TINY HOUSING

Each year in Brittany the church holds an ecclesiastical home coming during which they open the doors to the monasteries and abbeys. Visitors can meet the monks and speak with them. If they have taken a vow of silence one can only smile and nod.

Last year I visited L'abbaye de la Meilleraie. Surrounded by forests, lakes ponds and orchards, one is moved by how much the holy church accomplished by faith without the modern tools of bonusing and amenity contributions.

In spite of the beauty of the setting, the church can not recruit enough monks. At one time this monastery housed several hundred servants of God. Now they are down to twelve.

Whatever the reason for this it seems unlikely that it has anything to do with the size of their apartments. A 250 square foot room provides more than enough space for prayer, liturgical texts and a bunk. Since they have community toilets that leaves extra space to store jams,marmalades and other organic products of their toils.

Meanwhile, the secular authorities in
New York City under Mayor Bloomberg are optimistic that they will not have a problem selling out a building with tiny one room apartments in a crummy part of town.  (See
How Small Is Too Small? An Apartment Story-National Wire )

At first glance this would seem a paradox. How can it be that in New York or Vancouver, where we have already done the same thing, developers could sell out 250 square foot dwelling units whose tenants may end up comprising the strata council from hell, but in Brittany they can not fill units, the walls of which are four feet thick, and are managed by a brotherhood of Gregorian chanting, marmalade making men of God?

If you believe that sustainability is to environmentalism what Saint Thomas Aquinas is to Catholicism and if you believe that the market for smaller units is consistent with a love of nature and the entire  universe, you are a truly good person to be admired for the purity of your soul and your love of humanity.

You are also wrong.

If on the other hand you believe that there has always been big money in cheap housing as is demonstrated daily by the successful slumlords from DTES Vancouver to Calcutta, you are a cynic, a denier and a skeptic.

Nevertheless, you are probably right.

YE OLDE AFFORDABILITY REPORT (CIRCA 1976)

In 1976 Gordon Soules published his book “The HOUSING CRISIS: Causes, Effects and Solutions", (Gordon Soules Economic and Marketing Research) in which he addressed the issue of the high cost of housing in Vancouver.  He sought to answer the question, "What can be done to bring the cost of housing within the reach of the lower, younger, aspiring middle class?”


The 450 page work ( $75) consists of a series of essays by 61 persons involved in one way or another with housing and includes architects, planners, developers, real estate salesman, land economists, politicians, renters, homeowners of all political persuasions. These were the 'Who's Who" of the 1970's.


Soules' methodology was to record interviews and publish the transcripts.  The list of politicians includes Mayor Art Phillips, Ald. Michael Harcourt and Surrey Ald. William Vanderzalm.  The list of consultants, architects and planners  included  David Baxter, Michael Goldberg, Norman Hotson,  Arthur Erickson, Walter Hardwick among many others.


Ten developers were also on the list as well as several mortgage brokers, officials of landlord and tenant associations, realtors, and a long list of other housing experts.


The approach taken in Soules’ study is radically different than that of the current Vancouver Council’s Affordability Report. The opinions expressed by the writers are in conflict having not been homogenized by the committee.


So, why were prices so high relative to incomes?  Everybody blamed somebody else. 


The real estate interests blamed the no growth advocates and the environmental movement.  Restrictions on development they said were rationalized by the preservation of whooping cranes. 


 Developers blamed planners and municipalities, "We really do not have planners – we have controllers," said Port Moody developer James Houston.  


Mayor art Phillips after listing the various causes of the problem said, "I maintain that the primary approach to solving the housing problem in the greater Vancouver area lies in the immediate reduction and future control of immigration….  About 50% of Vancouver's annual growth rate is attributable to newcomers from foreign lands; the other half is the result of migration of Canadians from other provinces.  We cannot – and if we could, should not – legislate the movement of Canadians within their own free country.  But we can and should control that proportion of our population pressure that is represented by the influx of foreigners."  


Alderman Michael Harcourt agreed.


This was of course before political correctness raised its obsequious head.


Soules noted that "many interviewees proposed solutions to the housing crisis that would entail, among other measures, either lowering the cost of new housing or further increasing the purchasing power of consumers so that they could afford today's high prices.”  He described as "solutions that are non-solutions: ” (1) promote the construction of smaller units; (2) lower government building and servicing standards for new housing developments."  (3) increase housing densities to reduce the dwelling unit land cost.  (4) provide government grants to housing builders for each new unit constructed.


Does that sound familiar?


These were seen by many as simplistic solutions that  would not work. The land economists said that this is because the major characteristic of urban housing markets is that prices for new and existing units are based on demand rather than actual costs of providing them.  Reductions in costs of the ingredients of the new housing have a negligible effect on prices, such savings only accruing to the landowners, since the price of residential land tends to increase by an amount equivalent to any reduction in the cost of a dwelling. 


Soules noted that if housing is constructed with no frills, or is built smaller, the buyers get less for the same amount of money.  An increase in purchasing power enables consumers to pay higher prices and this automatically increases housing demand with consequent higher land and housing prices.  


All of this is a reminder of how we compartmentalize. Today those who oppose building more roads because of the certainty that they will immediately fill up with cars, will be the first to urge that we build more smaller and cheaper houses. They must not expect that they will also fill up with people and the price will keep mounting.


Soules  predicted that if mortgage lenders allowed applicants to borrow more or if interest rates dropped, housing and land prices would only rise. 


 That is exactly what happened. 


UBC's David Baxter, lecturer on urban land economics said, "Many of today's housing problems stem from 40 years of government subsidization of home ownership.  Every program that is intended to make it easier to attain home ownership increases the demand for this form of tenure and contributes to price increases.  The price of housing is set by the total demand for a relatively fixed stock of units.  Demand is very volatile."


The present Council might want to reconsider its density kick:  Dr. Robert Collier a municipal planner who did consulting work for Vancouver and later became the Planner for West Vancouver, said, "the traditional approach to reducing housing costs has been through increasing density, so that more units can be constructed on a piece of property.  But because of the monopoly position enjoyed by landowners as a group, increasing density serves very little purpose other than to ensure that those who own the land reap higher profits. 


 As an illustration, Collier said, "The price of a typical lot in West Vancouver is about $50,000. (!)  If the density on the property is doubled, the owner does not reduce his selling price of the per unit land cost from $50,000 to $25,000; more likely it is dropped to only $40,000 or $45,000.  Thus the buyer gains very little from the densities having been increased,  but the landowner becomes richer….The greater Vancouver Regional District and the provincial government propose to increase densities in Greater Vancouver, but this would not help to solve the housing crisis because prices of higher density units would tend to rise to the high price level of single-family houses."


All of which brought to mind the comment of one of Vancouver's most successful developers of the period who described a competitor's approach to me as, "Sell 'em shit and charge 'em a little less."


The Mayor's task force can pick up a copy on Ebay for $55.

IT'S THE MONEY

Ideas of catastrophic climate change are not new nor are proposals to deal with it. In the 1950s Emmanuel Velokovsky suggested that the earth might wobble and tip at any moment because of the accumulation of polar ice not to mention dangerous planetary alignments. His theories were widely accepted and were set forth in his book, "Worlds in Collision" .

The response to Climate change reflects at any time the belief in the cause. When people thought it was the work of an angry God they chucked virgins into volcanos. When they thought it was a top heavy earth it was proposed to detonate nuclear bombs on one or the other of the poles to lighten up things at the heavy end.

In 1970 it was predicted by the Club Rome that the earth was on the cusp of a period of global cooling. But when temperatures rose it was decided by a consensus of scientists that we weren't cooling. We were warming.

The news concerning the likely causes was for a time, as variable as the climate itself. The United Nation's Committee on Climate Change was established to review the literature on the subject. The IPCC reported that it is very likely that climate change is caused by man. The mechanism by which this might happen is exceedingly complex and at this stage a debate exists. There is no debate over whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas. There is a huge debate over rates of change. The most important one is over what to do about it.

Richard Lindzen was a member of the first IPCC and is the Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. Of the first IPCC report he said,"it is a summary for policy makers that was not prepared by scientists."

How is a layman to judge rival claims of supposed experts? Any charismatic person can spin a persuasive argument about any subject not in the domain of the reader's personal expertise. On this point Stephen Jay Gould observed, "When I see how poorly Velokovsky uses the data I am familiar with, then I must entertain doubts about his handling of data unfamiliar to me. But what it is a person who knows neither astronomy, Egyptology , nor geology to do especially when faced with a hypotheses so intrinsically exciting and a tendency shared I suspect by all of us to root for the underdog?"

There is no shortage of charismatic people floating around today who head foundations or got elected and who make pronouncements ex cathed
Anthropogenic climate change is now generally accepted. While the precise extent of anthropogenic as opposed to changes caused by other factors is debated the political responses have sometimes been bad policy. The promotion of Bio fuels it has been said resulted in an increase in CO2.

All the hype on densification may be another example. Local governments are now rezoning for a cooler climate. If they are going to do this they should first conclusively show that increasing density will result in a net reduction of CO2. No City has done this. There is not yet a reliable model that justifies an increase in density and a radical restructuring of our society.

Planners claim that high density buildings are more sustainable in the context of CO2 emissions.

It is quite an assumption. Apartments with their common areas,elevators,lights,heat,air conditioning, and other facilities demand lots of energy.

Infill housing happens at the expense of trees and vegetation.

Planners assume that people in high rises and dense areas will not drive their cars. They will commute by transit. Vancouver's commuting patterns are changing. People live in the City and commute to work outside it. Dense urban areas are magnets. The boulevards of Paris,which has the best public transportation system in the world, are jammed with cars.

If we accept what I take to be the prevailing view of the science, the real issue is simply this: the population on earth is not sustainable. If that is so, how will it help to accept millions of people from everywhere, and dump their excrement in Georgia Straight and their CO2 in the air?

To evaluate the science is hard for a layman because science advances not by consensus. Sometimes the crazy postal worker is right and the Academy is wrong. E equals mass times the speed of light squared. When Mendelieve proposed the periodic table to the Russian Academy, its head mockingly asked whether he had considered arranging the elements in their alphabetical order.

To evaluate solutions proposed by committees is a different matter. Those are the solutions of politicians - not climatologists. There are billions to be made in the climate change industries from composting toilets to urban home windmills and from bicycles to high rises.

Don't let them try to tell you that they are endorsed by a consensus of Scientists. When a developer tells you they are in it for the principle, not the money you can be sure of one thing - its the money.

GROUNDHOG DAY: The Affordable Housing Report

When City council released its affordable housing report it seemed like Groundhog Day.

It never stops.

In the early 70s the City produced a report on "housing the hard to house." Then in the mid 70s a fellow named Soules went to the trouble of interviewing every politician and developer in the Vancouver region about it and published a hard cover book called the "Housing Crises."

Oh what to do! What to do?

Then Gordon Campbell got elected. These were the halcyon days when developers were  kicking 80 year old grannies out of their Kerrisdale apartments as they were condominiumized. The construction of rental housing was dead in the water. Who (other than Morris Wosk) wanted to bother with complaining tenants whining to the Rentalsman?

So Mayor Campbell set up a meeting of concerned Developers. There was no end of ideas but the one that won the prize was this: Create a new company. Hand over to it 50 Million dollars of land on long term leases. Make the City's rent way down the totem poll so it starts collecting only after everyone gets paid.

The city contributed the land at an option price of ten dollars and away they went. The beauty part was that much of it would be funded by union pension funds.

Harry Rankin,Vancouver's socialist councillor,was against it. He described it as "state capitalism." He said that the state should only be involved with things that the market could not do. The market he said could build market housing.

That vote took a  lot of courage because the union pension funds supported the project. Can you imagine this VISION gang or for that matter the NPA not supporting a developer?

The Company was supposed to build thousands of units. Actually with City encouragement it became a large union developer but not for city rental units. It built on some of the best land in the city package and then moved on to better things. It put up a small fraction of the expected rental units and never exercised the options on the rest. I don't know when the city started collecting rent.

For some reason politicians keep trying things that didn't work the first time. Someone does OK I guess,.

THE LAW OF WINDMILLS

Municipal lawyers make money by knowing things that are generally not worth knowing. 

The idea of encouraging the installation of wind turbines  in the relatively dense areas of Vancouver is probably no more  idiotic than the other things done by our Council. A permit issued for one of these things could quite likely be set aside by a court.


Section 10 of the Zoning and Development Bylaw contains a grab bag full of general regulations. These regulations apply to each of the uses listed in the land use section of the bylaw. It says:

Relaxation of Limitations on Building Height
10.11.1 Height Increases for Buildings

(d) access and infrastructure required to maintain green roofs or urban agriculture, or roof-mounted energy technologies including solar panels and wind turbines, provided that the Director of Planning considers:
(i) their siting and sizing in relation to views, overlook, shadowing, and noise impacts, and
(ii) all applicable policies and guidelines adopted by Council;

A zoning bylaw regulates the use of land. Use means the purpose for which land can be used. All things that are not expressly permitted are forbidden.  The use section of the RS-5 Residential Zone for example allows a one family dwelling.  (One family dwelling actually means something else but we can deal with that some other time.)  It also allows   


Accessory Uses customarily ancillary to any of the uses listed in this section.


There has been speculation that a developer is planning to install some kind of a wind turbine on or with a new house.  The neighbours are worried about the potential noise and other impacts.


Is a wind turbine in Vancouver customarily ancillary to a single family dwelling?


The simple answer is: No


The City has adopted by resolution a bulletin which sets out certain guidelines for Wind Turbines. This is not a zoning bylaw.  Zoning bylaws must be adopted by "bylaw" following a public hearing. The city has no power to adopt zoning bylaws in any way other than as permitted by the Vancouver Charter. A resolution will not do the trick. There must be a public hearing at which the public has its say. [That the councilors pay any attention to what you have to say is what is known as a legal fiction.]


It use to be that where there is an ambiguity in a zoning bylaw it was construed in favor of the taxpayer. That has changed over the years. Now it favors the Government. So, it is always possible that a court would hold that the sleight of hand involved in leaving turbines out of the listing of uses, and slipping them into the general regulations does the trick. If I were the developer though, I would not count on it. It does not pass the 'bad odor' test.


So when the City issues a permit for a wind-turbine for the house next door, and if you think there is a enough wind in Vancouver (other than at City Hall)  to make the infernal contraption squeak in the night, then sue them. File a petition for judicial review against the City and Developer to quash the  the permit. While you're at it, ask the court to declare that wind turbines are not a permitted accessory use. Also ask for court costs.  

WILTING AT TIN MILLS

It looks as though wind turbine's will be the next step on Vancouver's road to "greenest city" sustainability.  Section 10 of our zoning bylaw allows them as long as the Planner considers the impacts on the neighbours.


Small turbines placed in areas blessed by frequent breezes can  generate  electricity in a reasonable breeze.  People in windy areas swear by them. 


I love machines. l have always thought about adding a small wind turbine to our Cabin on Nelson Island. There is plenty of wind as long as it is a westerly. It is just that they are a lot more expensive than solar collectors from Costco and, since turbines have moving parts they require service. Solar collectors are forever, or at least until an eagle drops a fish on one.


Notwithstanding the storm that took out Stanley Park a few years ago, Vancouver is on average neither a very breezy nor a very sunny City. It seems unlikely that small, roof top, wind turbines could be justified economically in an area already served by BC Hydro. Solar collectors, on the other hand are inexpensive, low maintenance, and have environmental advantages. Among these are that solar collectors do not puree' bats and finches.


According to a government of Alberta web site an average wind speed of 18 km/h is rated poor for wind turbines.


http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/eng4456    An average  22 km/h wind speed is good. Vancouver's average wind-speed is between 11-12 km/h. ttp://www.livingin-canada.com/climate-vancouver.html


Therefore the performance should not be very good. One would hope there are better ways of investing money, such as in LED light bulbs.


Theoretically the two complement each other. Sustainable correctness dictates that we install solar collectors and tin wind mills and take the burden off soon to be over-stressed government hydro electric power. This, however, is not really about effectiveness or efficiency. 


It is about fashion. Its about sustainable chic.


Home windmills in Vancouver will likely be the  Cartier  roof adornments of sustainability. Then over time the technology will improve in urban areas, like ours which is somewhat shy of wind, and will actually be useful. If you believe the manufacturers there may already be good systems out there. (There is one on YouTube based on 3000 year old Egyptian technology.) I would say, call me a sceptic on that score, except that the word sceptic has become associated with "denier", as in Holocaust Denier, in the new-speak of  sustainability.


 In the late 1940s, to have the first TV set in the neighbourhood was, in my hometown, Atlantic City, the penultimate status symbol. (The ultimate was wearing mink coats on the board walk even on warm summer nights. When it was really hot women would wear their appraisals) Neighbours who saw the antenna on the  roof knew that we had a Dumont TV with a six inch screen.  They would drop by to watch the test pattern. 


That was before they invented programs. 


To be able to show that you could  buy a machine that was absolutely useless showed a noble faith in technology. All it did was produce a circular CBS pattern on the screen, but we could say that one day they would have programs. Sure enough we eventually moved into the next phase, known today as  vast wasteland.  


I would love to have a tin wind mill on my roof. I would sit in the yard waiting for the wind to blow.  People would drive by for the educational experience of witnessing Newtons  first law of motion: bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.  


Sometimes it would move. What a moment that would be! The hood would  swoon at  the reduced carbon footprint. 


The ultimate symbol of conspicuous sustainability would be to park an electric Tesla car on the roof. Not only is it powered by clean energy,  but better, it couldn't go any where, thus meeting the apparent goals of our city fathers.


It is likely that City hall wants to see those of us living in over-valued homes who do not ride bikes, pass the commitment test by putting windmills on our roofs. 


A better idea would be for the City, through Science World, to provide an annual prize for inventors. I bet they could get great ideas from high school students on how to generate power from waves, tides, wind, horses, baked beans and anything else.


Encouraging home owners to invest a fair amount of money in stuff that looks good and may work somewhere else, but can not be economically justified here, will in the end just turn people off. They will see it as another government screw up.  It may be trendy but that fact  brings to mind Marlene Dietrich's advice:  Beware of  trendiness. What looks good today will look ridiculous tomorrow.

PERTURBATIONS IN THE TIME CONTINUUM

In a previous post I noted how the late Mayor Tom Campbell, who had survived drinking a glass of water from a public pool thus proving that the water was safe, survived for another 43 years, became wealthy and accumulated a  large collection of clocks. 

Today while skimming Google News I came across a perturbation in a time continuum.

There is a guy running in the Republican primary in New York’s 17th Congressional District, who, if the winner, could affect the fate of the Republican Party in New York State and be a major embarrassment for the national Republican Party.

New York will hold its first ever federal Congressional primaries on June 26^th (they’ve never been held on this date before) and the 17^th District’s GOP contest will decide the party’s nominee to oppose the Democratic incumbent, Rep. Nita Lowey. The 17th District, brand new as a result of the every ten year Federal census which results in redistricting to equalize Congressional district population (New York lost two Congressional Districts as residents fled the state’s high taxes, high property taxes, and lack of jobs) now covers most of Westchester County (just outside New York City) and all of Rockland County, just across the Hudson River from Westchester. The District runs the gamut from wealthy to poor residents.

One Republican candidate, Joe Carvin, the twice elected Rye Town Supervisor, has the full support of the Westchester and Rockland County Republican parties, having been endorsed at their convention on March 27.

The other candidate, Jim Russell, will be on the ballot to oppose Mr. Carvin in the primary.

Mr. Russell, who has run for Congress at every opportunity, may have been ejected from a parallel universe. Back in 2001 he published an essay which, finally in 2010, received national media attention when he was on the Republican line for Congress, after the party’s choice, a Lt. Colonel in the Army Reserves, was called up to active duty just before the election by the Pentagon and sent to Afghanistan. Mr. Russell wound up on the party line by default. But his being there caused the national media to start looking into his background, and in September of that year both the web site Politico, the Gannett Journal News (which covers Westchester and Rockland), various magazine reporters, and the New York Times read his essay and discovered he was that most abhorrent of public figures, a racist and anti-Semite.

Here’s how Peter Applebome of the New York Times described Russell’s essay in a September 26 article:

“Mr. Russell seemed to embrace, among other things, racial separatism, eugenics and an assortment of historical and literary figures with anti-Semitic or Nazi ties. It also turns out that he has attended gatherings of groups with white nationalist views.”

Mr. Applebome went on to report that “Russell writes that ‘parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and marriage.’”

Candidate Russell is also quoted (not by the Times) as claiming: It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species.  The raising of finches is one more thing Washington should regulate.

In response to his publications Russell pleads what lawyers call various rules of statutory interpretation. 

This will be quite a campaign. Russell’s opponent, Carvin, represents everything Russell loathes. Carvin is married to an African-American and has mixed-race children. He speaks five languages fluently (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Wolof, English), and has lived throughout the world. He co-founded Building Community Bridges (a group created to promote interracial and intercultural understanding) and One World United and Virtuous (to encourage international understanding).

So there you have it. The Rockland and Westchester County Republican Parties and every Republican candidate for county and state wide office in Westchester and Rockland Counties has disowned Russell (as the GOP did in 2010) but not every registered Republican who can vote in the primary may know all of this. What happens if instead of telling Russell to “get thee behind me, Beelzebub” they nominate him? The simple answer is the Republican parties in Rockland and Westchester Counties will once again disown him, and Mrs. Lowey will win the election, as she did in 2010, by default.

In a letter to the editor published June 11 in the Gannett Journal News, one writer said that the eyes of the county, the state and, yes, the nation will be on this primary watching whether or not Republican voters drown out a bigot from another dimension with a finch obsession.

Make that also Canada.