy and even literally your physical safety threatened. It's not cheap to spend your life fighting lawsuits when you could be making a good income instead. And it's not easy. read the full post YAWNs in mobile home parks July 6, 2008 Peter Naughton, Manager, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. I want to update my earlier post on YAWNS. I mentioned there that it might be ok for a successful filmmaker and his family (YAWN) living near Berkeley, California to dry their clothes on a line, grow their own vegetables and buy what they need at garage sales and second-hand stores, but if you happen to be a low income person in a mobile home park you better think again! Home Grown Food Network represents an outcome for such an alternative low income household. In its demonstration house project in Desert Hot Springs we seek to emulate a household "self-excluded" from consumerism. The project has been subject to endless legal conflicts on account of its policy of not wanting to use new "bought in the store" methods of creating a sustainable low cost housing unit in a mobile home park. Our experience through this project is that mobile home park rules exist to deliberately prohibit creative re-use of artefacts in remodelling and landscaping projects, prohibit practices that promote water conservation and that even prohibit food growing! Mobile home park owners and their management companies achieve this "rule enforcement" by deluging tenants in litigation. This litigation is couched in terms designed to intimidate and bully low income tenants into giving up plans for creating a sustainable lifestyle in their homes if they want to use recycled items and practice water saving landscaping techniques. The core tactic of the litigation is to allege violations of rules saying that everything in the mobile home space should be "clean", or "neat", in "good condition", or "neat,clean,attractive and well-kept fashion", or "clean. attractive, and well kept fashion". Armed with rules couched in such overly ambiguous terms, "mill" attorneys representing mobile home park owners beat a path to court again and again claiming "repeated violations' without specifying how or why the violations occurred as they are required by law to do. Without the resources to be represented in court each and every time they are required to do so, a low income family falls into disrepute with the court, and so will inevitably drown in this litigation deluge. Rules saying that everything in the mobile home space should be "clean", or "neat", in "good condition", or "neat,clean,attractive and well-kept fashion", or "clean. attractive, and well kept fashion" appear, in my experience, to be club jargon for "store bought". In fact, to our horror, whenever faced with the allegation that some artefact we were using in the project was "stuff' or "clutter", we produced evidence that an item had an original value of $100 or more, it appeared to became allowable, even though previously it had been called "clutter" and/or "stuff". The basis for the "neat,clean,attractive and well-kept fashion" based rules seems to be a club mentality. This implicitly expects everyone who wants to be in the club to, in the words of Molly Scott Cato, comply with "what is an 'acceptable' way to live, what items club members should all have, how often club members should wash, how their children should be dressed and should behave. And the most serious cause of being excluded from the club is being unemployed". more. The same exclusionary rationale is at work against mobile home owners who choose to exclude themselves from the "buying new stuff in a store" behavior because they want to exemplify an alternative view of the provision of basic housing, food supply and energy demands. Their behavior results in exclusion from the club for reasons that are related to the inability of the owner to show he/she has items to display in a certain way acceptable to the club/community. In these "clubs"/mobile home parks, as the other members accumulate more gadgets, the poor/or those who choose not to consume, will be forced to follow along, always a little behind, always rather 'deprived', but always in the direction of an inexorable increase in consumption "decided on" by the "clubs"/mobile home parks. If they do not follow along, they will find themselves forced out of the club. It does not matter what their reason for not following along is. Whether it is because of their low income or through their choice to adopt a frugal, energy saving, sustainable lifestyle, the evidence points to the same result. The pressures of the accumulating "store bought stuff" club turns their lack, manifested for whatever reason, into a fatal flaw. And the club seeks to take away the ability of the low income/frugal mobile home dweller to be a fully functioning member of the club whenever that low income/frugal mobile home dweller does not follow along. Taking away that ability is expressed by managers through their refusal to grant normal social rights to those so judged. This refusal to grant normal social/constitutionally protected rights to those who are poor is flagrantly real in the mobile home park setting where park managers perpetrate privacy violations. deliberately aggressive behavior to reduce quiet enjoyment of the property, and, of course, the ubiquitous eventual litigation deluges mentioned above. In the case of the Home Grown Food Network project in Desert Hot Springs, the owners and Park management attempted to use the litigation deluge in concert with a campaign to demean the project as "low class". They attempted to conveniently forget the fact that it was a carefully thought out and previously approved project to demonstrate how a low income family could live a sustainable lifestyle. The right not to consume is an aspect of freedom. At this point of evolution of the economy it is important to remove the road blocks that confront people who want to live a sustainable lifestyle whatever their income level, by whatever level of participation they choose to have in the market place. Home Grown Food Network champions sustainability for low income families, and that is why I am looking forward to some serious contagious Yawning. Peter Naughton, Manager, Home-Grown Food Network. This post is also published on Home Grown Food Network's Wordpress site YAWNs in the market June 30, 2008 Peter Naughton, Manager, Home Grown Food Network, Inc. It is always interesting when those who live in the hallowed halls of academia tiptoe out into the real world and come up with a new label for behaviors they observe in human beings, especially human beings in the market place. I remember when, in the late eighties after the market crash of '87, a cluster of supercomputers in an isolated house in Santa Fe, New Mexico allowed programmers to use weather forecasting software to discover that traders on the stock market did not behave in a way consistent with the "rules" of economic theory. You know the theory- the one that "views" people as "lightning calculators of pleasure and pains, who oscillate like homogeneous globules of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift them about the area and whose choices are not influenced by the choices of other consumers" !! (more) Some economists latched onto this New Mexico research and started to advance a new theory of the market place. To their surprise they were labeled as oddball and flaky and their reputations and careers suffered so much that it has become more and more difficult for any academic wanting to keep their job as a teacher to question the established theory of human behavior in the market place. Is this all about to change because of a new breed of Gen Xers and Ys, Young and Wealthy but Normal, or YAWNS, arriving in the marketplace? YAWNS are men and women in their 20s, 30s and 40s who want nothing less than to change the world and save the planet, and who might be "sick to death of buying stuff" This declaration of new market place behavior has been made only in newspapers, and, surprise, surprise, has not been endorsed by any economists!. A sociologist at Stanford University, David Grusky, has ventured out on a limb to say that "a cultural and demographic 'perfect storm' " is responsible. Now there's that weather forecasting theory again, and with it the implied hope that it might blow itself out like any other storm. Hmm. I would bet my bottom dollar that there will be no serious economic study made of YAWNS. No academic will come forward with a model that supports a theory of the market where consumers are capable of saying "Enough already!" to all their buying and acting in a way consistent with a "spiritual/eco-friendly goal". And so the mainstream media, by consigning YAWNS to the same category as hippies and ecofreaks, will deliberately keep us in the dark about these mysterious Yawns and their behavior. Or will it? We might be ready to discuss self-exclusion from the market place seriously. In my opinion YAWNS are timidly testing their freedom to be free of consumerism. They want their consumerism or lack of it not to affect their ability to function in society. Anyone who wants to 'self-exclude' themselves from consumerism is suggesting an alternative view of the manner in which the provision for basic needs for their existence as a human being might happen. YAWNS are saying that if buying stuff is necessary for identity within a market economy then that's a problem with the market economy, not with those who choose to find their identity elsewhere. Now that's what I call an alternative view! Home Grown Food Network represents the suggestion of such an alternative view. In its demonstration house project in Desert Hot Springs we seek to emulate a household "self-excluded" from consumerism. The project has been subject to endless legal conflicts on account of its policy of not wanting to use new "bought in the store" methods of creating a sustainable low cost housing unit in a mobile home park. This would suggest that it might be ok for a successful filmmaker and his family (YAWN) living near Berkeley, California to dry their clothes on a line, grow their own vegetables and buy what they need at garage sales and second-hand stores, but if you happen to be a low income person in a mobile home park you better think again! And that's why I think we need a serious bout of contagious YAWNING! This post is also published on Home Grown Food Network's Wordpress site