Documenting a personal quest for non-toxic housing.
Monday, February 17, 2003Project Status - Hurry Up and Wait
At present my work time is being occupied by the pursuit of three housing strategies; rent supported multi-unit housing, home-brew modular construction, and the most recent addition of relocating and adapting a Lustron home. Unfortunately, none of these seem to be coming together.
The first of these is the result of a colleague in the mortgage brokerage industry discovering that I had a very good credit rating despite a lack of income and suggesting the idea of mortgaging the construction of several small rental homes or a multi-unit home so that the rent from most of them would cover the mortgage on the whole. This is a simple strategy that has been exploited by many but my situation complicates it due to the regressive restrictions of the Social Security Administration on what SSI recipients can do with their property. SSI recipients are prohibited from owning any kind of 'investment property' and thus in order for this idea to work I would have to have all my rental units on the one single piece of home property I am allowed. Because the needs of my disability require a relatively remote location free of pollution, the only likely tenants are people with my same health problem. This means that all the housing units have to be built to the same non-toxic construction standard and as a result are much more costly than they might otherwise be. This, in turn, creates the dilemma of needing immediate 100% occupancy because the higher construction cost means less principle can be reserved to make mortgage payments while waiting for tenants. My colleague in the mortgage business tells me that it would be impossible to make this work unless I can have tenants signed up before the mortgage application is even made.
Demand for non-toxic housing is extreme in the US. HUD receives hundreds of calls a month by desperate EIs looking for this kind of housing. So as long as the rent rate is reasonable, it is guaranteed that tenants will be found no matter how remote my location may be. The problem is that there is too much variability among the mix of sensitivities EIs have. It's relatively straightforward to make a home that is suitable in composition for some 90% of all EIs. But no one location in America can likewise match that because of the subtle ubiquity of pollution here, particularly from domestic sources. As a result, most EIs will not sign a lease for a home unbuilt because they cannot be sure they can tolerate it until they have tried it for at least a week. This problem has proved unsolvable so far.
A colleague in the EI community in Arizona recently referred me to key individuals in HUD with the intent that they might be able to offer a solution to this problem through a HUD guaranteed loan that might offer more flexibility in repayment terms. But it turned out that HUD does not offer such things to anyone but large corporations and non-profit organizations. They showed great interest in my project and have asked to be kept updated on its progress but they offer no help. HUD seems to have a sincere desire to find a solution to the non-toxic housing crisis in this country. They can't ignore the huge number of calls they receive about this problem. But they want a solution on their own terms -which basically means a single turnkey solution that works for 100% of all EI patients. They have tried to build non-toxic public housing in the past but it had poor results because they relied on a project team of EI patients with no construction experience and insisted on an urban location no serious EI sufferer could ever tolerate. They did try to offer me some useful information on what they mistakenly believed was non-toxic housing which was displayed in an exhibit on the National Mall in 2001. Called the Solar Decathlon, it was in fact an exhibition of solar pwoered prefab housing designed by university students. On examination, it turned out that not a single one of these could even come close to being suitable as non-toxic housing due to a common reliance on a large assortment of chemical laden materials.
The next strategy is something I have explored for many years, initially trying to find a prefabricated component system made of metal which would allow me to stockpile building components incrementally. The point to that is to overcome the restriction imposed by Social Security on SSI recipients saving any money whatsoever, and thus being left unable to save for a home or build equity for a mortgage. (it often seems as if the SSA's SSI policies are deliberately crafted to drive the disabled into homelessness...) No off-the-shelf building system proved effective because of the still primitive nature of their manufacture and, as a consequence, their impractically high cost. Thus in recent years I have shifted my attention to building system which offer the possibility of DIY parts fabrication. One approach that is most promising is the idea of reverse-engineering one of a variety of kit housing products whose structures are simple enough that their components are easily duplicated. But I lack sufficient workshop and dry storage space to make this work using lumber components and the only willing and inexpensive labor I've found for this is from someone 1000 miles from my location. At that distance shipping costs would make it impractical.
Recently I have taken another look at the N55 space frame system developed by a design group in Denmark. (http://www.n55.dk/Mhus.html see also the Gallery section Min-A-Max and other Space Frames) This system is compelling in the fact that it uses fairly small stainless steel parts made from off-the-shelf angle stock which would not be damaged by the damp fungus prone storage space I have immediately available. But the parts count for this system is very high, their 20 square meter exhibit structure needing some 3000 strut parts. And there is no clear figure for the cost of structures built with this because they have all been experiments. The octet geometry is also somewhat limiting but an attractive pavilion style structure based on hexagonal clear-span room units enclosed by store-front glazing/panel systems is quite feasible and would be simpler to fabricate and assemble than the N55 demonstration structure. It remains unclear just how feasible this idea is since cost is unknown and metal components tend to require more tools and more work space to work with than wood.
Finally, I was recently introduced to a project by a group of Arizona EIs who are seeking to obtain anf relocate to Arizona several decommissioned Lustron homes from the Quantico US Marines base in Virginia. The Lustron is a unique bungalow style prefab home which was invented in the late 1940s as a solution to the post-war housing crisis but ended production after some 2500 units were built due to a political scandal. It is composed entirely of porcelain coated steel panels, inside and out, and uses a simple modular construction system that is fully demountable. Amazingly, these unusual homes have proven almost indestructible except by deliberate demolition and many of them remain to this day, mostly in the Midwestern states. Being completely non-toxic in composition, it could be ideal housing for EIs but needs some adaptation, particularly with the replacement of HVAC systems, insulation, and improvement in ventilation. But unless these homes can be acquired for virtually nothing the costs of adaptation, construction of a new foundation slab, and dismantling, refurbishing, shipping, and reassembly of their roughly 3000 parts would make them too expensive.
