J ournalism for P eople B uilding a B etter W orld
THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING ISSUE
5 WAYS
no . 86 S ummer
Communities Are Creating Affordable Homes
2018
Nia and Takuma Umoja of the Cooperative Community of New West Jackson, Mississippi
The Lost Indigenous Housing Designs
WHY CAN’T EVERYONE HAVE A HOME? So many ways to solve the affordability crisis
After Centuries of Housing Racism, a Southern City Gets Innovative A Renewed Desire to Live in Community
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In choosing to live in community—sharing not just a house, but their lives with each other—they’ve defined a new American Dream. They hope others will follow their model, if not by making the same choice, then by being willing to look beyond traditional boundaries. Chris Winters, p 21
SOLUTIONS WE LOVE
5 Reasons: Salmon Are the Solution 6 People We Love: Guerrilla Changemakers Transform Swastikas 8 Female Anatomy 11 And Mountains 12 The Page That Counts 14
SALMON HELP KEEP OUR ENVIRONMENT AND OUR COMMUNITIES HEALTHY. IF SALMON ARE IN HOT WATER, WE ALL ARE.
YES! ILLUSTRATIONS BY DELPHINE LEE
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PEOPLE WE LOVE
Isabelle Morrison
Ibo Omari, founder of the #PaintBack Project, transforms swastikas, which are illegal in Germany. The first one in 2015 was transformed into a mosquito flying away from a net.
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PHOTO BY THIELKER/ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES
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Why Can’t Everyone Have a Home? The author lives with his wife and 78-yearold mother in a rental house in Seattle. They are searching for a house to buy.
Chris Winters
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or Julia Rosenblatt, the solution to affordable housing was to move in with friends and family—more than 10 people under one roof. Rosenblatt, a co-founder of the HartBeat Ensemble theater group in Hartford, Connecticut, had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in local activist communities. The year was 2003, the United States had launched a war in Iraq, and the post-9/11 environment was making her think differently about what kind of life she was going to have for herself and her family. An initial group of about 20 people liked the idea of creating an intentional community: living together with a shared set of goals and values to have a life that would be more meaningful, less harmful to other communities and the environment—and more affordable. In 2008, six people moved into one house. The big move came in 2014, when those six were joined by five more to buy a 5,800-square-foot 1921 house on tony Scarborough Street in the city’s West End. The nine-bedroom house had been sitting empty for four years. Rosenblatt, her husband, Joshua Blanchfield, and their children, Tessa and Elijah Rosenfield (a merging of their parents’ last names), now live with Dave and Laura Rozza and their son, Milo, plus another married couple, Maureen Welch and Simon DeSantis, and Hannah Simms. The other original group member left the home when he got married. Everyone contributed to the down payment. DeSantis and Laura Rozza had the best credit, so the mortgage for the $453,000 purchase price was taken out in their names, while a separate legal agreement stipulates that everyone is a
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co-owner of the house. “We couldn’t maintain ourselves as a four-person household,” Rosenblatt says. “There was no way we could have bought this house at all with any less than eight adults pitching in.” There were additional considerations, too. “It was the idea of sort of creating a new world we want to live in,” says Laura Rozza, a grant writer for a nonprofit serving people with disabilities. “The idea of the American Dream in 2003 was unobtainable for the majority of people,” says Dave Rozza, a math tutor. The city of Hartford disagreed with their idea of what constitutes a household and sued the group, saying that multiple adults who were not all related couldn’t live together in a single-family dwelling under the city’s zoning laws. The city dropped the case after a year and a half but hasn’t changed its codes, leaving the group in a sort of legal limbo.
Most families make similar calculations involving costs, parenting needs, and how their values are reflected in the living arrangements they choose. For the merged families in Hartford, their choice became a radical declaration of independence from societal expectations, and it’s one small story in an epic housing affordability crisis unfolding across the U.S. In many ways, this is a continuation of the housing market collapse of 2008, after the mortgage industry took advantage of loose regulations and overextended its lending. A lot of that was driven by Wall Street, which packaged subprime and other loans into exotic financial instruments that concealed the weakness in those debts. When the financial crash came, it took the housing market with it. A wave of foreclosures arrived—more than 2.3 million properties received foreclosure notices in 2008 alone, according to RealtyTrac, and another 2.8 million in 2009. That was accompanied by home seizures (more than 1 million families lost their homes in 2010), job losses, and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. A decade later, with major economic indicators on the rebound in many places, the housing crisis has turned into an epidemic of unaffordability: too few homes are available where they’re needed, and those that are, whether for sale or for rent, are increasingly out of reach for people whose incomes have effectively stagnated.
After buying the West End house—a single-family dwelling —the group had to battle the city over definitions of family and household.
There’s no overall shortage of homes; the affordability challenge is different in each city. According to federal government data, the overall housing market has more than kept up with population growth. What’s happened instead is a split. In hot markets like the technology centers of the West Coast, competition for housing has driven up both rents and sale prices. Seattle is home to fast-growing Amazon and also the highest annual price increases in the country, 12.86 percent as of January. The median sale price in the city has surpassed $800,000. But in cities still recovering from the housing market collapse, such as those in the Rust Belt, there are plenty of vacant houses. It’s decent-paying jobs that are scarcer, and many of those vacant houses are still owned by banks that are unlikely to sell until the market turns around. In Detroit, prices are going up at a more modest 7.6 percent per year, but there are still an estimated 25,000 vacant houses in the city that were lost to foreclosure over the years. That, topped off with stagnant wages, has resulted in a lack of housing many
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people can afford either to rent or buy. The average wage for a non-managerial employee at the beginning of 1979 was $22.51 per hour in 2018 dollars. In March 2018, it was $22.44 per hour, essentially flat. In that same 40-year period, housing prices have gone up nearly 50 percent, from a median price of $60,300 ($220,300 in today’s dollars) to $326,800 today. What Seattle and Detroit share is a large percentage of the population considered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to be cost-burdened: households spending more than 30 percent of income on housing. A study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University estimated that in the greater Seattle area, 33.4 percent of both rental and owner households fit that description in 2015. In Detroit, 31.4 percent did. These are not unique situations: Nationwide, 1 in 3 households is spending more than 30 percent of income for a home. With that kind of math working against them, people have had to get creative.
Multiple Solutions There is no single solution to the housing equation. As communities grapple with housing costs, what is clear is that cooperation and coordination among government, private developers, the nonprofit community, and individuals at all income levels is required. Solutions will have to be intensely customized by location. What works in a fast-growing city like Seattle won’t work in a city like Detroit, and what helps build more houses to sell is different from what creates more rental units. Consider all the collaboration, innovation—and compassion—over the Applewood mobile home park in Midvale, Utah, a suburb about 12 miles south of Salt Lake City: 56 homes, reserved for adults 55 or older, mostly seniors. Most of them owned their own single- or double-wides, but they had to pay $320 per month as a lot fee—leasing the spots where their homes sit. Most of the residents are retired and on fixed incomes, says Shirlene Stoven, 81, who has lived there since 1994. In 2013, the owner of the park sold to a large developer, Ivory Homes. The site is situated between two TRAX light rail yesmagazine . org
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without much intervention beyond the hard work of its members. Still, Umoja admits that “nobody knows yet if the CLT structure will work for communities here in Jackson.” What seems clear, however, is that the CLT model works best when it’s self-sustaining, like One Roof Community Housing, in Duluth, Minnesota, which also cuts costs in home rehabbing like CCNWJ, except through a subsidiary. “We handle the purchasing of the land, while our construction company [Common Ground Construction] does the home building and renovation,” says One Roof Director Jim Philbin. “They’re a professional contractor, but we’re able to get better pricing with them rather than a general contractor because they’re, well, a part of us.” Some CLTs have mastered the art of revenue generation. Jackie Keogh, fund development manager of Portland, Oregon-based Proud Ground, says her group financed its property purchases in 2016 with the help of real estate brokers who donated their sales commissions from market-rate sales. Proud Ground is still the only nonprofit brokerage in Oregon, and it continues to maintain itself through commission fees. This adds up when the CLT has more than 280 homes in its portfolio. “We make about $100,000 annually from that, and it goes to fulfill our mission to subsidize some of our affordable housing. The more homes in your portfolio, the greater number of leases and transactions you collect,” Keogh says. Some CLTs have to go “way outside the box” to fund themselves, says Jason Webb, a former CLT operator and current training specialist at Grounded Solutions Network, an organization that educates groups looking to create their own CLTs. He predicts that the model will become more sustainable now that federal lending agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have announced their willingness to embrace CLTs. Banks, he says, also are
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learning that CLT-orchestrated mortgages are astoundingly stable, with very few homebuyers walking away from their financial commitments. “The demand for affordable housing will always be there, and now, with these additional resources opening up, we’ll be able to get more folks into their homes faster,” Webb says. “Every one of the 100 homeowners that I personally put into a home [as a CLT
operator] went through a traditional bank to get a 30-year conventional mortgage, and those mortgages are some of the safest investment vehicles at those banks.” Regardless of CLTs’ proven track record, Hall says, Cooperation Jackson still has a steep hill to climb over the next few years on funding, however creative the funding options may be. The group learned recently that the soil
COMMENTARY :: Darrick Hamilton
IS CREDIT SCORING THE NEW REDLINING?
at Ewing Street isn’t very suitable for gardening, and is now mulling over whether to begin soil remediation to make the farming component of the Ewing community feasible. Still, she says, a groundbreaking shouldn’t be too far into the future. “Looking at the financing and business planning for property development, I think we’re looking at the end of 2019 or 2020,” she says. y
Nia Umoja pushes a piece of plywood against a doorway on an abandoned house acquired by the Cooperative Community of West Jackson, which plans to restore the building to function as a center for folk art. PHOTO BY WILLIAM WIDMER/REDUX
Adam Lynch is a freelance writer in Jackson, Mississippi. yesmagazine . org
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5 WAYS COMMUNITIES ARE CREATING AFFORDABLE HOMES
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DISASTER RECOVERY
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n Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, a pilot program not only seeks to produce temporary-to-permanent housing quickly following hurricanes and other natural disasters, but also points the way to a broader solution for families who out of necessity build their homes a little at a time. Community Development Corporation’s RAPIDO replaced the disposable FEMA trailers with a small but livable housing “core”—a kitchen, living room, bathroom, and bedroom. The structure was specifically designed so additional bedrooms could be added incrementally once a second round of government funding came through. Eventually, 20 such homes—including the extra bedrooms—were completed through the RAPIDO program, each in less than six weeks and for about half the cost of federal replacement houses. The CDCB envisions building hundreds of these temporary-to-permanent houses following disasters, extending limited recovery funds to more residents while getting them into finished homes in weeks rather than years. —Daniel Tyx
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MULTIGEN DESIGN
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he growth of multigenerational households in this country—rent-burdened millennials moving in with their parents, older Americans living with their adult children, and growing numbers of immigrant families accustomed to living this way—is creating a unique housing dynamic. And few in the industry are creating housing to serve those among them seeking affordability in an urban setting. It’s a phenomenon known in the industry as the “missing middle.” One such builder is Scott K. Choppin, founder and CEO of Urban Pacific Group in Long Beach, California, who, over the last two years, created what he calls the “urban town house.” It’s housing aimed specifically at moderate-income, multigenerational households with multiple breadwinners who together earn about $100,000 a year. The homes are mostly in working-class neighborhoods where there hasn’t been any new housing built for years, and where many of the families he’s serving already live. His urban town houses are three-story rentals, typically with five bedrooms and 3.75 bathrooms. —Kevon Paynter
Left, Louise Williamsto n with her grandchildren in the duplex she shares wit h Rosetta Farrell throug h the Renting Partnerships pro gram.
GRANNY PODS
EARNING DIVIDENDS
A
unique housing program in Cincinnati is allowing lowincome renters to participate in the management and upkeep of their homes as a way to earn dividends they can cash in later. Margery Spinney and Carol Smith founded Renting Partnerships in 2013 to help organize affordable housing communities for those with few choices. Renters must commit to a five-year lease, participate in management of their homes, contribute to work assignments and property maintenance, and pay their rent on time. In exchange, they accrue financial equity, or housing dividends, each month—up to $10,000 over 10 years. While these dividends accumulate indefinitely, residents can cash out after five years. Their first property is a two-family duplex in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Avondale. It was acquired by The Coalition for Sustainable Communities, a nonprofit that invests in development projects in gentrified neighborhoods. The Coalition owns the property and master leases it to Renting Partnerships, giving them control of operating and management of the building—a typical arrangement for Renting Partnerships. —Shaima Shamdeen
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mall backyard homes, sometimes called mother-in-law suites or granny pods, are the latest response to the growing housing crisis—at least on the West Coast. Typically measuring under 1,000 square feet, these socalled accessory dwelling units built on the properties of existing homes offer the potential for generations of families to live in close proximity, for recent graduates to move back with parents without having to be under the same roof, or even as a source of rental income. But zoning restrictions have long kept them illegal in many parts of the country. Now faced with a housing affordability crisis, cities and counties are easing some of those rules and embracing the granny pod as part of the solution. In Los Angeles, the number of applications for ADU construction between 2016 and 2017 rose from 80 to 1,980. And in cities such as Portland, Oregon, Seattle, and Vancouver, British Columbia, applications for the units have climbed as restrictions have eased. —Kevon Paynter and Lornet Turnbull
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A NEW GENERATION FINDS A DIFFERENT AMERICAN DREAM— AND THEY’RE HAPPY Flexible work and make-do housing.
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BOOKS + FILM + MUSIC
What Came Before #MeToo: The “Himpathy” That Shaped Misogyny Lilian Calles Barger
The #MeToo movement has brought unprecedented attention to sexual harassment and assault. It’s revealed just how many women feel besieged by sexually predatory behavior— especially in the workplace. The wave of women coming forward has shown that sexual harassment is the rule in many institutions. And #MeToo has only revealed a small piece of a much larger problem. Although the most high-profile #MeToo stories have focused on celebrities or executives, most victims are disproportionately young, lowincome, and minority women. Also less evident in the #MeToo movement have been cases of sexual violence: where shaming, trolling, threats, and unwelcome advances have given way to rape, physical violence, and even forms of torture—of which choking is the most common.
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In its most extreme cases, it can literally be a matter of life and death, and yet sexual harassment and violence remain largely hidden by an elaborate system of denial, gaslighting, and retraction of accusations by women. Meanwhile, unrepentant abusers are often comforted or excused while victims are blamed. How did we get here? Moral philosopher Kate Manne’s book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, helps explain. Thanks to Manne, the undue comfort that men receive now has a name: It’s
called himpathy. And, together with how she defines misogyny, Manne provides a useful framework for understanding not just the present #MeToo moment, but what came before. For Manne, misogyny is not simply “men who hate women.” That’s far too simplistic, she says. Rather, it’s a far-reaching, punitive social system that keeps women in their place by rewarding compliance and punishing resistance to the gendered social order. This disciplining role of misogyny has escaped attention for a variety of reasons, chiefly, the social shield of himpathy. Himpathy, a term destined to become part of the feminist vocabulary, names a problem previously unrecognized—and perhaps that’s the first step in solving it. Manne defines himpathy as the “excessive sympathy
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sometimes shown to male perpetrators of sexual violence,” in the attempt to preserve their reputation, power, or status. Accused men, especially those with privilege, are broadly treated with deference by the media and the public, and if they’re brought to court are given lenient sentences. This is so common as to be a given for men in power. Harvey Weinstein is a case in point. Wielding control over the film careers of many and trading on his artistic reputation, he escaped unscathed for decades. Excuses are abundantly generated: alcohol, flirtation taken too far, or provocation on the part of the victim. Himpathy builds on the idea that sexual predators and rapists are creepy monsters, not “golden boys.” Correspondingly, the women in these situations are characterized as hysterical, misguided, or liars who misread the intentions of their attackers. Himpathy is a helpful explanation of the response after sexual abuse allegations are revealed. Over and over, we’ve seen victim blaming and rewriting of the story by friends, family, media, and sometimes even the victim. Responses to #MeToo revelations by close-at-hand onlookers are often characterized by shock and guilt for having looked the other way when powerful and respected men are involved. But himpathy is certainly not a recent phenomenon. Historically, misogyny and himpathy have been normal, if unrecognized, fare for women in the workplace. Sexual coercion at work had to be named before it could be fought, and feminists of the 1970s identified common experiences women suffered by naming marital rape and domestic abuse. The term “sexual harassment” in the workplace was defined by Lin Farley in her 1978 book, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job, as “unsolicited nonreciprocal male behavior that asserts a woman’s sex role over her function as a worker.” Farley joined the legal scholar Catharine A. MacKinnon in pressing the courts to consider it part of “sex discrimination”
under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act gave women and minorities new rights in employment. But there was still backlash. A law on the books is only the first step in triggering a cultural shift. And law is not useful unless some are willing to use it and make a claim. The recognition of sexual harassment as a form of employment-related discrimination opened the floodgates: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began receiving tens of thousands of claims each year. Even with a rush of claims, many from low-wage workers, the definition of sexual harassment as interpreted by the courts is narrow and fails to consider the disadvantaged social circumstances of women that dissuade many from seeking legal recourse. Over the next 40 years, as women entered previously male-dominated fields, sexual harassment, though illegal under the law, persisted. Take, for example, the high-profile cases of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas in 1991 or Bill Clinton and Paula Jones in 1994. Despite attracting a great deal of attention, these failed to mobilize a mass movement. In both cases, the men involved were held by many to be blameless while Hill and Jones were scrutinized for ill intentions. Hill’s accusation on national television ultimately did not stop the Thomas confirmation, and Jones faded into obscurity. High-profile cases like these are easily dismissed as aberrations, a moral failure of one individual, a political plot, or gold-digging on the part of victims. Non-transgressing men benefit from a system that keeps women in their place, and low-profile cases continue to be invisible. The backlash against #MeToo, in an already global movement, has begun. Sometimes the case is taken up by women, such as the actress Catherine Deneuve, who evoked the French tradition of seduction against sexual puritanism: “Clumsy flirting is not a crime,” she said. Claire Berlinski, writing for The American Interest, charged
Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny Kate Manne Oxford University Press, 2017
that in #MeToo, “mass hysteria had set in [as] a form of moral panic” that misinterprets naturally romantic interactions as nefarious. This women-against-women narrative is part of the story of misogyny and himpathy—and it’s part of why it’s so difficult to remedy. By standing by their man, “good women” show their deference and act as enforcers. In exchange for upholding gender norms—and participating in misogyny by punishing those who don’t—they earn favors and advancement, which reinforces even further the social deviance of the victims. After all, women can say no, these defenders say. But if you are not a woman with executive power or Meryl Streep, saying no is difficult. Women who work to support their families have few options. When the choice is between your job and your dignity, himpathy is likely to work as a silencing mechanism. Unless #MeToo successfully expands beyond professional women by reaching out to empower pink- and blue-collar women who suffer in silence under male supervisors, it will leave its mark but will not have done its most significant work. y Lilian Calles Barger is a historian, author, and speaker addressing issues of gender, social justice, culture, and religion. She lives in Taos, New Mexico. @lilianbarger.
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