MONDAY, DEC 7, 2020: NOTE TO FILE
Homes for the Unhoused
Enough talk-talk already
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: SERVING POSTERITY, FROM THE WIRES, RULES TO PERSIST BY
Abstract: How big is big enough? How big of a house do humans need to live in? The average American home being built today is 2,322 sq ft of living space for a family to occupy. Their ancestors at the turn of the twentieth century built average sized homes of 800 sq ft. Post WWII Americans quickly built 13 million homes considered spacious at about 1,000 sq ft per family of up to 10. Go back a few millennia and their ancestors could have built homes with 100 sq ft per person (e.g. wickiups, igloos, tepees), but didn't bother because over the course of a few hundred thousand years their ancestors had found that homes of up to 25 sq ft per person was big enough. So would 30 sq ft per person be too much?
COOS BAY (A-P) —A Canadian designer has heard enough talk, talk, talk about what to do about the increasing houseless population. But is his design for one solution, profitably building lots of tiny homes, viable? Read 'Impatient with Red Tape, Vancouver Builder Makes a Tiny Home Prototype'.
The 'tiny townhouse' to temporarily address a presumed temporary homeless problem is 100 sq ft and costs $11+k US dollars. If people are homeless because they can't go into debt to live in a McMansion (or pay rent), then the private sector will build tiny McMansions. The designer is a maker of conventional dwellings for the uber 'just too much' rich (i.e. 99+% of those living obligate lives in cities), e.g. North American denizens of industrial society (Canadians are 'richer' per capita than Americans, i.e. they consume more energy).
A 10' x 10' ft dwelling, however, is far in excess of human needs (if not wants). In Canada, living in a tent may fail to meet the needs of some as one cannot easily/safely build a fire inside a tent to dry wet clothes or bedding without a wood-gas stove and chimney. Using fossil fuels to heat a home or tent is unsustainable and the transfority value of electricity is too high.
When, or rather as, homelessness in the Coos Bay metro area (about 32k population in southern coastal Oregon having a temperate Mediterranean climate that rarely freezes in winter) increases (inland cities are far harsher in winter), area residents will eventually do what residents here did in the 19th century—they will fund/build/organize poor farms/poorhouses. People in need will be given food, water, shelter, enough clothing/blankets to maintain bodily homeostasis, and baseline educational, medical and mental health care that area uber-residents pay for or voluntarily give. In return, residents of the farms will provide such labor, if any, as they can offer in return (the economy of the community will not be a monetary economy, but a gifting economy.)
Those who refuse to work or generate extra costs (e.g. require being jailed) will receive 'just enough' to prevent a significant (P≤0.05) increase in risk of mortality (e.g. from malnutrition, being too cold/wet, lack of medical/psycho-social care). Needs will be met, but wants are optional. Those who can and do what they can to support the farming community will receive 'enough', more than just enough, but not uber-enough, which may include some wants.
Until we transition back to viable solutions (ad hoc camps by the homeless on public or private lands are not viable long-term), then providing some level of shelter will be needed. The number of homeless will soon increase due to inability to afford to live like Americans have been for nearly a hundred years of hyper-consumption of energy and planetary resources (Americans, currently 4.24% of humans, consume about 1/4 of the planet's environmental and crustal resources for the taking).
Eventually (perhaps very soon when evictions resume) evermore 'talk, talk, talk' will come to Coos Bay while nothing is actually done that actually works long-term to provide for human needs. As a designer and former houseless person (for 13 years, as a 'poor' student, I lived in an 8' x 6' box 4' high I build on the back of a $200 1954 Ford pickup, 45 sq ft, and yes, it was clearly more than I needed, but perhaps not criminally more than needed, that I was able to afford by working about six weeks a year as a migrant farmworker during the summers).
I will build a big-enough home for one fellow human at my expense (time and money) and perhaps the adequately homed can help cultivate my garden, voluntarily of course, as Candide advised. I will also perhaps go to jail when the city prosecutes me for refusing to pay fines for violating current zoning ordinances. If they confiscate currently private property instead of imprisoning me for failure to comply, I will organize resistance and engage in civil disobedience until imprisoned (or norms change).
The big-enough home I design and make will be 6' x 8' and 4' high outside. It will be of 2x2 construction with shingled sheathing. The roof could be hardie board if available, or cedar planks (as used by the indigenous living here for millennia). The home will be raised high enough so plants can still grow under and around it. And if wheels are temporarily added, it will be a mobile home so that, if the city/county/state succeeds in enforcing current norms, the well-enough housed can take their home with them, moving it with a lever under human power daily, until they find a safe place or the uber-rich attack and destroy their home. One can hope 'it' doesn't come to that, but future details cannot be foreseen (see last 10k years of human history).
The big-enough home will provide good-enough security, i.e. a lock on the door. There will be no windows, but view ports (peep holes) on each side and a section of the roof will be a light source (skylight). There will be a wood-gas 'rocket' stove for cooking outdoors as in this climate dressing warm and having blankets/bed covers is enough inside a 110 cu ft somewhat insulated home. We don't have three-dog nights here on the coast that are life threatening. A human body generates about 100W of heat. The Inuit slept naked in igloos between seal skins.
Speaking of which, the Inuit could, for the price of an effort, build 30 foot in diameter igloos providing 700 sq ft of shelter. Did each family of perhaps 5-10 build such an igloo?. No, big-enough igloos were about 10'-12' feet in diameter, offering a less-is-better 80-100 sq ft of cozy space that human bodies and a few oil lamps could heat. Minimal space requirements per person for shelter is less than the 656 sq ft per person average of space US homes currently provide. Bomb shelter designers figure 5-10 sq ft is minimally. Human ancestors preferred more spacious abodes as evidenced by the homes they built.
American indigenous living in agricultural villages in Eastern forests built longhouses housing multiple families. With the coming of horses to pull the poles and hides used to be at home on the prairie in tepees, the size of tepees increased from about 10' diameters to 15' diameters providing up to 30 sq ft per person and a dog or two. From wickiups to longhouses that, for the price of an effort (labor) could have been twice as big, humans have found that 20 to 25 sq ft per person is big enough, i.e. not worth the effort of making more space unless animal or fossil-fueled slaves are available to do the work. Pre-empire building, before developing our uber ways/norms, most of our ancestors lived in wickiups that were about 15 to 20 feet in diameter and housed 10 to12 people. Large wickiups housed 20 to 25 people (and maybe a few dogs).
So a Coos home of 43 sq ft interior space per former uber-rich person is Bigenuff, i.e. is a transitional home size for those being forced to transition back to having enough food, water, shelter, and services (e.g. social approbation, respect, care, love, understanding) a eusocial species needs (as distinct from is able to be made to want). If walls are 1 foot thick of mostly insulation for those living in subzero F areas, the interior is 4x6 feet or 24 sq ft 2 ft high, i.e. just big enough. With that much insulation, body heat alone would keep inside temperature well above freezing even on three-dog nights (plenty of room for one dog or even for two people who like each other and home heating just doesn't get anymore appreciative).
Each potentially rolling room could be adjoined to another in marriage. If children 'happen', as they must to maintain a viable population, they would get their own potentially rolling room when too big to share that of the parents and as a rite of passage, most would, as new adults, borrow wheels and roll on. Rooms should be made to last a lifetime, with due maintenance (shakes and shingles replaced once per lifetime). Those who become elderly could be immolated after death in their homes after descendants inherit personal and useful items of value as humans have been doing for millennia. The ashes would be sifted for screws to be reused.
So, like you know, is this another lame plan to temporarily take care of the homeless? No. It is a design for a viable human future where humans have come to understand the planet and have learned to prosperously and properly live with it (and with one another).
For details, conceptual and other, see Bigenuff Homes and The Measure of Enough.
