Affordable Housing?
It would be fun to see a housing development of these houses. Though small, they certainly seem affordable, especially if you build it yourself.
Not sure they'd would work well for more than one person. I suppose it would depend on who the second person is. I think I could handle living in one.
Found out about these houses through that tabloid the Eureka Reporter includes on Sundays- American Profile.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 8:59 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
It's not the buildings that are the problem. It's the land. Personally I find it appalling that there are literally thousands of acres of unused land here in Humboldt and yet when the police catch a homeless person sleeping on less than 10 square feet they harass the helpless homeless person.
Each city that produces homeless people should be responsible for those people. Big cities are producing most of the homeless yet they are coming to Humboldt County because the drugs are plentiful. Why should rural counties be paying for the costs of big city social problems? Send them back to where they come from and send the travel bills to the same places. For our local homeless, they need good food and housing and psychological treatment programs to get back into productive society.
That cabin on wheels is cute. I should mention my Compost Cabin idea here that came close to getting a Jimmy Carter ERDA grant before Reagan closed the program down.
But if the homeless person slips on a banana peel on someone else's 10 square feet, they can sue for mega-bucks, that makes them a liability, besides, have you seen what happens when you let a homeless encampment take root? Just look under Arcata's overpasses, or remember Clam beach.
Or the South Jetty.
Or SoHum. Same trash scene over and over again.
There has to be a value assigned to what you have,where you stay,how you interact with others for any of it to have a meaning worthy of accountability. It doesn't just mean a dollar value. You can teach accountability but an extreemly permisive society has a much harder time. Society as illistrated by Arcata's model is muce like a a family making excuses for the father who is a drunk. The first step is no inableing. You want to eat,you work. If your "living the life" you're out of Dodge. If you then break the law you're in a work centered detention facility. The Arcata model is the failed example all over our nation. It moves even good people from hardship to a resigned dependance on a hand out that cannot become a hand up. There are to many on the other side of the equation that live off of and support the negitive status quo now in full blown disarray. Prying the enablers grip away from the issue is the secound hurdle and perhaps the the greates challenge. When we start on a realistic path, the zoning,sg. ft regulations, etc,will happen quicker that you might expect. The workforce and manpower models and the old CCC's and todays consevation corps are excellent and produce sucess. If you want to see the real problem,look at anyone defending the Arcata way.
I like the Enesti house, the design with 600 sq. feet and a front porch.
I like these cabin ideas. My Compost Cabin idea uses hollow walls where air heated by composting green matter (grass clippings, leaves, only) in the lower third of the cabin walls that are built as compost bins. Composting greenery can reach over a 100 degrees and this will keep the air in the cabin walls warm in winter. In summer, the bins are emptied and the collected greeen compost used on the garden. Cool air from underneath the cabin is then sucked up through the hollow walls by a small ventilation fan mounted in the ceiling.
The idea is the cabin uses no wood or fossil fuels and the cabin doesn't need good solar conditions to work efficiently.
On cabin designs, I too had thought of miniature Victorian cabin designs and these guys are going in that direction. This is the wave of the future. Away from the wasted space of huge houses that only serve a family for a generation then sit mostly empty for most of their lifespans.
Rather than living in an attractive cabin the size of a two-person tent, I like the idea of getting a job, then working up to progressively better and better jobs, until we can afford to buy a house. (or a mobile home.)
I constantly hear how much harder it is to get a toe-hold in this economy. Real estate certainly is much more expensive than, say, thirty-three years ago. But thirty-three years ago, the help wanted column in the Times-Standard carried only eight or ten ads per day, and half of them were for military recruiting! Look at today's paper. Things just ain't all that bleak for people starting out today.
Yet, griping is as American as apple pie.
Luckily for me as an anonymous poster, I won't have to listen to all the griping people are going to do about this post of mine! LOL.
That composting cabin sounds very interesting, but isn't putting wet bales of hay into a barn the way to start a barn fire? And how would the composting lawn clipping affect the life of the allergy sufferer?
and this will keep the air in the cabin walls warm in winter.
How does it keep the air in the cabin warm? A very thin inner wall?
Fred writes:
"I think I could handle living in one."
If only you had a dime for every good idea you came up with.
Compost bins don't catch fire. And the hollow cabin walls are well insulated on the outside to reflect the heat inwards into the cabin. Having a wall of heated air between the inside of the cabin and the outside air temperature is what keeps it warm in winter. Small space with human body heat will do the rest.
I've posted the Compost Cabin idea with diagram on my blog site for the millions of you interested.
That trailer looks just about right for the typical Humboldt hick. But where do the residents leave their nonoperable junk car and piles of dumpster gleanings?
The nicest thing about it is its on wheels and can be sent on a one way trip to trinity or del norte county.
$995 bucks for a set of plans for a 100 sq foot building? Some of these little homes are over $20k!
Seems pretty steep for what you get, a kiddy playhouse.
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