Please go read this very short book by Pete Leki: How to Disappear. I love it. I’ve also been working on a wiki with Michael here How to Disappear Wiki. We’re not sure yet what’ll come of the wiki project, but we’d really like to see this book widely read.
Archive for the 'housing' Category
I met with Kevin from Xero Flor America, LLC tonight. The name is a bit confusing because their website is xeroflora.com. Anyway, they’re the leading contenders for suppying our green roof. A green roof means growing stuff up there. Not flowers or anything, but sedum. Sedum is a succulent that’s ideal because it can hold a lot of water, but is also very drought resistant. The whole point of having a green roof is to reduce stormwater runoff. Well, that’s one of the points. Here in Chicago when we have heavy rains, the water treatment plants can’t handle all of the volume in our combined storm water and sewage system so we release raw sewage into the river. That’s bad, obviously. So here at the HUB (my co-op) this year we’re going ot install a green roof, which should vastly reduce the amount of runoff we have. We’re also depaving part of our concrete courtyard to plant a rain garden, which is native grasses that grow really deep roots so then can absorb a lot of water. Water for the rain garden will come from our disconnected downspouts as well as our rainbarrels. Wow, we’re doing a lot! We’ll see how it goes. Anyway, let me know if you have experiences with Xero Flor. Thanks!
It’s where I live!
My furnace hasn’t been working. The blower would just blow and blow, but no gas was being burned. My HVAC guy came today, and discovered that there was a whole lot of water leaking from the gas line valve. I noticed the water in there, but didn’t know how significant it was. He dried it out and pressed the reset button for the safety that shut it down, and it started up, and eventually dried itself out and now seems to be working. He was baffled about where the water was coming from and we’re just keeping our fingers crossed at this point. No idea what caused it. Strange.
Maurice J. Nash was my great-grandfather. He was married to Laura Nash. Their daughter Elizabeth Jonckheere was my grandmother. She was 6 years old in the story told here.
Marjorie David, my mom’s cousin wrote:
An excerpt from recollections written by Maurice J. Nash in 1965. [Written for me by Grandpa.] Unfortunately, he didn’t write more about what was entailed in finishing the house. It’s always amazed me what Grandpa and Grandma accomplished.
There’s always a beginning and our life together, Laura and I, seems to have had a guiding hand above and beyond ours alone. For the things we did to grow and prosper and bring up our children (our future citizens) surely were not of a minor order of effort and accomplishment. Right from the beginning we had our eyes on a goal that was of self-help in building a house. As I had grown up to perform daily chores – work in fields, work here, work there, I was inspired to do just that as I made our way, life in a big city.
Right from the first I began by breaking into several good trades. There were no schools for learning trades except in the big factories, which had student training. Tool design was my #1. I got a brief go at tool making by running a lathe in the Hudson Motors tool room. Then when we went through our first depression, 1921 and 1922, I had an opportunity to learn sheet metal finishing and quickly became enough adept to earn $1 an hour, the top rate for the times. I was finishing back and window quarter panels for the Ford Coupe. They were to be nailed to the wooden frame of the coupe, which made it a very stylish car for the times, which now seem so far away. One’s livelihood was of the utmost importance to our little family. In the year 1922 the family consisted of Marjorie, Elizabeth, Evelyn, and that same year our first boy, little Junior as we called him, was born. Maurice J. Nash as we called him.
The next year (1923) on Labor Day, I hired a farmer from not far away to bring his team and we got started digging the basement to our home of the future, our dream house [at 4545 Guilford Avenue, Detroit]. It seemed we never got more than a few dollars ahead all the time we were engaged in building that dream house (my pile of bricks I have on occasion called it).
The year 1924 was a great year for our little family for we were all engaged in building the walls. Even little Junior tried to and did carry one brick at a time. I had gotten 3 kinds of brick and had to clean 2 of them of mortar as they were used – from a building in Grosse Pointe. I had ordered several truckloads of each kind. It seemed all through the winter I was cleaning and stacking bricks in some order on what is now the front lawn. I had laid up the basement walls the previous fall. Had covered it over with the lumber of the first floor and [put on] a sloping roof and [covered it with] tarpaper so it would be dry inside. Down there in our basement during the winter I had fashioned the 5 window frames of our lower floor. They were quite special being made for hinged windows, as the house design called for that type of casement, which I had seen in Grosse Point on my numerous trips past the big and fashionable houses in that area.
When spring came we were all set to begin laying up the walls of our home. Saturdays and Sundays I could accomplish the most as I must keep working at my regular job our system was very practicable. Laura mixed the mortar, that is after I had filled a large box (about 3 feet by 6 feet and 10 inches deep, with several ingredients: sand, lime and cement, all ready to be moistened up in small batches by her. I was to lay up the brick and the girls were to carry them, the 3 kinds, in quantities such as they could well do without getting tired. Evelyn, the third of the girls and but four years old, carried 25, 2 in her arms at a stint. Elizabeth and Marjorie were then 6 and 7, carried 50 each. As the laying progressed the 125 bricks they carried laid up a nice area of all. And our little man, although he was just past 2 years, carried a quota of 1 brick at a trip from the piles in front. It should be recorded here that it took a considerable amount of lungpower to call the girls home from the neighbors to where they always vanished as soon as they had finished their stints. And it might be added also that they never played at home where the work was. We never saw the neighbors’ girls either. So once each hour or some such interval I gave forth a hew and cry to get my workers back home.
With mamma making batches of mortar, the little workers toting up the brick and me laying same, it seemed no time at all before we had the walls of our home to be, up and ready for the second floor. After we were up to that height I put on the joists and rough floor, then some more brick were needed. At this stage it became necessary to build a ladder from the first to the second floor. I can still see the tiny tots struggle up that ladder with their brick.
The Chicago Co-op website is finally up. If simply want to follow along with the news about what’s happening the in Chicago housing cooperative and intentional communities scene or write about such events, then the blog is for you: http://www.chicagocoop.net/blog/. Check out the invitation for the Chicago Cooperatives and Communities Gathering on July 8th at Stone Soup.
If you’d like to help organize information about cooperatives and communities or simply get more information, then the wiki is for you: http://www.chicagocoop.net/wiki
I also welcome general design advice or offers of help. For example, should the blog be on the Chicago Co-op home page, with the wiki somehow linked from there, perhaps with different categories linked seperately? How should we best unify the styles of the two parts of the site? Thanks!
This is a follow-up to my last post on zoning. In that post I told you how our architect was going to put the average ceiling height on the drawings to address the legal-floor-area issue (Zoning says 6′9″ is legal so if we’re below that, we’re increasing floor area, which is an issue – Permits says legal has to be 7′6″ which is why we’re in this mess to begin with). Peter (the architect) did that and it still wasn’t good enough. He then produced a sort of inverted topographical map of the ceiling which today was accepted!
What does this mean?
We got our denial today. This means we can finally file an appeal. The denial lists 4 issues so we’re asking for 4 variations to the zoning ordinance.
- Reduce the required rear yard from 30′ to 0′ since that’s where the entire rear building sit anyway.
- Reduce the northside yard from 4′ to 2′11″ since that’s the amount of passageway we have to the alley right now.
- Reduce the combined side yard from 10′ to 2′11″ for the same reason as #2 (we have no southside yard b/c we’re on the corner and that’s the sidewalk on that side.
- Increase allowable floor area by less than 15%. This is because some (small portion) of the ceiling is less than 6′9″. If it were more than a 15% increase, we’d have a big problem
So our attorney, Mark Kupiec will now file the appeal and send us a copy and then he’ll send a letter of notification of filing to our neighbors. Once the appeal application is accepted, we’ll be given public hearing notice signs for our windows and the Zoning Board will send another notification to our neighbors with the date/time of the hearing, most likely sometime in July.
The federal guidelines for “affordable housing” say that for housing to be “affordable” it should cost no more than 30% of your income. One problem with this standard is that it does not take into account another huge portion of many people’s expenses: transportation. Many people are spending hundreds of dollars per month commuting, while others live in transit-friendly locations where commuting costs end up much lower.
The Center for Neighborhood Technology has been working on a more accurate, wholistic measure of affordablily. On their blog, they write about How High Gas Prices Drive Up the Cost of Housing:
“The old maxim, ‘Drive till we can afford it,’ may be softening,” said Michael Noonan, division president for one of the top national home builders operating in the Twin Cities area and a vice president of the Builders Association of the Twin Cities. “The rising cost of gas is adding a dimension that people didn’t used to consider as carefully as they do today.”Some organizations are working to encourage consumers’ awareness about commuting costs before they buy. In fact, the Twin Cities area may become ground zero in a national movement to help homeowners understand the true cost of home ownership.
This is a follow-up to my previous post about zoning.
I have not spoken with attorney, Mark Kupiec, since April 19th. At that time, he told me visited Gerald Garcia in Zoning 6 times and found new objections each time. He was hoping for a denial “any day now.”
On May 2nd we found out from Aggie in Mark’s office that there was an additional objection from the City, relating to existing ceiling height. Our architect provided a letter stating that the ceiling is sloped and that the average existing height is 6’9.5”.
On May 9th, Mr. Garcia said that wasn’t good enough, he needs a section drawing showing the exact height at each point. Anything less than 6’9” is not legal living space with regards to FAR, which is why this is important. I spoke with Peter, our architect, today and he’ll put the average on the drawing and send it to Mark.
My housing co-op needs a zoning variance (or variation, depending on who you ask) in order to replace a flat roof with a gable roof that will allow the inside space to be of legal living space height to put in a bathroom.
We hired a zoning attorney, Mark Kupiec, back in February. Actually, we met with him at our place on Feb 8th and then officially agreed to hire him at a meeting on the 11th. The plan was that he would get us a denial first (required) and then apply for a hearing before the Zoning Board of Appeals. There was some requirement of a public notice 30 days before the hearing so the earliest to get a hearing date was to be April.
Two weeks ago today, we finally were told by the attorney that we were not on the schedule for April. Dan then talked with him 3 days in a row where Mark promised to send an email explaining the situation so we all could have the same information rather than play the telephone game where our questions don’t get answered. No email.
Then I left messages 5 business days in a row. And I sent one email. No response. Yesterday we had a bicycling attorney friend give Mark a call. He left a message. No response. He recommended we drop by Mark’s office. I did that today.
Mark wasn’t in. I spoke with Agnes (I think). She said they were waiting for Peter to get new drawings to them, as required by Mr. Garcia at the City. Mr. Garcia is the one that has to officially deny our request so we can file the request for appeal. Agnes hopes to get the denial tomorrow. She didn’t know if we’d already missed our window for the May hearing date (they only meet once/month). She also couldn’t give me any better advice about how to get Mark to communicate with us. She took my name, phone number and email again. We’ll see.
Update 5:24p same day: Mark phoned me just now to give me the whole scoop. He wasn’t calling back because he was hoping to give us news of the official denial last week and then every day they’ve been visiting the City. Still no dice.
He had to visit the examiner (Gerald Garcia, the most senior person there) 6 times so far on our case because there are no City records showing 6 units in this building. Everything shows 4 so they had to search Board of Elections, Water Department from the 50s, permit applications, etc as well as photos we submitted. Since we’re 6 units, we also were not given a City certification of number of dwelling units at closing because that’s only done for 5 or fewer units. We also had to submit a section drawing from our architect because the front part of the building has 2 floors and the back part has 3 floors which made the examiner question how the building fits together and when the back building was added.
We have missed the May hearing deadline. We should get a denial soon (tomorrow, he hopes) and then will move forward with the June 16th hearing. We’ll know the answer that day, more or less and then can follow-up by phone the following Monday, and will have to wait a few weeks for the in-writing confirmation. That’s when we can apply for our permits.
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