yes! P owerful I deas , P ractical A ctions
summer
How to Make “Green” Affordable
6 Sensible
Homes
2012
Making It Home After the CRASH, Ways to REBUILD
Hometown Heartache: Couldn’t Wait to Leave —and Why I Came Back
Cheaper Together: Neighbors Invest in Community Real Homes: Why Small is Beautiful Dear Bank of America, We’re Not Leaving
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are ...” Maya Angelou Author and poet
photo by Orlin Bertsch
Doors were donated to form a privacy wall for residents of the latest tent city for homeless people in downtown Portland, Ore. The homeless encampment, named by its residents “Right 2 Dream Too,” is home to about 70 people.
FROM THE EDITOR
What Are Homes For?
YesMagazine.org/quotes Download your favorite Quote Pages from this and past issues of YES! Hang them up and share the inspiration.
A s t h e h o u s i n g c r a s h of the last few years unfolded, something odd happened in community land trusts across the country. Or rather, something didn’t happen: There were few short sales. Sheriffs didn’t show up to put people’s belongings out on the curb. No homes sat abandoned. Neighborhoods stayed intact. Community land trusts (see page 30) experienced foreclosures at a tenth the rate of U.S. housing overall, even though residents are mainly low- and moderate-income. And here’s another thing that didn’t happen. No one made a killing flipping land trust homes or using them to back exotic mortgage-based securities. No one got a multimillion-dollar bonus for selling credit default swaps created as bets on which securities would fail. Community banks also fared well. The FDIC reported last year that community bank borrowers had “far fewer” foreclosures than those who borrowed from big banks. Their secret? Both local banks and community land trusts did what they were designed to do—got people into decent, secure homes at affordable prices. The Wall Street players, on the other hand, used home finance to make mega-profits for the 1 percent. And they’re still at it. Today big companies and speculators are buying up foreclosed homes in bulk at fire-sale prices in competition with would-be homeowners, and renting them out to the growing group of people cut out of home ownership. If home prices go up again, it will be these companies—not ordinary families—that will get the windfall. Instead of evicting residents and creating yet another speculative market for homes, mortgages for those underwater should be modified to reflect current market value. Homes already foreclosed should be sold to community land trusts, other nonprofits, or families looking for affordable homes.
We’ve seen where we get when we use houses as gambling chips in the global finance casino. In this issue of YES!, we look at what it would mean to use this moment of transition to instead create housing systems that work for people, not as a way to create more profits for the 1 percent. The community land trust model gives us a starting place—housing works better when it’s taken out of the speculative market. But there’s more. Our homes are not only where we find shelter and security for ourselves and our families—they are structures that connect us to place. Houses draw from the bounty of the Earth for water, energy, and building materials. The way we’ve built and inhabited homes in the United States is a major source of greenhouse gases, creating an ecological bubble far more serious than the financial bubble. We know how to do better. Homes can be built with plentiful, local materials; we can be frugal with energy and water; and we can locate homes where little or no driving is required. And we can reject the McMansion ideal, which isolates people in a cocoon of too much consumption and too little community. We need our homes to connect us with neighbors, whether we live in apartments in walkable urban cores, in warehouses converted into cohousing communities, or in houses linked by greenspaces, shared alleys, or gardens. When we have the security of home and when we create long-term, soul-sustaining links to the natural world and to community, then we can know we are where we belong.
Sarah van Gelder Executive Editor yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
1
THE ISSUE 62 THEME
Making It Home
40 The Mission of YES! is to support you in building a just and sustainable world. In each issue we focus on a different theme through these lenses:
17
Real Homes: Small, Frugal, and Green
Solving today’s big problems will take more than a quick fix. These authors offer clarity about the roots of our problems and visions of a better way.
After the real-estate crash, what do we call home? Adjust your expectations. It’s not a slot machine or an investment. It’s a place to live. By Doug Pibel 23 : : Just the Facts: Less Space, More Family
WORLD & COMMUNITY New models that foster justice and real prosperity, and sustain the Earth’s living systems. How can we bring these models to life and put them to work?
THE POWER OF ONE
Dear Bank of America, We’re Not Leaving
Living on the Street, Fighting for Recognition
Activists and homeowners say evictions have got to stop. By Amy Dean
Homeless protesters force corporations to reckon with the recession. By Claudia Rowe
How we found happiness in a rundown rental. By Corbyn Hightower
Humor, storytelling, and the arts— taking you into unexpected spaces where business-as-usual breaks open into new possibilities.
2012 ::
27
Renting With Style
BREAKING OPEN
yesmagazine . org
32
24
34
Stories of people who find their courage, open their hearts, and discover what it means to be human in today’s world.
yes ! summer
phoenix commotion photo
18
NEW VISIONS
2
Guide to the THEME SECTION
20
28
What’s a Sensible Home?
What We Leave Behind
It’s small. It’s also ... Not owned by a bank, Page 32, Made of reused materials, Page 40, Not full of stuff, Page 41, A hub, Page 42, Supportive, Page 45.
In the wreckage of foreclosures, what’s left of American dreams. By S.J. Dunning
OTHER FEATURES
12 The Real Reason the Military Is Going Green U.S. armed forces are the world’s No. 1 oil guzzler. Their concern about fossil fuel may shift the politics of climate change. By Natalie Pompilio
54 Standing Up for Gay Rights
24
A one-woman gay-marriage campaign on a tiny reservation: How Heather Purser brought selfacceptance to Indian Country. Interview by Madeline Ostrander
photo by jeff dunnicliff
46 Hometown Heartache How history and family brought three generations back to the Jersey town they’d forsaken. By Mindy Fullilove and Molly Rose Kaufman
30
38
Cheaper Together
How to Build Green on a Budget
How land trusts and cooperatives create shelter from the storms of the housing market. By Miriam Axel-Lute, John Emmeus Davis, and Harold Simon
36 How to tell whether owning or renting is best for you. By Dean Baker
43 How to make an oasis of friendly neighbors and green living, even in a pricey city. By Sven Eberlein
photo by came ron ka r sten for yes! magazine
on THE COVER
When It’s Smart to Rent
Life Is Easier With Friends Next Door
54
The challenge: build the greenest houses on earth—and make them affordable. By Jennifer Atlee
46 Mindy Fullilove at her Orange, N.J., home. Photographed by Stephen O’Byrne for YES! Magazine.
1
FROM THE EDITOR
4
READERS FORUM
6
SIGNS OF LIFE : : ALEC boycott, German renewables, Apple workers’ rights, solving colony collapse puzzle
10
PEOPLE WE LOVE
11
COMMENTARY : : What happened to the hope and change? How to face the Obama enthusiasm gap.
16
THE PAGE THAT COUNTS
52
FROM THE PUBLISHER : : Use the People’s Veto
58
YES! BUT HOW? : : Feel like you want to go batty?
61
IN REVIEW : : Radicals get religion, hillbilly nationalists, and The Big Fix yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
3
ISSUE 62
Making It Home
Recent college graduate Ella Jenkins lives with her parents while she builds her 130-square-foot home in their yard. photo by dawn j enkins
18
yes ! summer
2012 ::
yesmagazine . org
HOMES With 5 million houses in foreclosure, we are rediscovering that living sustainably includes living affordably. And one more thing: Small is beautiful.
Doug Pibel The real estate bubble that kicked off the 21st century taught us some things that a home isn’t. It isn’t a way to get rich quick. It isn’t a cash machine. It isn’t a speculative investment that’s guaranteed never to lose value. This is not to make light of the pain of people who have suffered from the real-estate-fueled financial meltdown. It wasn’t the buyers who made those claims about residential real estate—it was the people who were making the loans. Say what you may about undeserving people getting loans they shouldn’t have gotten, but remember one thing: not one of the borrowers ever approved a loan. That was done by the people who made money writing the loans. Few of the people who bought during the bubble have gotten any help from banks or the government. Lenders and speculators, on the other hand, got billions in bailouts. CoreLogic,
which provides analytical data on real estate and financing, estimates that, in the fourth quarter of 2011, the difference between the current value and the amount owed for underwater loans was $717 billion. That is hardly more than the $700 billion handed over instantly to banks and corporations in the early days of the financial meltdown—and a fraction of the trillions in loan guarantees and other assistance the big players got. We could have reduced the principal on every underwater loan to current market value for less money than we’ve pumped into the banks and corporations that caused the problem in the first place. But the residential real estate market remains a mess, with 2.7 million foreclosures during 2011 alone, and many more to come. This has been an “unprecedented cycle,” says Walter Molony, spokesman for the National Association of Realtors. “We’ve never had this kind
of mortgage market before, and it’s going to be at least another year or two before foreclosures stabilize.” And the crash has expanded well beyond the much-maligned subprime market. High unemployment following the financial meltdown has left previously rock-solid homeowners losing their homes to foreclosure in record numbers. The Census Bureau estimates that, in 2011, there were 18.7 million houses standing empty, even as hundreds of thousands of people were homeless. The giant houses that were an ostentatious display of wealth are now millstones holding their owners underwater, worth far less than the debt owed on them. Experts speculate about when housing prices will return to previous levels. But why would that be a good thing? The previous levels were unrelated to real value. We were oversold, yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
»
19
ISSUE 62
Making It Home
photos by Dawn Jenkins
20
yes ! summer
2012 ::
yesmagazine . org
Ella Jenkins is building the home of her dreams. It has pine floors and a yellow front door. And it’s 130 square feet, mobile, and currently sitting in her parents’ yard. Jenkins, 23, is building her little house with the help of her stepdad after years living in college dorm rooms and couch surfing while she studied music in Scotland. She knew her degree in Scottish harp music and Gaelic singing would not be especially marketable, and she found Southern California rent to be “staggeringly high.” “I could not support myself doing what I want to do when I need to pay rent,” she says. Family and friends weren’t initially sure about her building her own house. Her parents were worried. Her sister thought she was nuts. “I’ve never built anything in my life,” Jenkins says. But her stepdad, Rick Lanes, has been helping out since she began construction in September, lending his tools and helping her frame her house while she lives with Lanes and her mother in Frazier Park, outside Bakersfield. Though she’s faced constant challenges in home construction, and “near-death” experiences with ladders, she hopes to be finished with her home this summer. And she hopes it will be an end to the constant moving that comes with young adulthood and earning money as a street musician. “Right now everything’s totally up in the air,” Jenkins said. “What I love about the tiny house is it doesn’t change, it’s your house.” Along the way, she has found ways to cut costs. In addition to borrowing her stepdad’s tools and experience as a carpenter, she has found fixtures inexpensively on the Internet, and her neighbor has helped with electricity and plumbing. Recently, she found a manzanita branch to use as her front porch post. On top of gaining a home for herself, Jenkins developed a strengthened bond with her stepdad. “It’s been such a fun year. I’m going to be really sad when I have to leave.” Though it may not be everyone’s dream house, it’s just what Jenkins wants.“I just feel this wonderful feeling of peace,” she says of her house. “I just walk in and feel it’s huge.”—Lynsi Burton Follow Ella as she builds at YesMagazine.org/ella
yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
21
ISSUE 62
Making It Home
DEEP
ON A BUDGET Living lighter on the planet is the goal, from leading-edge architecture to conscientious acts of weatherization.
Jennifer Atlee The notion of building or remodeling to deep green standards is daunting. A 2011 survey by the National Association of Homebuilders found that 60 percent of professional builders thought environmentally sensitive housing was too expensive for low-income people and 30 percent said even the middle class couldn’t afford it. But modern pioneers—from ownerbuilders in British Columbia to designers challenging the harsh conditions of the Aleutian Islands—are showing that green building on a budget, even to the most exacting standards, is possible with enough creativity and planning.
38
yes ! summer
2012 ::
yesmagazine . org
Just the Facts Doug Pibel
We’ve got some big houses ... Just 60 years ago, the average American had 291 square feet of living space. Now it’s close to 1,000 square feet. Have we changed our needs that much? Or just our wants? Average size of new homes increased 67% from 1970 to 2007
Square feet per resident
Square feet
70%
2,500
80%
2,000
50%
Percentage of new homes smaller than 1,200 square feet
1,000 800 600
40%
1,500
30%
1,000
400
20%
500
200
10% 1950 1970 2007 2010
House size increased 2.5 times as household size decreased
1950
1970
2004
1950
1970 2007
... that we could share. For many people, “doubling up”—moving in with family or friends—is the last step on the way to homelessness. But doubling up has benefits for people and for the planet.
2
1
Less poverty 11.5% 14.6%
Poverty rate for multigenerational homes Poverty rate for other homes
In 2010, that 3.1% difference could have meant 1.4 million people kept out of poverty.
Security and IndependeNce for Elders Consider this: 79 million baby boomers will be entering their elder years in the next two decades. Where will they live? Elders who live with others are healthier, by 15%. For older men, rates of depression are more than double for those living alone (30% vs. 12%). “In excellent or good health” 55%, Men living alone
3
74%, Men living with others
MORE SUSTAINABLE
56%, Women living alone 70%, Women living with others
One of the biggest costs of housing—both monetary and ecological—is heating and cooling. If you put four people in the space that used to be occupied by two, it changes the heating and cooling requirements for that space hardly at all. But it means you’re heating and cooling half the space you were before.
“Lonely” 29%, Men living alone 6%, Men living with others 28%, Women living alone 11%, Women living with others Source: National Association of Home Builders, 2010 Census, Pew Research Center YES! MAGAZINE GRAPHIC 2012
yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
i
ISSUE 62
34
Making It Home
yes ! summer
2012 ::
yesmagazine . org
Renting With Or, How to “Own It” (Even When You Don’t)
Corbyn Hightower
W
P hot os by Cor byn Hight ower
e live in a big, somewhat dilapidated rental house that I’ve come to think of as our creaking ship in these recession-rocked seas. We’ve painted every room a different color, and the spiral staircase is wrapped with fairy lights. No longer do we live in the fancy new house with professional landscaping, but in this place the children can wrestle and climb, erect forts, and raise up baby chicks under a warming light. This is a house in which you can ride tricycles. We’ve been living here for three years now. Before 2008, we lived in a pristine two-story house in a tidy exurban neighborhood outside Austin, Texas. We had a balcony overlooking the homeowner association-approved lawn. We did not know our neighbors, though we tried to spot them through the window when we saw a pizza delivery car approach their house. We were top earners then. I worked in outside sales, earning five-figure commissions until the stock market and banking crisis hit and all of my retailers ceased ordering. Our income streams fell by about 90 percent, and we tumbled from affluence to poverty. We quickly felt like imposters in that brand-new house with its wall-to-wall carpeting, recessed lighting, and built-in art niches. It wouldn’t be
long, we knew, before we were officially outed as having Blown it Big Time. When I was finally offered a job that would take us out of state, we liquidated everything we could in the world’s most desperate garage sale, rented the largest U-Haul we could afford, and headed west like the Joads. There is something about driving cross-country that makes transitions easier. You can see the land swell and flatten, sense the terrain and climate shift from curving mountainous roads to vast swathes of desert. We stopped for several overnights, sticking to hotels with free breakfast bars that could stuff our bellies full enough to take us to late afternoon. When we arrived in the house we had rented sight unseen, what was immediately surprising and thrilling was how urban it felt. Well, as urban as a sleepy suburb of 120,000 souls outside of Sacramento, Calif., can feel. Our house had a lovely rock facade, a deep and cozy front porch, and an apple tree whose branches were in full flower with the petals carpeting the small yard and walkway. But my positive reaction was short-lived. When we stepped inside, our economic downturn took a shift to the visceral. The walls were cheaply paneled, the aged carpeting was a matted and mottled light brown, the appliances yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
»
35
ISSUE 62
Making It Home
How I learned to my hometown A sense of history and community tugged at the heart of Mindy Fullilove and pulled her back home.
Molly Rose Kaufman and Mindy Thompson Fullilove Molly: I didn’t think we had a hometown I shut off the lights and closed the wide barn doors. “Once upon a midnight dreary,” Jenn said softly, “while I pondered weak and weary...” Guests, ranging in age from 8 months to 89 years, sat in rows on old couches and folding chairs. They leaned in close to hear my best friend recite “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. She’d memorized all 18 stanzas for her performance in “The Molly Rose Show,” an annual talent show and birthday party that I hosted in the barn behind my mother and stepfather’s house in Englewood, N.J. Over the years, acts have included readings from a childhood diary, hip-hop dancing, and a ventriloquist act with a baby dressed as the dummy.
46
yes ! summer
2012 ::
yesmagazine . org
“The Molly Rose Show” came to an abrupt end when my mom and stepdad’s divorce forced them to sell the house in 2009. I tried to keep the tradition going, but I gave up when I couldn’t find a venue with the magic of the barn. My mom, Mindy, didn’t want to stay in Englewood after the move. We had loved our house there, a six-bedroom Victorian set back from the street with a wide front porch. But Englewood was not our hometown; I did not think we had one. Mindy grew up in Orange, N.J., a place my grandfather once called, “a dirty little Jim Crow town going nowhere.” She fled when she was 16. Her father, Ernie Thompson, grew up on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a place he left at age 13 for Jersey City, where he worked in
photos by stephen o’byrn e for yes ! magazine
Three generations look through old photo albums at Mindy Fullilove’s home in Orange, N.J.: Mindy, her daughter, Molly Rose Kaufman, and her granddaughter, Lily. At left, snapshots of Mindy at her childhood home in Orange.
factories and became the first black field organizer hired by the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers Union. His negotiating skill earned him the name “Big Train” because he could deliver the goods. He traveled the country spreading the message that blacks and whites, men and women, should fight together for fair treatment. My grandmother, Maggie, fell in love with Ernie when they met at a union hall where she was a secretary. She was a white woman from Chippewa Lake, Ohio, who’d been radicalized by early encounters with racism. As a young woman she committed her life to fighting for justice. Maggie admired Ernie’s dedication. She told me proudly that he lived on peanuts and milk for nine months during a strike one winter.
While Ernie was traveling, Maggie bought a home that faced a pond in Orange, a town on the outskirts of Newark, N.J. It was modest, but the view was wonderful, and it suited her budget. Soon after, the progressive unions came under attack during McCarthyism. Ernie found himself in Orange unemployed and depressed. Maggie found the cure: An organizer should be organizing. Maggie learned that the schools in Orange were segregated. As a result their daughter Mindy (who became my mother) was sent to a school that was farther from home and inferior to the nearby white school. Maggie obtained a copy of the map that revealed the gerrymander and showed it to Ernie. He started a campaign and desegregated the schools within three months. yesmagazine . org
::
yes ! summer
2012
»
47
UNIQUE PAPER
SPECIAL INKS
We print on 100% postconsumer waste, processed chlorine free using BIOGAS
Our inks are agri-based, made from nontoxic soy and vegetable products.
ENERGY.
FOREST STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL (FSC) certifies that our paper— and our printers—adhere to the strictest sustainable forestry standards.
LOVABLE PRINTERS We choose Royle because it is independently owned and committed to conservation.
“YES! Magazine is a vital voice among independent media.” Journalist and co-host of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman
“We need journalism with the courage to confront conventional wisdom. We need informed people. We need people who read YES! Magazine.”
NONPROFIT. INDEPENDENT. SUBSCRIBER-SUPPORTED. Subscribe at 800/937-4451 or YesMagazine.org