Once you decide you can stomach living on turf defined as an easement, without any ownership rights, and you’re still determined how to live affordably and sustainably, then your next challenge is to overcome your aversion to the boxcar lifestyle. One of my daughters, a writer with considerable imagination, had to put away the Gertrude Chandler Warner series called the “Boxcar Children Mysteries,” because she found the thought of living in a caboose too distressing. Too dingy, too bound to echo, too, well, industrial. Cold steel – nasty – but are you sure about that? Before you make up your mind, take a look at the series on the shipping container-built house built in St. Petersburg on Bob Vila’s Web site. It shows a remarkable transformation of ugly steel containers into a strong, weather-proof homestead.
There are many forms of building materials available in the new community of dwellers but for now, let’s focus on a single base material: Cargo storage containers, sometimes known as shipping containers or ISOs; for short, I’m going to call them ISOs. Using ISOs is not an innovation in building construction. There are books available about their use in construction, like Jure Kotnik’s Container Architecture (2008) or Lori Ryker’s Off the Grid: Modern Homes + Alternative Energy (2005) (available in preview format at Google Books). Earlier this year, the American Institute of Architects awarded a Texas architectural firm a prize for use of ISOs in the residential development of a “retreat.” Here are the properties of ISOs that render them highly desirable building materials:
1. Availability: There are hundreds of thousands of ISOs sitting idly throughout the country; estimates are as high as 700,000 units simply being stored, empty, in 2009.
2. Affordability: An ISO with the dimensions of 10 X 20 feet may be purchased, as of the date of completion of this article, for as little as $1,000 per unit.
3. Strength: ISOs are made essentially of corrugated metal, which makes them unlikely targets for destruction, absent a “direct hit” by a substantially-heavier object; they are far more likely to withstand hurricane force winds or tornados than any other form of “temporary” housing construction or by frame constructed, permanent houses.
4. Rectilinear shape: ISOs are boxes; with such configuration, boxes can be stacked in multiple tiers, or turned on their sides or ends, rendering them adaptable for rectilinear design.
5. Weight: ISOs are heavy, but lack the weight of a structure made of block; therefore, they can be transported, in a state ready for final, exterior assembly, on an 18-wheeled trailer truck.
6. Configure-ability: ISOs are metal and therefore may be cut with a torch to the configuration of fenestration, doors or integration with other ISO units or other materials by a dwelling’s designer, without compromising the strength of the remainder of the structure.
7. Barn Door Adaptability: The end doors of ISOs can be maintained for security purposes while permitting, in an open position, fenestration or other decorative forms.
8. Height Potential: ISOs can be stacked, evidenced by their classic use on railroad flatbed cars. Yet the ISOs can be carefully anchored due to their design feature that incorporates big holes for marrying posts in one end. Stacked units can be moved into position in developments quickly, using cranes.
9. Attachment to utilities sources: Because the floors of an ISO are very strong, they can be set in place upon posts, elevating them above ground level, which permits them to be “wired and plumbed” with minimal cost (avoiding saw cutting a slab) to utilities connections installed beneath the base of the floor without weakening the floor; this feature permits, in raised position, ISOs to be used in areas with surface drainage challenges (consider their application in the 9th Ward neighborhoods in New Orleans, Louisiana, where they could be erected above-grade in areas of lower mean elevations and still withstand the wind and “storm surge” dilemmas that area faces.
10. Integration with sustainability technologies: By standing an ISO-based structure on piers, wiring, plumbing and solar-powered apparatus configuration are all made easier beneath the dwelling unit. The walls are sufficiently strong to support solar panel integration where roof placement is inconvenient.
11. Insulation properties: Some existing ISOs, being originally designed for refrigeration, are manufactured with heavy insulation in place, which enables the structure’s interior to withstand extremes of temperature throughout the year without substantial additional expense to the contractor.
You might think, yeah, but how do they appear to the city officials in the community where I live? I’ve been in touch with planning departments in two counties in Florida on the subject of building container-based residences. The planning department’s responses are the same. These are manufactured housing products under our zoning code’s definitions; manufactured housing is accepted housing stock in residentially-zoned districts; so comply with the building codes, and go forth with your project. There’s no apparent prejudice within the bureaucracy. So basic resistance to container projects may come not from a government but from an HOA, if there were restrictive covenants that dictated what types of materials can (and cannot) be used in construction. That means the consumer may not be able to live in a planned community that has a few remaining vacant lots. On the other hand, how do you suppose HOAs in the busted subdivisions populating Nevada, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere will react to the opportunity to see build-out achieved? I imagine there are some boards of directors that will be only too obliging to amend the covenants, conditions and restrictions to permit construction of alternative-materials dwellings.
-MNW
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Co-Housing, Part Two - Matters of ‘Turf’
Conventional, permanent, single-family housing presumes the fact of defined space. The Postal Service needs a street number to deliver the occupant’s mail. The County Assessor needs a parcel number so that it values, then computes and bills, your property taxes. Fire and police responders require an address in case of a call for help. But none of these aids to identification is truly critical except to aid in imposing taxes. As long as they are logical and sequential, street address numbers can be arbitrarily assigned without separate parcel ownership. Valuation for tax purposes admittedly does require distinguishing among parcels by character of improvements and parcel size, unless ad valorem tax systems were “flat tax”-based, tied to the fact of ownership alone.
Subdivision regulations came about, I guess, as a deterrent to unprincipled sales of lots lacking legal access and suitable urban infrastructure (by a particular community’s standards). Early Massachusetts subdivision regulations originated responding to concerns about the impact of public and private street development. Boston had regulations as early as the 1890s. The advent of these regulations standardized residential development in communities. It probably impaired the growth of “intentional communities,” where dwellers desired to share living quarters and yards in loose alliances. Momentum toward government control peaked in the 1950s. The Civil Rights movement spawned a number of campaigns for individual rights, and by the 1960s, professional planners and public officials became more critical of subdivision regulation as a concept encouraging development uniformity. The notion of PRD (planned residential development) and PUD (planned unit development) zones allowed deviation from formulaic subdivision standards such as setbacks, street widths and density measures.
By the 1990s, principles that added concern for native habitats and pedestrian “scale” led to phenomena such as conservation subdivision design, with its attendant clustered housing units and minimal quantities of impervious surface materials used in road and driveway improvements or of heavily compacted soils. These type developments tend to feature narrower streets, fewer visible utilities lines and retention of the land’s character and history, preserved mainly through conservation easements. “Traditional Neighborhood Developments” are another phenomenon of fairly recent vintage; these are useful both for the development of new neighborhoods and the revitalization or extension of existing neighborhoods, which are structured upon a fine network of interconnecting, pedestrian-oriented streets and other public spaces. These developments offer a mixture of housing types and prices, prominently-sited civic or community buildings, and stores/offices/workplaces, to provide a balanced mix of activities. Religious institutions and pre-school/elementary school facilities are encouraged to complete the sense of an “urban village.” A Traditional Neighborhood Development has a recognizable center and clearly defined edges; their optimum size is a quarter mile from its center to edge. Seaside, Florida, one of the earliest TNDs, is an often-cited illustration of this concept, since Robert Davis is considered the “guru” of the New Urbanism.
What all of these innovations in subdivision treatment have in common, however, is that they are all still subdivisions. Even if density reaches the clustered scale of condominium housing, there remains “one owner, one lot,” as the organizing principle. That organizational scheme, I contend, is no longer purposeful. If you don’t need to own a lot to have the exclusive right as owner to occupy some three-dimensional “footprint,” well, don’t. Save some money. Avoid some headaches. Stay flexible; optimize your mobility.
So, is the medieval times’ premise of living within the fiefdom of the local lord (of the land) desirable? With the advent of political democracies, why not? Wasn’t the haste to have private ownership of a parcel of one’s own intended to eliminate the vassal’s continued obligatory fealty to the lord, because the vassal had no alternative but to become a nomad? We’re evolved in America, having eliminated slavery, so a return to protracted occupancy of another’s land isn’t that daunting - especially if one’s annual expenses are significantly trimmed that way. In a conventional leasing mode, the objective of the owner is to cause the renter to pay the owner’s mortgage and other expenses, creating cash flow enabling that owner-landlord to leverage the income stream into additional loans with which to acquire yet more property, and so on. In Europe, according to some sources, a significant percentage of the population are tenants and are nonplussed by the idea that relatively few own relatively most of the realty. The few pay taxes on the land and to insure it and to keep it weed and pest-free, coupled with principal and interest on the amount borrowed.
If fewer folks own most of the land, that eliminates the need for conventions like subdivision ordinances and lot boundaries. How does someone describe where she lives, in that event? Legal descriptions still identify a two, or even three, dimensional occupancy “space.” But instead of cutting a larger parcel into smaller lots or tracts, how about just living under an easement regime? What I mean is this: suppose you have a 5 –acre parcel, and you want to afford 5 persons/groups occupancy of portions of that parcel. If you don’t desire to have separate road networks leading each occupant in and out of his or her “turf,” you can establish a single, main road that all occupants use in common. In a subdivision, this would be a “common area tract.” But it’s no different in effect if you simply grant a non-exclusive easement to the dweller on each slice of turf. The slices of turf are defined by a set of exclusive easements (one each describing the slice allocated to each unique occupant, excluding all others).
What is compelling about this concept is that the easements can be granted in “gross,” meaning just for the lifetime of the grantee occupying the turf (person who has the occupancy right). The easement is documented and filed in the public records (perfecting, in a manner of speaking, the right to occupy and use the turf). The easement recites that the grantee’s death or his/her abandonment of the easement (e.g., by moving away) will terminate the grant forever. This entitles the owner of the fee title interest to grant a subsequent easement in gross to the next occupant of the identical (or maybe different, depending on what’s going on with the balance of the owner’s parcel) turf.
Unconventional? You betcha. Affordable for the occupant? Sure. All that needs to occur is an attitude adjustment – shunning the sense of inadequacy felt because you don’t live on land you own outright. The present state of the economy and the savings realized ought to help salve those wounds, especially for those who have taken a beating in their credit scores.
-MNW
Subdivision regulations came about, I guess, as a deterrent to unprincipled sales of lots lacking legal access and suitable urban infrastructure (by a particular community’s standards). Early Massachusetts subdivision regulations originated responding to concerns about the impact of public and private street development. Boston had regulations as early as the 1890s. The advent of these regulations standardized residential development in communities. It probably impaired the growth of “intentional communities,” where dwellers desired to share living quarters and yards in loose alliances. Momentum toward government control peaked in the 1950s. The Civil Rights movement spawned a number of campaigns for individual rights, and by the 1960s, professional planners and public officials became more critical of subdivision regulation as a concept encouraging development uniformity. The notion of PRD (planned residential development) and PUD (planned unit development) zones allowed deviation from formulaic subdivision standards such as setbacks, street widths and density measures.
By the 1990s, principles that added concern for native habitats and pedestrian “scale” led to phenomena such as conservation subdivision design, with its attendant clustered housing units and minimal quantities of impervious surface materials used in road and driveway improvements or of heavily compacted soils. These type developments tend to feature narrower streets, fewer visible utilities lines and retention of the land’s character and history, preserved mainly through conservation easements. “Traditional Neighborhood Developments” are another phenomenon of fairly recent vintage; these are useful both for the development of new neighborhoods and the revitalization or extension of existing neighborhoods, which are structured upon a fine network of interconnecting, pedestrian-oriented streets and other public spaces. These developments offer a mixture of housing types and prices, prominently-sited civic or community buildings, and stores/offices/workplaces, to provide a balanced mix of activities. Religious institutions and pre-school/elementary school facilities are encouraged to complete the sense of an “urban village.” A Traditional Neighborhood Development has a recognizable center and clearly defined edges; their optimum size is a quarter mile from its center to edge. Seaside, Florida, one of the earliest TNDs, is an often-cited illustration of this concept, since Robert Davis is considered the “guru” of the New Urbanism.
What all of these innovations in subdivision treatment have in common, however, is that they are all still subdivisions. Even if density reaches the clustered scale of condominium housing, there remains “one owner, one lot,” as the organizing principle. That organizational scheme, I contend, is no longer purposeful. If you don’t need to own a lot to have the exclusive right as owner to occupy some three-dimensional “footprint,” well, don’t. Save some money. Avoid some headaches. Stay flexible; optimize your mobility.
So, is the medieval times’ premise of living within the fiefdom of the local lord (of the land) desirable? With the advent of political democracies, why not? Wasn’t the haste to have private ownership of a parcel of one’s own intended to eliminate the vassal’s continued obligatory fealty to the lord, because the vassal had no alternative but to become a nomad? We’re evolved in America, having eliminated slavery, so a return to protracted occupancy of another’s land isn’t that daunting - especially if one’s annual expenses are significantly trimmed that way. In a conventional leasing mode, the objective of the owner is to cause the renter to pay the owner’s mortgage and other expenses, creating cash flow enabling that owner-landlord to leverage the income stream into additional loans with which to acquire yet more property, and so on. In Europe, according to some sources, a significant percentage of the population are tenants and are nonplussed by the idea that relatively few own relatively most of the realty. The few pay taxes on the land and to insure it and to keep it weed and pest-free, coupled with principal and interest on the amount borrowed.
If fewer folks own most of the land, that eliminates the need for conventions like subdivision ordinances and lot boundaries. How does someone describe where she lives, in that event? Legal descriptions still identify a two, or even three, dimensional occupancy “space.” But instead of cutting a larger parcel into smaller lots or tracts, how about just living under an easement regime? What I mean is this: suppose you have a 5 –acre parcel, and you want to afford 5 persons/groups occupancy of portions of that parcel. If you don’t desire to have separate road networks leading each occupant in and out of his or her “turf,” you can establish a single, main road that all occupants use in common. In a subdivision, this would be a “common area tract.” But it’s no different in effect if you simply grant a non-exclusive easement to the dweller on each slice of turf. The slices of turf are defined by a set of exclusive easements (one each describing the slice allocated to each unique occupant, excluding all others).
What is compelling about this concept is that the easements can be granted in “gross,” meaning just for the lifetime of the grantee occupying the turf (person who has the occupancy right). The easement is documented and filed in the public records (perfecting, in a manner of speaking, the right to occupy and use the turf). The easement recites that the grantee’s death or his/her abandonment of the easement (e.g., by moving away) will terminate the grant forever. This entitles the owner of the fee title interest to grant a subsequent easement in gross to the next occupant of the identical (or maybe different, depending on what’s going on with the balance of the owner’s parcel) turf.
Unconventional? You betcha. Affordable for the occupant? Sure. All that needs to occur is an attitude adjustment – shunning the sense of inadequacy felt because you don’t live on land you own outright. The present state of the economy and the savings realized ought to help salve those wounds, especially for those who have taken a beating in their credit scores.
-MNW
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