Kauai Northshore update

SUBHEAD: There is pressure on all local news sources to say nothing negative about impact on tourism.

By Neal Chantara on 1 May 2018 in Island Breath-
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2018/05/kauai-norhshore-update.html)


Image above: An upscale north shore raised residential structure "totaled" after being knocked off its foundation from flood waters eroding the earth around the column footings. Note half the yard looks like a putting green and half is a washed out gully. Photo by Jamm Aquino. From (http://www.staradvertiser.com/2018/04/16/photo-galleries/photos-aftermath-kauai-flooding/).

We are high and dry, but many did get wet. Mold and the high levels of contaminate in the flood waters (the water is actually "black water" from sewage, gas and oil from vehicles, etc) are making homes unlivable.

 Some people aren't aware of the danger and are simply throwing out furniture and planning to move back in.

I've been a designer and builder of healthy homes. I know better and have been researching what to do for wood that has been contaminated by these types of flood waters.

But what is so heartening is, the outpouring of support on this island. Differences have been put aside. So many volunteers. The federal and state agencies won't deal in any food other than non-perishables.

The locals with boats coordinated with locals with farms or money to buy apples, etc and a supply line of fresh food is going out to the island past Hanalei.

I spoke at length with a friend living way out there yesterday. People are picking up their trash at the road edge. Each house was delivered 5 gallons of gas. There's a free thrift store for clothes.

I was told the Hanalei Court House has more boots available than a big box store. The Hanalei Colony Resort, beyond the landslides, has been offering free breakfasts and dinners.

My friend said people are saying they are eating better now than before the flood.

Now one lane is open to emergency vehicles only. She said people out there can sign up the night before and a shuttle that leaves at 6am goes out. It will return at 6pm.

We continue to do our 2 mile walks at a couple beaches around here. They still stink. The beaches of the north shore are too contaminated to be in. However a friend said he heard the mayor on the local radio say he had a letter from the Dept of Health giving the OK to swim again!

The tourist bureau is under so much pressure. Business has really fallen off. Our daughter is a fashion designer supplying clothing to Chanterelle Couture, with four island stores and a couple on Oahu

One of Chanterelle's store owners told her that the entire week was 60% less business than normal.
Her two stores are on the other side of the island from the storm damage.

 A friend of ours, who is managing forty-two vacation rentals, had a call from a mainland person who had a booking in a place unaffected by the flood for next October - they wanted to cancel.

There is pressure on every news source in all of Hawaii not to say anything negative as so many mainland people do not differentiate between islands or part of islands and Hawaii.

They seem to think of Hawaii as one small state rather than small islands widely separated.

Many organizations have organized to help. I went by one Hanalei church with a sign out front "Free Water, Clothing, Food". There is a group of volunteers fixing homes for free.

So that's a quick update of the island news, but the real place to focus is on the Aloha.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Storm damage on Kauai 4/24/18

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New Zealand ban on foreign buyers

SUBHEAD: The International Monetary Fund says banning foreigner home sales discriminatory (against super rich people).

By Matthew Brockett on 16 April 2018 in Bloomberg Markets -
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/imf-takes-a-swipe-at-new-zealand-s-ban-on-foreign-house-buyers)


Image above: "Threatened: The super-rich fear their comfortable lifestyles in the west could be destroyed by terrorism or civil unrest, so they have started buying up 'boltholes' in New Zealand, like this award-winning five bedroom house, just a five minute drive from Queenstown". From
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931325/Super-rich-buying-property-New-Zealand-bolthole-case-west-goes-meltdown.html).


[IB Publisher's note: After a lifetime of stripping the continents of resources and burning all the fossil fuel that could be found what is a retiring "player" from the IMF, "Wall Street" or "The City" to do on retirement if they cannot buy a thousand hectare ranch in New Zealand with a private jet runway and armed guards to ride out the apocalypse. Here on Kauai we had fears of such an invasion, but the super rich are not that interested in a place that is a major military target of our "enemies" and has been compromised by generations of plantation farming and, now, GMO and pesticide experimentation. The truly rich will let the "middle-class" professionals and their service people "Californicate" Hawaii.]

The International Monetary Fund has criticized New Zealand’s “discriminatory” ban on home sales to foreigners, saying it’s unlikely to improve housing affordability.

“Foreign buyers seem to have played a minor role in New Zealand’s residential real estate market recently,” the IMF said in a statement Tuesday, after concluding its annual Article IV mission to New Zealand.

If the government’s broader housing policy agenda is fully implemented, that “would address most of the potential problems associated with foreign buyers on a less discriminatory basis,” it said.

The new Labour-led government has pledged to fix the nation’s housing crisis with a raft of measures, including a ban on foreign speculators buying residential property, removal of tax distortions and an ambitious building program.

House prices have surged more than 60 percent in the past decade amid record immigration and a construction shortfall, shutting many out of the housing market.

However, data suggest non-residents buy only a tiny percentage of homes sold, and critics of the law change say it will have the unintended consequence of worsening housing supply by turning overseas investors away.

Proposed changes to the Overseas Investment Act, which the government says will bring New Zealand into line with neighboring Australia, will classify residential land as “sensitive,” meaning non-residents or non-citizens can’t purchase existing dwellings without the consent of the Overseas Investment Office.

While non-resident foreigners will be allowed to invest in new construction, they will be forced to sell once the homes are built.

IMF Mission Chief Thomas Helbling said a ban is a “very definitive measure” and could send a negative signal to foreign investors more broadly.

“Foreign direct investment, trade, commerce abroad involves various dimensions, including employee housing,” he told a media briefing in Wellington. “I find it difficult to assess that signal, but that’s one thing perhaps to worry about.”

The IMF’s report is otherwise broadly positive:

• Economic growth to remain around 3% in the near term, risks broadly balanced.
• Soft landing in housing market should continue.
• Monetary policy appropriate; the IMF warns against precautionary further easing or premature tightening.
• With household debt still elevated, RBNZ shouldn’t relax mortgage lending restrictions any further.
• The country’s fiscal position is “strong” and there is no need for faster debt reduction beyond what the government has already outlined.

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A Roof, a Skill, a Market

SUBHEAD: Nubian Vault construction provides an economy based on local source of wealth.

By John Thakara on 8 October 2016 for Thackara.com -
(http://thackara.com/place-bioregion/a-roof-a-skill-a-market/#more-7249)


Image above: A nearly finished building using construction techniques outlined. From original article.

[IB Editor's note: Bioreginal construction techniques can provide skills, shelter, income and self reliance. It does not require extractive industrialism and long lines of shipping materials. Here on Kauai it would mean building with local materials such as driftwood, lava rock, palm fronds and other materials, including those used historically by Hawaiians. Learning and applying such knowledge would provide many potential jobs.]

“Beware the scale trap”.  In a Letter To Philanthropists Parker Mitchell,  a former CEO of Engineers Without Borders in Canada, advised potential donors that “scale is important, but don’t rush it. Most good ideas take time – to iron out the details, to bring down the costs, to be tested in different environments”. Organic demand-driven scale will happen in time, but it takes patience to find the right elements of a solution.

These lessons are exemplified by The Nubian Vault Association (AVN). With a mission is to serve the one hundred million people living in the Sahel region of West Africa who are either homeless, or live precariously in short-life structures, AVN has spent 16-years, on the ground, developing a multi-dimensional approach that works.

AVN’s pioneering work will be presented this week at the finals of the Place By Design competition at SXSWeco.  Rather than a celebration of the past, it will share a  challenge with the whole social impact community: What’s the best way to grow faster – a lot faster – without wrecking a system that has worked well so far?

“No wood, no iron – we build with the earth”

One hundred million people are living precariously in the Sahel region of West Africa. Deserts are spreading, the bush timber they once used to build homes is no longer available; as a result they are forced to use imported wood and corrugated iron to build houses.

These modern materials have poor insulation properties, are unhealthy and uncomfortable to live with, and cost cash to purchase that many poor families simply don’t have.

The traditional development model is either to give people money or, in social impact design projects, to treat the situation as a production challenge.

The Nubian Vault Association has evolved a quite different approach: the long-term, muti-dimensional cultivation of living local economies based on three kinds of value: a roof, a skill, and a market.


Image above: An occupied home employing Nubian Vault Construction. From original article.

The roof in question is inspired by a building type, the nubian vault, invented by  Egyptians 3,500 years ago. Adapted for today’s conditions, these vaulted earth roofs are built with locally-made adobe bricks whose raw materials are free and locally available.

Because nubian vault structures contain no wood, or iron, they are affordable, ecological, and – with their excellent thermal properties – comfortable.

They are also durable: AVN houses built more than fifteen years ago are still in daily use and can be expected to last 50 years or more. This compares with an average life expectancy of 7 – 10 years for a house with a corrugated iron roof and thin concrete block walls.

Skills are created as the cohort of masons trained by AVN grows. Since 2000, more than 440 masons have been trained, and a growing cohort of apprentices is following in their steps by learning and working on new sites. This transmission of know-how between master and apprentice is at the core of AVN’s approach.

AVN has evolved a nuanced approach to the creation of self-sustaining local markets They begin with a demonstration project – for a small mosque, perhaps – and then recruit a dynamic and confident individual to be their ‘ambassador’.  He or she looks for new customers among up within a 100km radius of the demonstration project.

New customers, as they are found, are connected with a mason.

Unlike many architecture-for-good efforts, AVN does not build homes for local people, and has not donated lent them money to do so. On the contrary: new clients usually participate in the construction of their own house and pay the masons directly. AVN’s core objective is to create autonomous local markets that do not depend on external inputs of cash.

AVN supports this process with advice on the recruitment of local apprentices, and helps with the logistics and planning of the first construction sites in new markets.

Its local teams also organise two to three day congresses at the start and end of each construction season to which all NV masons are invited. They swap experiences and tips, make contacts, and network. AVN also provides training workshops on  skills needed to run a small business and become a successful entrepreneur.

Right now, a large proportion of new customers are found by the builders themselves.“It’s like priming a pump”, explains AVN co-founder Thomas Granier; “our work expands on the famous saying: we teach a man to fish; we teach him how to mend the nets; we teach him how to sell the fish”.

In the language of impact and outputs, AVN’s record is impressive: Masons trained through AVN’s Program have built more than 2,000 homes and other structures for their clients. More than 800 villages contain at least one nubian vault, and AVN  offices have been opened  in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali and Senegal.

Looking ahead, progress, for Granier and his team progress,  is not like ramping up production in a factory. Although the number of new buildings completed has been growing at an impressive 25% a year – that rate would mean the completion of just 200,000 buildings by 2040. Probably ten times that number are needed.

A growth rate of 35% would multiply that number by six – to 1,200,000 buildings – which gets a lot closer to the scale of the need. But how?

Thre are no easy precedents to learn from. As Tom de Blasis points out in an interesting new book called Leap Dialogues, only a handful of programmes have been succssful at the million-plus scale: vacinnations for measles and rubella; anti-malarial bed nets; mobile phones; and micro-finance. None of these is comparable to building houses.

AVN therefore needs to develop an operation that works at a system scale. It needs to figure out what factors determine the readiness of an area to become self-sufficient – its ‘market-readiness’?  And to achieve that, it must decide what kind of platform it must become if it is to enable the exponential growth of its approach.

Funding is important, of course. It can take AVN staff several months to research and write a grant application. They must wait more months for a decision to be made. And once they have the go-ahead, it takes more time to ramp up activities.

This heavy back-office work diverts energy from
 AVN’s most important work: curating the exchange of value among multiple actors in diverse and changing contexts.

In sixteen years so far, AVN has fostered working relationships between actors in different domains. local, regional and national public authorities; international donors; civil society actors such as NGOs; and so on. The diversity of agendas and cutures invoved in one programme is mind-boggling.

During this process, system conditions on the ground have continued to change; AVN must adapt continuously in an environment shaped by changing demographics, migration, armed conflict, and climate change.

In traditional development projects, with their clearly defined vendors and suppliers, a legacy support infrastructure exists: laws, business models, financial management systems.

AVN, in the absence of a legacy support system, proceeds on the basis of sensitively  cultivated trust.
A new kind of business model is needed to support this kind of complex long-term system-shaping work.



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Honolulu's Homeless "Solution"

SUBHEAD: This location will only be open for three years because the owners have development plans.

By AP Staff on 17 October 2015 in Al Jazeera America -
(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/17/hawaii-declares-homeless-state-of-emergency.html)


Image above: Photo of former homeless encampment along the Kapalana Canal, Hawaii by Cathy Bessewtz for AP. From (http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/21/Honolulu-Mayor-Kills-Expanded-Sit-Lie-Ban.html).

Hawaii Gov. David Ige has declared a State of Emergency to deal with the state's homelessness crisis just days after city and state officials cleared one of the nation's largest homeless encampments.

The move will help the state speed up the process of building a homeless shelter for families, and the state is considering four possible sites, Ige said at a news conference Friday.

"We are making sure that we have options for those who are homeless to move into an emergency shelter, and the biggest deficit in the system is shelter space for families," Ige said. "So the emergency proclamation would allow us to stand up shelters for families in an expeditious manner."

Hawaii saw a 23 percent increase in its unsheltered homeless population from 2014 to 2015 and a 46 percent increase in the number of unsheltered families, said Scott Morishige, the state's homelessness coordinator.

There were 7,260 homeless people in Hawaii at the latest count, meaning Hawaii has the highest rate of homelessness per capita of any state in the nation.

The state has identified $1.3 million to expand services to homeless individuals and families, he said. In addition to a new shelter, the money also would go to the state's Housing First program, which provides homes and services to chronically homeless individuals without requiring them to get sober or treat mental illness first and programs that help families pay deposits and rent.


Image above: View of homeless housing site on Sand Island in industrial area looking north. Sand Island lies between Honolulu International Airport and downtown Honolulu. It is connected to Oahu by a highway causeway. From (http://khon2.com/2015/06/02/city-unveils-plans-for-temporary-housing-homeless-services-on-sand-island-2/). 


The new transitional shelter the state is envisioning would house about 15 families at a time, Morishige said. Two of the sites under consideration are in Kakaako, the neighborhood where the large homeless encampment was cleared, and the other sites are in Liliha and near Sand Island.

The recent clearing of the Kakaako homeless encampment could be used as a model in other parts of the state, Ige said. By coordinating with service providers, more than half of the estimated 300 residents of the encampment, including 25 families, were moved into shelters and permanent housing, the governor said.

When completed in December, the shelter, in an industrial part of Honolulu, will temporarily house up to 87 clients at a time.

"They definitely are off the streets and in a better situation where we are in a position to provide them services that will help us move them permanently out of the state of homelessness," he said.

Meanwhile on Friday, crews were installing converted shipping containers for Honolulu's latest homeless shelter on a gravel lot on Sand Island. The rooms in the first units were designed for couples and are 73 square feet.

"If they're living in tents now, the individual units are going to be just as large or larger," said Chris Sadayasu, the asset management administrator for the Honolulu Office of Strategic Development.

The rooms, which were made from new shipping containers, each have a window and a screen door for ventilation.

The structures are insulated, and the roofs have white reflective coating, and an awning will provide shade for relaxing outside, said Russ Wozniak, an architect and engineer from Group 70, an architecture firm. The coating and insulation keep the units about 30 degrees cooler than they would otherwise be, Wozniak said.

"It's kind of as comfortable as you can get without mechanical air conditioning," Wozniak said.
A trailer on site holds five bathrooms that each have a toilet and shower, and there's a separate portable toilet and shower that are accessible to the disabled.


Image above: A 8' x 20' container fitted with two living units. Tubular frame above appears to be structure for tent cover over area between two facing units. From (http://www.elkharttruth.com/news/national/2015/10/17/Hawaii-governor-declares-state-of-emergency-for-homelessness.html). For more details on units see KITV video on this link. (http://www.kitv.com/news/First-look-at-Sand-Island-containers-for-homeless/35889966).

Another KITV News article on 15 June 1015 (http://www.kitv.com/news/honolulu-mayor-unveils-sand-island-homeless-facility/33359324) indicated:

There will be security on site 24/7 along with management officials. Although the plan calls for a shuttle services to provide residents rides to the nearest bus stop, homeless advocates feel the location may not work.

"Accessibility to resources: stores, fresh water, schools, jobs override any desire to actually want to come all the way out to Sand Island," said Kathryn Xian of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery.

Its proximity to town is not the only thing that people are concerned with. Opponents say that the area's weather conditions may make it unbearable to live in those metal containers.

"We're concerned about the baking factor of these units. There are no trees that I saw in the design and the lack of access to water running water infrastructure rises the concern a bit more," said Xian.

City officials will offer opportunities for homeless to visit the site before deciding to live here. Initial construction will cost about $500,000 to build. The city will spend about $1.5 million a year on support services for residents.

This location will only be open for three years because the land owners have plans for the property after that.

[IB Publisher's note: Many who come to Hawaii realize it is possible to live outdoors.  It seems that Gov. Ige will go to great extremes to keep the homeless in Honolulu hidden from visitors. Control of the raised vehicular causeway that is the only access to Sand Island will in effect "trap" homeless people. What Ige seems to have envisioned is a FEMA camp for those who can't rent or own housing.

Wikipedia describes Sand Island, "formerly known as Quarantine Island, as a small island within the city of Honolulu. It was known as Quarantine Island during the nineteenth century, when it was used to quarantine ships believed to carry contagious passengers. During World War II, Sand Island was used as an Army internment camp to house Japanese Americans."

The Sand Island lies between Honolulu International Airport's an artificial island called Reef Runway and down town Honolulu. Heavy takeoff traffic of large jets takes place from Reef Runway. 

When construction of Reef Island was proposed in the 1970's an organization called Life of the Land sued the Department of Transportation contending  that construction of the Reef Runway would result in "loss of surfing sites" and "loss of the effective use of the proposed Sand Island Park due to high aircraft noise. See (http://www.hawaii.edu/ohelo/courtdecisions/LifeoftheLand73.htm). That has been what happened. Now a noisy public park extends along the south shore of Sand Island.

Most of Sand Island is used as an industrial site with a fuel farm and other  non-residential uses.The site for these "container homes" was fenced off and the topsoil and grass scraped away. Six inches of used roadway blacktop was laid down over the entire site and compressed. This surface will be a drivable by flatbed trucks delivering containers. Not a blade of grass will grow and the surface will be hot and emit petro-chemical gases.]
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Hawaii's rising homelessness

SUBHEAD: Honolulu's new ‘sit-lie' law and related regulations unfairly target its most vulnerable residents.

By John Letman on 13 October 2014 for Island Breath -
(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/13/homeless-in-hawaiinewlegislation.html)


Image above: A man lies sleeping on grass near Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. Photo by Cathy Bussewitz. From original article.

On a tropical island known for its clean, blue waters and sandy beaches, the last thing business owners want is an image tarnished by homeless camps and sidewalks cluttered with squatters.

In the 2014 “State of Homelessness in America” report, Hawaii ranked highest among the 50 states for homeless people per capita. A recent state-sponsored tally found there were more than 4,700 homeless on Oahu, with at least 2,200 on neighboring islands — figures that most advocates agree underreport the true total. With Honolulu’s business interests and residents frustrated by Oahu’s growing homeless population, the city has introduced three laws aimed at clearing city streets and parks.

On Sept. 16, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell signed three bills that make it a misdemeanor (punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a maximum $1,000 fine) to sit or lie on sidewalks in the bustling tourist district of Waikiki and outlaw relieving oneself in public islandwide.

Homeless advocates say the new laws unfairly target Hawaii’s most vulnerable residents, especially since Waikiki has only one 24-hour public restroom in the crowded district.

Kathryn Xian, executive director of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, said Honolulu’s sit-lie law is unconstitutional and points to Hawaii’s historic “law of the splintered paddle,” known in Hawaiian as kanawai mamalahoe.

Introduced by King Kamehameha around 1797, the law states, “Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety.” Kanawai mamalahoe is written into Hawaii’s state constitution, and homeless advocates say it must be upheld, while sit-lie supporters say it is only symbolic and not legally binding.

Xian also cited a 2012 research report that found such laws don’t increase economic activity or improve homeless services.

But members of the business community, like Rick Egged, president of the Waikiki Improvement Association, support the measures. “There has been a remarkable improvement,” he said. “A number of people on Kalakaua Avenue that were staking out and panhandling visitors — they’re gone.”

He said the concentration of Hawaii’s tourism industry in Waikiki made the district a “target-rich environment” for homeless people looking to receive money from visitors.

He acknowledged the importance of policies that help those unable to take care of themselves but stressed, “We want to make sure that homeless people understand we’re not going to let them take over Waikiki’s public spaces.”

Sherry Menor-McNamara, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, said that while the new laws aren’t a perfect solution, they’re “a step in the right direction” that will improve traffic to Waikiki’s shops.

She said her organization has been receiving phone calls from visitors expressing concerns about the growing number of homeless people in Honolulu. “We’ve heard from some [visitors] that they wouldn’t want to return to Hawaii because it’s gotten worse,” she said.

The laws come a year after the city passed an ordinance authorizing officials to remove objects deemed a “public nuisance” from the sidewalk, including tents, containers, furniture, food, medication and other personal items.

Homeless supporters urged leaders to address broader issues of economic inequality, a lack of affordable housing and what they see as the state’s misplaced priorities that reward transnational business interests at the expense of the state’s most socially and economically marginalized classes.

“We are not a Disneyland paradise,” said Laulani Teale, a coordinator at the nonprofit peace project Hoopae Pono. “The people here are in a very real struggle to survive, and they’re being displaced at a terrible rate.”

The Caldwell administration plans to relocate a hundred “chronic homeless” who meet specific criteria to an industrial site called Sand Island as part of its “compassionate disruption” policy.

Critics blast the plan as an attempt to expel Honolulu’s most desperate population to an isolated, unsafe and uninhabitable location where they will be out of sight but no better off.

“I would argue it is much more incompassionate to leave people on the streets in place than to pick them up and take them to a shelter,” Honolulu City Council Member Ikaika Anderson said at a press conference.

Xian, however, called Sand Island a “de facto internment camp.”

The 173-acre island, composed mostly of dredged sediment and fill, was an actual internment camp used to detain U.S. citizens of Japanese descent and others during World War II. Before that, it was used to quarantine ship passengers.

In the 1970s Native Hawaiians established their own village on Sand Island but were evicted by the state for trespassing. More recently, it has served as a sewage treatment plant and solid waste disposal site. A 2000 EPA study reported parts of the island were contaminated with arsenic, lead, nickel, methylene chloride and possibly pesticides and PCBs. While concerns of remnant toxins persist, the city has proposed paving the homeless transition site with asphalt.

Caldwell’s office declined to provide comment for this story but in a news release wrote that Sand Island would offer a “safe, supportive environment and provide assessment services, stability and access to supportive services.”

Honolulu resident H. Doug Matsuoka describes himself as one of Hawaii’s “hidden homeless”; he lacks a permanent residence and is staying with a friend. He said he sees “more homeless all over town,” including a greater number of families with children.

Hawaii’s homeless population reflects the state’s diverse demographics. Homeless advocates say most are lifelong or longtime island residents, and increasingly they are elderly, children, military veterans, victims of domestic violence and mental health patients struggling as health services are cut.

According to a 2013 University of Hawaii Center on the Family report, roughly one-third of Hawaii’s homeless are Native Hawaiians (though they represent only 10 percent of the overall population). Another third are Caucasians, with the remainder a mix of people, half of whom are Micronesians who can legally migrate to the U.S. under a special agreement, the Compact of Free Association.

A 90-minute drive west of Honolulu, on Oahu’s hot, arid Waianae coast, Alice Ululani Kaholo Greenwood recalled her experience with homelessness in 2005. A Native Hawaiian, she lost her home when her landlord sold the house she was renting and she couldn’t afford a new place.

“I used to criticize the homeless,” she said. “Then when I moved on the beach, [homeless people] really helped me.” After nine months of homelessness, she was able to get into subsidized housing but continues to fight for other homeless people.

According to Greenwood, Waianae’s harbor has more than 250 homeless, including some 40 children.

Alongside the increase in homelessness is a boom in large-scale, luxury construction projects in central Honolulu and other parts of Oahu. These developments underscore the lack of affordable housing in a state where the median sale price of a single-family home on Oahu was $678,500 (condominium $347,000) in September.

State Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, chair of the Senate Human Services Committee, said Hawaii’s real estate investment trends have helped drive the cost of land and property taxes higher while Hawaii has failed to keep up with housing demand for at least a decade. She pointed to a 2011 study that reports Hawaii could require as many as 50,000 new housing units by 2016 to meet current needs.

“People don’t know they’re affecting local folks, but when [they] move here and buy [multi]million-dollar homes, that jacks up everyone’s value,” said Chun Oakland, who represents an urban district where many homeless live.

Kyle Kajihiro, a board member with the nonprofit group Hawaii Peace and Justice, blamed military expropriation of land in Hawaii for contributing to the homeless problem.

“The stark contrast between the landlessness of Native Hawaiians and the vast amount of land occupied by the military is symbolic of the injustice of Hawaii’s military-political economy,” he said.

While Chun Oakland is generally supportive of the military presence, she said that if proposed military cuts mean a downsized presence in Hawaii, it could free up thousands of housing units.

“My hope is that if there are vacancies in military housing," she said, "they will be offered to the state for residents to buy or rent.”

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Permaculture Development

SUBHEAD: What permaculturalists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet.

By Steve Whitman & Sharon Ferguson 30 July 2012 in Sustainable Cities -
(http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/sharon-ferguson/52646/taking-permaculture-path-community-resilience)

[IB Publisher's note: This is a commercial real estate development in New Hampshire that is being promoted as "sustainable, resilient and based on permaculture principles. Automobile parking is separated from the units, yet there is access to the generously sized units. Financial arrangements appear to be like those for condominiums ($400k units with two per building). There are monthly fees and steep property taxers. This is for upscale clients.]


Image above: Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm plan. From original article.

We don't know what the details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturalists are one of the critical groups doing that. — David Suzuki, quoted in HopeDance 2009

We need to see our communities as the ecosystems they are and consider how the components of these places can be better integrated. Permaculture is a holistic, integrated system analysis and design tool that very few planners are using. Planners need to know about permaculture and use it as a framework to guide our communities.

Change Agents & Ecosystem Designers
Planners serve as change agents in their communities, regions, and ultimately on a global scale. As a profession we play a pivotal role in facilitating dialogue about pressing issues that will impact our collective futures. This includes educating the public on a range of topics from public health to climate change and energy concerns, economics, and many others.

Although many in the profession would not recognize this role, we are ecosystem designers as well. Our comprehensive plans and regulations guide development and redevelopment efforts. These projects result in places that serve as ecosystems for humans and other species, but all too often they do not serve the community and the users as well as they could.

With our economy and energy futures in flux, now is an opportunity to transition to more ecological and robust models of development that will serve our communities and all species more effectively in the future. What does this look like? It will look different in each of our communities due to our unique geography and history, the needs of our population, and ultimately the goals we set. However, we can all use the same framework and some of the same tools to get to our chosen futures.

Planners must look more expansively at developing local initiatives. We have access to many of the solutions we need locally. Permaculture offers a pathway to a positive transition beyond sustainability to resilient communities. Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecologies.

A Permaculture Primer
Planners are the facilitators of both long-range planning efforts, and short-term review and permitting activities in our communities. The adoption of the permaculture framework is overdue. Permaculture is considered one of the most holistic, integrated system analysis and design tools in the world, and yet very few planners are using it.

In the 1970s, while working in Australia, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren coined the term permaculture by combining the words "permanent" and "agriculture." The notion of permaculture was based on the work of farmers and scholars documenting the potential for "permanent agriculture" in the early 1900s, the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous peoples worldwide, and an interest in systems thinking. The term permaculture was then expanded to also stand for "permanent culture" to incorporate the social aspects that are needed in a sustainable system.

Permaculture is fast becoming one of the most effective design methodologies for attaining sustainability worldwide. Although rooted in horticulture and agriculture, permaculture draws from many disciplines including ecology, appropriate technology, architecture, and international development.

Examples of applying concepts of permaculture abound in the United States, and permaculture design courses are taught on a routine basis. There is apparently no entity keeping track of the number of permaculture course graduates, but we conservatively estimate that at least 100,000 people in the United States have graduated from certificate courses in permaculture.

At this point, you may be wondering what is the difference between sustainable community planning and permaculture. Permaculture differs from sustainable community planning efforts in that it seeks to integrate the proposed sustainable elements (e.g., water catchment, renewable energy, district heating, food growing, waste recycling, transportation, etc.) into a whole system that operates efficiently so that the number of inputs are minimized but outputs attained are maximized.

The goal is to create an ecosystem that provides as many useful products and functions out of the system as the designer's abilities allow while healing the planet. A maxim of design is that the yield of a system is theoretically unlimited (or only limited by the imagination and information of the designer) (Mollison 1998).

Permaculture is much more than organic agriculture. It integrates buildings and their landscapes, and permaculture projects incorporate all of their elements into a comprehensive and mutually beneficial design. Each element is analyzed to ensure that it serves multiple functions, and is placed with a strong relationship to the other elements in the system to maximize productivity. Permaculture designs are inspired by natural patterns and range from small urban park retrofits to mixed land-use subdivisions and large rural farms.

During the last two decades we have seen the formation of intentional communities including cohousing developments, many of which are designed in accordance with permaculture principles. One example of this is Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm, discussed below.

Resilience & Transition
As we consider using permaculture in our planning efforts, resilience should be the goal. Resilience refers to the ability of a system to hold together and maintain its ability to function in the face of change and shocks from the outside. Resilient communities possess the ability to withstand external shocks and can bounce back quickly from sudden environmental or economic changes. Planners need to place resilience building at the heart of any plans we make for the future (Hopkins 2008).

This is the approach being used in "transition town" efforts around the globe, a movement that itself was born from a permaculture design effort. The transition town movement is a response to the twin challenges of peak oil and climate change. Transition initiatives are based on assumptions (among others) that life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that our settlements and communities currently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.

Transition town efforts focus on rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localizing energy production, rediscovering local building materials, and rethinking how we manage waste, all of which build resilience. Currently, in the United States alone, there are at least 115 official Transition Town Initiatives (Transition United States; Transition Network).

Applicable at Any Scale
How can permaculture be utilized by planners to create communities that are more resilient to outside shocks from the global economy, climate change, and energy issues? There are many points of intervention. Permaculture tools and strategies can, in fact, be applied at many different scales: home gardens, city blocks, farms, villages, cities, and entire nations. Four brief examples illustrate the range of applying permaculture tools and strategies.


Image above: Figure 1 - Public right-of-way, pre-water harvesting (1994). Source: Brad Lancaster. From original article.


Image above: Figure 2 - Public right-of-way, post-water harvesting and planting (2006). Source: Brad Lancaster. From original article.

Rainwater Harvesting
Rainwater harvesting is one example of applying permaculture principles. Urban strategies for harvesting rainwater through the capture of street runoff grew out of the work of permaculturist Brad Lancaster in Tucson, Arizona. Lancaster and his brother bought a rundown house in Tucson and under the cover of night they cut through the curbs along the adjoining right-of-way to harvest the stormwater runoff rather than let it be lost to the storm sewer. The runoff was captured along both sides of the street and directed to tree wells. The before-and-after photographs of vegetation shown in Figures 1 and 2, taken from the same vantage point, are a powerful statement of the potential of permaculture strategies.

City officials in Tucson saw Lancaster's resourceful innovation. He then began working with city engineers to convince them of the viability of the practice. City staff then improved upon the design of the curb cuts and, as a result, the capture of stormwater runoff was legalized on residential streets.


Image above: Aerial photo of homes at Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm. From architect's website (http://www.houzz.com/projects/418198/Nubanusit--Neighborhood---Farm-CoHousing-Community).

Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm
An example application of permaculture is Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Nubanusit is a 70-acre property (see Figure 3) designed using permaculture design and cohousing practices to create a dense village of residential units, shared community space, and agricultural land while preserving the balance of the property in its natural state.

The community is composed of LEED-certified structures and includes a range of appropriate technologies including district heating and photovoltaics. The project was possible because of a new community comprehensive plan and regulatory changes that encouraged open space developments and mixed land uses.

Planning in Bloomington, Indiana
When creating comprehensive plans we should broadly consider permaculture and resilience. In some of the more cutting-edge comprehensive planning efforts in the United States, these issues are only addressed (at best) in separate peak oil or climate adaptation plans. In communities that do address these larger picture issues in their long-range planning documents, there is often a lack of implementation via land-use regulations. A good example of implementation is Bloomington, Indiana.

In Bloomington, a plan titled "Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience" was adopted in December 2009 with an emphasis on creating food security. That effort is based on both permaculture and transition efforts and includes a range of recommendations, from creating a centralized composting system to removing and reducing the legal, institutional, and cultural barriers to farming within and around the city.

Systems Approach for Cuba
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 crushed the Cuban economy. Having been entirely dependent on fossil fuels from the Soviet Union, Cuba then had to deal with severe shortages of petroleum. The loss of support from the Soviet Union had a crippling effect on the transportation, industrial, and agricultural systems in Cuba.

Along with fossil fuel loss, Cuba suffered an 80 percent loss of food imports, resulting in widespread food shortages. Cubans were forced to explore every avenue possible to increase their food production without benefit of fuel for farm equipment or inputs of chemical fertilizer (Cuba History.org).

In 1993, a group of Australian permaculturists arrived in Cuba in response to the economic collapse and taught their techniques, which were soon implemented in urban food growing schemes across the nation. Much of the success of Cuba's urban agriculture and food security has been attributed to the introduction of permaculture. The city of Havana now produces more than 60 percent of its fruit and vegetables within the city, owing to the techniques taught by those first permaculturists (Morgan, Murphy, and Quinn 2006).

Demonstration & Education
Across the country, there are examples of established and emerging permaculture demonstration projects. We need more of these. We need to guide the implementation of permaculture demonstration projects on municipal properties and elsewhere. To do so, however, planners need to get trained to engage people and assist localities in thinking about permaculture. Planners can even complete a permaculture design certification program.

The permaculture design certificate course is a minimum of 72 hours with a core curriculum that is used internationally. Courses are offered regularly in most states and around the world, or you can take the course in a place that you always wanted to visit and combine the course with a vacation. The format for these offerings range from two-week residential offerings to weekend formats spread out over a season or two. The permaculture design certificate is an internationally recognized credential for professionals.

Conclusion
Permaculture is a systems approach to planning for the future that goes well beyond smart growth, low-impact development, habitat protection, complete streets, and other initiatives that are often viewed as separate entities. Permaculture incorporates these and other concepts more holistically in a way that creates an integrated system. Enabling and incentivizing projects that help our communities become more resilient is important and will support our local economies and ecosystems while building local capacity.

Permaculture designs are guided by a set of ethics and principles that can be used at any scale. Ideally, this holistic ecosystem approach will become commonplace in regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives. We need permaculture as a framework to better serve all populations, build community, retrofit infrastructure, and support the local economy.

We need to see our communities as the ecosystems they are and consider how the components of these places can be better integrated. For instance, certain landscapes can be designed to require little maintenance, provide clean, infiltrated stormwater, create valuable habitat, and provide edible foods for people. That outcome would be a better asset to the community than what is currently required in most places. So, planners, be a change agent in your communities!

References
Cuba History.org. "History of Cuban Nation, from Colonial Days to the Present."www.cubahistory.org/ Accessed April 21, 2012.

HopeDance. August 20, 2009. "Quotes about Permaculture." HopeDance: Celebrating Transition, Opportunity & Resilience. www.hopedance.orghttp://www.hopedance.org/index.php/home/soul-news/996 Accessed April 21, 2012.

Hopkins, Rob. 2008. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing.

Lancaster, Brad. "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond." www.harvestingrainwater.comAccessed April 21, 2012.

Mollison, Bill. 1988. Permaculture: A Designer's Manual. Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications.

Morgan, Faith, Murphy, Eugene "Pat," and Quinn, Megan. 2006. "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil." Documentary.

Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm: A Cohousing Community in Pertersborough, NH (website).www.peterboroughcohousing.org. Accessed April 21, 2012.

• Steve Whitman is a planner with Jeffrey H. Taylor & Associates in New Hampshire. His work is focused largely on community planning and sustainability issues. Whitman is a certified permaculture teacher, and he … 

• Sharon Ferguson is a senior planner with the Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska, and a certified permaculture designer and teacher. Ferguson co-founded the APA interest group Sustainable Community Planning.

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Trike Home & Turf

SUBHEAD: If you want to know why the Chinese experiment in industrial consumerism is bound to fail, take a look at this project.

By Kimberly Mok on 4 January 2013 for TreeHugger -
(http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/tricycle-house-peoples-architecture-office.html)


Image above: It's likely the security folks guarding this corporate office plaza will be moving these folks along by sunset.  From original article.

Private land ownership is something that most of us might take for granted, but it's not the case in communist China, where all land is either state-owned or run by collective economic organizations (CEOs).


Image above: Note how this "generous" storage system has to be folded-down or placed somewhere else when functions like eating or sleeping are involved. From original article.


But with China's rapidly developing economy, skyrocketing real estate prices, unscrupulous "land grabs" and recent legislation towards a civil code protecting private ownership, the issue of owning land is in a tumultuous transition, prompting designers like People’s Architecture Office (PAO) and the People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO) to explore different possibilities.


Image above: They don't really show where the cooking and cleaning is done in this kitchen/dining mode - could it be out on the curb? From original article.

Their joint effort is the Tricycle House and Tricycle Garden, a paired mobile home and garden plot mounted on modified three-wheelers. Made with CNC-scored, translucent polypropylene plastic, the house is an accordion-shaped, expandable temporary shelter. Say the designers:

Through this design, single family homes can be affordable and sustainable, parking lots are not wasted at night, and traffic jams are acceptable. The Tricycle House is man-powered allowing off-the-grid living.

Image above: Does the dirty bath water get drained though the floor and onto the plaza stonework, or what... where's the toilet? From original article.

Created as part of Beijing's Get It Louder 2012 exhibition, Tricycle House was shown alongside other temporary urban shelters, like this one made out of spray foam insulation. Of course, this house's hidden amenities gives it a more comfortable edge, allowing it to be a multipurpose living space in small quarters:

Facilities in the [Tricycle] house include a sink and stove, a bathtub, a water tank, and furniture that can transform from a bed to a dining table and bench to a bench and counter top. The sink, stove, and bathtub can collapse into the front wall of the house.

Image above: Ah sweet dreams sleeping on your dining room table over your folded storage unit. From original article.

The mobile garden is a clever addition, showing that living small and on the move doesn't mean a landless existence. More images over at ArchDaily, People’s Architecture Office and the People’s Industrial Design Office.


Image above: An romantic encampment on the plaza before sunset, as other like minded bike oriented vagabonds gather after work to get through the night. From original article.

[IB Editor's note: How long will the houseplant or the uncovered raised gardens boxes live? Any longer than it takes to get rid of the dirty bathwater? 

This effort by could be a joke or possibly a promo stunt by the cargo bike industry. It could be attempt by the People’s Architecture Office and the  People’s Industrial Design Office  to misdirect the West into a race to the bottom of industrial design concepts of housing and transportation.

The tin-roofed shacks in America's urban Hoovervilles of the 1930's were better urban housing solutions than these cargo bikes. Today's makeshift slums around (or in) the junkyards major third-world cities are the natural home for these polypropylene hovels.]
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Koloa Camp Revival Event

SOURCE: Jeri DiPietro (ofstone@aol.com)
SUBHEAD: This event highlights the spirit of community that was a special part of Koloa Camp, as an example of aloha.  

By Jeri DiPietro on 16 May 2012 for press release in Island Breath- 
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2012/05/koloa-camp-revival-event.html)


Image above: Painting of o plantation house titled "By Gone Days" by Kauai artist Martin Wessler. From (http://wesslerfineart.com/workszoom/860487). Note: Image removed at the request of artist.

WHAT:
“KOLOA CAMP REVIVAL” EVENT A celebration of our Koloa Camp Ohana  

WHEN:
Sunday, May 20th, 2012 Noon – 5 PM  

WHERE: Koloa Ball Park  

CONTACT:
For more information about this event contact: 808-292-3695 or 808-635-6145

Friends and supporters of Koloa Camp ohana present a celebration of the camp culture, comraderie, and history of Koloa Camp on Sunday, May 20, 2012 at Koloa Ball Park, noon - 5 pm. This event highlights the spirit of community that was a special part of Koloa Camp, as an example of old Kaua’ian aloha.

Live music by Kaua’i musicians, "talk story" with Koloa Camp kupuna and friends, food, and photo displays are part of this family-oriented celebration. “We want to thank all the people – the state senators, county council members, volunteers, petition signers, sign wavers, everyone who helped make the case for more affordable housing and respect for Koloa Camp tenants and kupuna,” said Doreen Jacintho, a longtime tenant of Koloa Camp. Ms. Jacintho is the daughter of Louis Jacintho, Jr., a Grove Farm irrigation supervisor.

In spring 2012, following eviction notices delivered to Koloa Camp tenants by landowner Grove Farm, the Kaua’i County Council and Hawaii State Senate passed resolutions urging Grove Farm to explore “win-win” alternatives to its proposed new housing development, to include more affordable housing for Koloa Camp existing tenants. Many Koloa Camp tenants were elderly with severely limited incomes and limited relocation possibilities.

Despite the passage of these resolutions Grove Farm proceeded with the evictions. “Aloha needs to be defined and lived anew by each generation,” said County Council member JoAnn Yukimura, “Each person and each business must ask the question, ‘How do we act with aloha here and now?’ I believe a win-win solution can be found for Koloa Camp and Grove Farm if we have the courage to try new ways and meet each other with mutual respect and the desire to find common ground.”

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Koloa Camp Resolution

SUBHEAD: Please pass Resolution # 2012-29 Historic Preservation of Kauai and Koloa are important. By Ken Taylor on 13 March 2012 in Island Breath - (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2012/03/koloa-camo-resolution.html) Image above: Koloa Camp areal from Google Earth. Aloha Kakou, JoAnn Yukimura's resolution supporting Koloa Camp will be introduced this Wednesday morning, first order of business. We need to meet at the County Building at 8:30 am.

Resolution No. 2012-29 RESOLUTION CALLING FOR A JUST AND EQUITABLE SOLUTION AT KOLOA CAMP AND REQUESTING WITHDRAWAL OF EVICTION NOTICES BY GROVE FARM COMPANY TO ALLOW FOR EXPLORING OF ALTERNATIVES.

If you cannot make Wednesday, March 14th County Council meeting, send in a written note in Support of Resolution 2012-29 or email County Council members at: CouncilTestimony@Kauai.gov All that is needed, is something like:

"Please pass Resolution # 2012-29 Historic Preservation of Kauai and Koloa are important. Historic Preservation equals Quality of Life, and makes good economic sense."

While we want as many tenants as possible to testify, the testimony of residents of Wailani Rd, friends, family, and members of the community will be a HUGE factor in our favor. Let's move a mountain! This is our chance to help preserve 100+ years of Kauai history and to save some affordable housing in the process. This matter is important for all of Kauai. Please pass this on to all your friends and family.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Koloa Camp Meeting 3/10/12 .

North Dakota Boom Town Slum

SUBHEAD: Oil Rush workers in North Dakota brings RV's so they can live in Walmart parking lots.  

By Harry Bradford on 9 February 2012 for Huffington Post -  
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/09/north-dakota-boomtown_n_1266116.html?ref=business)


Image above: Two vehicles take 14 parking spaces to camp in Walmart's parlking lot overnight. From (http://joysofdickandjune.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/yesyes-you-can-park-at-wal-marts-overnight).
 
Apparently one Walmart isn't cool with people squatting in its parking lot.

Dozens of workers who have flocked to Williston, North Dakota to benefit from the region's oil boom have been living in tents and trailers for months outside of a local Walmart, but last Monday, the retail chain's management told the squatters to go or be towed, The Bismarck Tribune reports. Lines of RVs accommodated workers shoulder-to-shoulder but after receiving a variety of complaints, including from female customers who said they feared walking through the camp to shop, Walmart officials say they've had enough.

"It's just not appropriate for people to be living in our parking lot," Walmart spokeswoman Kayla Whaling told The Bismarck Tribune.

And it seems that the town's residents agree.

"Walmart is hell. You just don't want to go there," said one member of the Nehring family, a group of sisters who have been featured in a reality TV show Boomtown Girls that's being shopped to networks like TLC and MTV. "You can't find anything because it's all cleared out," another Nehring sister explains.

The camp is just one result of a huge population influx into Williston, thanks to a promise of plentiful -- and well-paid -- work in the oil industry. North Dakota currently boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 3.3 percent.

No doubt because of that, housing has become scarce in the town and the apartments that are available have seen huge jumps in rent, with prices sometimes increasing threefold. More than 1,000 longtime Williston residents have abandoned the town in the past two years due to crowding and the boost in living expenses.

The oil rush has had other negative impacts as well. Drunken bar fights have become more common as workers try to blow off steam after long hours. Charges of Driving Under the Influence have also grown more typical, while instances of theft more than doubled in 2011 compared to the year before.

Exotic dancing has also become a thriving industry in the town, with some strippers making up to $3,000 per night in tips alone. The popularity of the clubs may be due in part to the low ratio of women to men in the town, which may explain why some are "feeling like a piece of meat" in Walmart's parking lot, as one Nehring sister put it.


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Bioclimatic buildings in the tropics

SUBHEAD: Home built of indigenous materials, without walls, in northern Columbia is a beachside paradise.

 By Paula Alvarado on 20 September 2011 for TreeHugger -  
(http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09/bioclimatic-no-walls-house-in-northern-colombia-is-caribbean-paradise.php)  
Image above: Photo by Sergio Gomez. From original article.
 
World renewed for their work in Medellin, especially with the Orchid House at the Botanical Garden, Colombian firm Plan B Architects is busy and keeps coming up with great projects.

One of their latest is this wall-less house in Rio Cedro, a city located by the Caribbean Sea, 200 miles north from Medellin.






The house (spotted at Inhabitat) was built with certified wood from reforested sources as a way to respect the surrounding native vegetation that has been hit with deforestation due to the expanding livestock industry.

Instead of coming up with a structure that can resist efforts and loads, they came up with one that can be traversed by the environment that surrounds it. As the climate in the area is warm all year long, they decided on an open, permeable design that has passive cooling trough through solar orientation (main facades point to north and south) and crossed ventilation.



For the ceiling, they chose a local construction technique with branches of the Palma Amarga (sabal mauritiiformis) and palmata (Bactris guineensis) stems, as stated in Plataforma Arquitectura.

About 30 centimeters (12 inch) thick, the roof is impermeable to rain and helps control temperature. Concrete was only used to secure the base of the building and accessories like a sofa, stairs and a table on the lower level.



The upper level was designed for day activities and the lower level is thought for more intimate, night activities. All facilities have modular installations that can be arranged to accommodate more or less people.

Undoubtedly this is a paradise beach house in no way thought for practical applications in places less perfect than the Caribbean, but it's always interesting to see projects conceived especially for local conditions and carefully carried away with local materials.

Vacation Rental Betrayal

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (taylork021@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: If you are concerned with uncontrolled vacation rentals you should attend this council meeting.

By Glen Mickens on 29 July 2011 to Kauai County Council -  
 
 [Source note: Please be at the Public Hearing on Wednesday Aug 3rd at 1:30 PM at the Kauai Council Chambers in Nawiliwili. The hearing is being held to discuss Bill 2410 and, as Walter Lewis points out, in its present form, it is clearly a violation of the terms of the Charter Amendment passed in 2008 by a nearly 2 to 1 vote of the people. We already have nearly 10,000 transient accommodations – hotels, time shares and transient vacation rentals – on our island. The Bill would improperly allow thousands more. Any testimony you can give to express your concern about this potential proliferation would be welcome. Or just come and lend your silent support.]

 
Image above: A Kekaha plantation cottage ($150 a night) TVR that might otherwise be a local family home. From (http://www.kekahaoceansidekauai.com/oomano_hale.htm).  

 (via email to Source) I have been given a copy of the testimony that Walter Lewis emailed to your committee for this hearing and I approve and support the comments and suggestions he made. Walter’s conclusion that the Bill in its present form violates the terms of the Charter amendment should be clear to all.

The accomplishment of the return of authority to process transient accommodation approvals to the Planning Commission as provided in the charter amendment would be simple except for the complications arising from the actions by the Planning Commission in conferring preliminary approvals for projects of owners who contemplated building transient accommodations.

Disregarding the restraints of the General Plan the Commission bestowed its “blessings” at a rate vastly greater than the guidelines of the Plan. In all it seems that there may be as many as 4000 accommodation units involved. The owners of these properties are not culpable, they did nothing wrong, but their position is tainted by the excesses of the Planning Commission.

Walter’s suggestion for dealing with this difficult situation merits close consideration. Walter’s solution is reasonable and fair. First, have a registration of such owners and find out how many units are involved. Then give the qualifying owners a priority over others to build after meeting usual requirements.

To allow the Planning Commission to give order to the priority require the owners to commit when the units in the project are to be built. This will allow owners who want to proceed earlier to go ahead of owners who want deferral of their time to build. It should be possible to process all such owners within a reasonable time.

Finally, if any owner would be aggrieved by a decision of the Planning Commission give such owner or owners the right to appeal to the council to adjudicate the position. This arrangement solves a difficult problem and allows both the purposes of the charter amendment to be carried out and gives any owner who believes his legal rights have not been honored a fair audience.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai TVR Whine-A-Thon 7/23/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Musing on TVR Hatred 8/24/09
Island Breath: Illegal Transient Vacation Rentals 6/7/07
Island Breath: Planning Director Gone Berserk? 6/30/06
Island Breath: Vacation Rentals Targeted 9/8/04

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First Earth – Film Inspiration

SUBHEAD: Uncompromising sustainable ecological architecture captured in a movie. By Øyvind Holmstad on 17 March 2011 in Permaculture RI (http://permaculture.org.au/2011/03/17/first-earth-a-cob-building-film-for-inspiration/) Image above: Interior of a cob home. From (http://www.lowimpactliving.com/blog/tag/cob-home).

First Earth: Uncompromising Ecological Architecture by David Sheen is meant as an inspirational film about earthen buildings, or more specifically, what they call ‘cob’. Cob is the oldest and easiest way of building from earth. You can find information and relevant literature here, and inspiring pictures here.

The architect Rolf Jacobsen at Gaia Tjøme, Norway, has, together with his son, built an experimental cob building on their property. Because of the cold climate they chose a two layer wall with perlite in between for insulation. You can read a discussion about cob in humid climates in this article, looking especially at the comments thread.

No matter whatever you live — in a hot, cold, dry or humid climate — lean back and watch the video below. If you enjoy it the DVD can be ordered here. (The DVD version of the film has high-quality video and audio and includes extras.)

Video above: Part 1. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=DuDkfuziZiI).

Video above: Part 2. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11n97wW1PLQ).

Video above: Part 3. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3trjONseWiA).

Video above: Part 4. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysOVLw30fvQ).

Video above: Part 5. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFTwnTbLPBU).

Video above: Part 6. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFTwnTbLPBU).

Video above: Part 7. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOeb3jv3xoU).

Video above: Part 8. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFnzpCf5Z-g).

Video above: Part 9. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dydztLSnF78).

Video above: Part 10. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk64Of_HPrI).

Video above: Part 11. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqdsSwOwD9A)

Video above: Part 12. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoSdnMEhRa0). Below an earth dome house in Hawaii. Video above: Mark Hansen builds earth house. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0oE3-bv744).

For more visit: http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/projects/hawaii.htm

Radiant City

SUBHEAD: Watch film "Radiant City" - how urban sprawl is eating the planet.  

By Lloyd Alter on 4 April 2011 in Treehugger -  
(http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/watch-radiant-city-sprawl.php)

 
Image above: Still frame from film "Radiant City". See video below.

Four years ago I reviewed Radiant City, a sort of cross between documentary and drama by Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown. Spacing describes how "together they demonstrate how urban sprawl is eating the planet. They look at the brutalizing aesthetic of strip malls and listen to fears about the soul-eating suburbs. Making heavy use of cultural references, they riff off sitcoms and reality TV and drop names from Jane Jacobs to The Sopranos while all the while using a wide range of cinematic devices to examine what happens when cities get sick and mutate."

Now it is free and online.

At the time I found it to be a strange mix, combining Jim Kunstler, Ken Greenberg, Andreas Duany and Mark Kingwell with - the Moss family, trying to survive in suburban Calgary. The poor family has a hard time keeping up with Kunstler, gleefully chewing up the scenery.

Definitely worth a watch, courtesy of Canada's National Film Board.

Video above: Trailer for "Radiant City". From (http://www.nfb.ca/film/radiant_city/).

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Now What?

SUBHEAD: The mortgage problem is not going away. It is going to paralyze the real estate industry for as far ahead as anyone can see. Image above: Burning house in Australia in 2008. From (http://www.rainbowreporter.com/australian-property-downturn). By James Howard Kunstler on 31 October 2010 in Kunstler.com - (http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/10/now-what.html) On Tuesday, when the Republican Party and its Tea Party chump-proxies re-conquer the sin-drenched bizarro universe of the US congress, they'll have to re-assume ownership of the stickiest web of frauds and swindles ever run in human history - and chances are the victory will blow up in their supernaturally suntanned, Botox-smoothed faces.

But don't cry for John Boehner, Barack Obama.

The President and his Democrats may have inherited this clusterfuck from the feckless George Bush but they flubbed every chance to mitigate any part of it, ranging from their failure to restore the rule of law in banking (by prosecuting the executives of major banks who oversaw the systematic swindle), to mis-directing our dwindling resources toward ends (such as "shovel-ready" new super-highways) that won't promote a credible future for this society, to misleading the public in the fantasy that alt-energy will offset the disruptions of peak oil (and allow us to keep running suburbia, the US Military, and WalMart by other means).

It's really too late for both parties. They're unreformable. They've squandered their legitimacy just as the US enters the fat heart of the long emergency. Neither of them have a plan, or even a single idea that isn't a dodge or a grift. Both parties tout a "recovery" that is just a cover story for accounting chicanery and statistical lies aimed at concealing the criminally-engineered national bankruptcy that they presided over in split shifts. Both parties are overwhelmingly made up of bagmen for the companies that looted America.

Alas, the damage is now so pervasive in money matters that the federal government could be toast as a viable enterprise, even if a new party or two spontaneously rose up out of the ruins of a plundered democracy. Anyway, one of them will not be the Tea Party, with its incoherent agenda and moron cadres who seek to put Jesus back in the US constitution, where he never was in the first place - though they don't know that.

Nor is there any party on the left or even in the center with a clue or a moral compass. Its just one of those tragic moments in history - like 1850s America, when a strange vacuum of thought occupied the heart of political life, and the scene was cluttered up with mere place-holders like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. (Can you state a single idea or position, these political ciphers advanced?)

Where we stand now is on the cusp of another giant step into the abyss, since the latest storm of Foreclosure-Gate suggests pretty strongly that mega-tons of mortgage-backed securities are assured of blowing up, as well as the sundry derivatives of these things (CDOs, CDOs-squared, plus the massive fetid matter infesting the alternative cosmos of credit default swaps). If you follow the media-of-record like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, you would have to conclude that there is no extant plausible notion among financial leaders as to how the fiasco of botched mortgage-and-title documentation can be resolved. After three weeks of emerging events around this debacle, the consensus among the power brokers is to pretend that there's no problem, that the issue of missing, forged, post-dated, trashed, or non-existent paper related to claims on property can just be put aside, brushed under the rug, glossed over, ignored.

Let me tell you something: this problem is not going away. At the very least it is going to paralyze the real estate industry for as far ahead as anyone can see. For another thing, it could force the disclosure of what the banks are holding in their vaults in the way of worthless paper and expose their insolvency. For still another thing, it could lead to rafts of lawsuits that would additionally shove the banks toward collapse, demolish the claims that underlie our currency, call into question the meaning of property ownership per se that is the basis of Anglo-American law, and tie up the court system until kingdom come. In any case, every pension fund, state government, and insurance operation would be crippled. I could go on but you get the picture.... This might all sound extreme, but I repeat: nobody with any authority in this land has proposed a plausible way out.

By the way, I haven't even touched on the totally insane but now accepted practices of the Federal Reserve attempting to stage manage the velocity of money by so-called quantitative easing - a.k.a. the US writing checks to itself - because even that nonsense assumes that everything else remains more or less stable.

This is what the two major parties can look forward to as we swing around into the Yuletide season and then into 2011. The proud winners of seats in congress and the senate might as well put on clown suits and little pointed hats on Wednesday morning and drive around the Washington monument in toy cars. There will be a desperate need for a new politics in this country, for people unafraid to tell the truth and act in the genuine public interest. If we can't generate it from the saner quarters of this country where people think thoughts that comport with reality, I'm afraid we could see some generals step into the picture.

I write literally over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, en route from Australia where I spent the past week - not on vacation. It's a reminder that there are a lot of other players in the wide world - not all of them nations on the verge of a nervous breakdown. See also: Ea O Ka Aina: The Tonmstone Blues 10/14/10 .