emphasis mine
http://www.alternet.org/rights/40324/
Evangelical Conversion-for-Parole Program Thwarted
By Rob Boston, Church and State
Posted on August 28, 2006, Printed on August 28, 2006
The day after a federal court struck down a taxpayer-supported evangelical Christian program in an Iowa prison, Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, issued a press statement. He was not pleased.
"The courts took God out of America's schools, now they are on the path to take God out of America's prisons," Earley groused.
Earley's analysis of judicial decisions dealing with religion and public schools was widely off the mark, but he had good reason to be upset about the recent ruling on public funds for inmate indoctrination. His organization, Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by ex-Watergate felon Charles Colson, has been sponsoring the Iowa program for three years. If the ruling stands up on appeal, not only will Earley's group have to shut down the program, it will be required to repay the state of Iowa more than $1.5 million in public support it has received during that time.
The June 2 decision in Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries was a staggering loss not just for Earley's group but perhaps for key elements of President George W. Bush's "faith-based" initiative as well.
U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt didn't mince words. Officials at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility had become, he wrote, far too entangled with religion by establishing a special wing for Prison Fellowship's InnerChange program. InnerChange, Pratt declared, is suffused with religion.
"The religion classes are not objective inquiries into the religious life, comparable to an adult study or college course, offered for the sake of discussing and learning universal secular, civic values or truths," Pratt wrote. "They are, instead, overwhelmingly devotional in nature and intended to indoctrinate InnerChange inmates into the Evangelical Christian belief system."
Later in the ruling, Pratt observed, "For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates. There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates."
Attorneys at Americans United were especially gratified by the legal victory. For AU's legal team, Pratt's meticulous 140-page ruling capped more than three years of hard work, including extensive research and on-site visits with inmates and their families in Newton.
Americans United first became interested in the case late in 2002 after a Newton inmate filed a lawsuit pro se (without an attorney) challenging the program and outlining its details. Americans United agreed to represent the inmate and filed another lawsuit against the state's support of the program on behalf of taxpayers and family members of inmates. The two lawsuits were then combined into one.
<font color=red>
The InnerChange program was given the prison's "honor unit," which had been used to house the best-behaved inmates. Those inmates were dumped back into the general population. In their place, about 200 inmates took possession of the wing and began receiving religious instruction around the clock.</font>
Iowa corrections officials had instituted the program in 1999. In the first full year, the state allocated $229,950 from its Inmate Telephone Rebate Fund, funds obtained from surcharges placed on calls made to and by inmates. A few years after that, the state stopped using the telephone monies, instead funding the program with direct appropriations from the Healthy Iowans Tobacco Trust, which is partly composed of tax dollars.
Many inmates and their families were especially upset over the allocation from the telephone rebate program. Money from that fund is supposed to be spent on programs to benefit all prisoners, yet a significant portion of it was being siphoned off to fund a religious program that only some inmates wanted.
AU's lawsuit challenged only state involvement with InnerChange, not religious programs in prisons generally. Prison inmates have the right to practice their faith behind bars. They may read religious literature, receive visits from spiritual counselors and, within the confines of the unique security needs of prisons, access religious items.
The InnerChange program was something entirely different. The effort was established at Newton Correctional Facility after public issuance of a proposal that Pratt determined was "gerrymandered" to fit only the Colson group. State officials, he concluded, were adamant about establishing the evangelical program in the prison.
On paper, InnerChange was open to any inmate who wanted to take part. The reality on the ground was something else. The program was so saturated with the conservative, biblically literalist form of Christianity favored by Prison Fellowship that members of other faiths found it inhospitable. During the trial, several inmates testified that they found InnerChange impossible to reconcile with their own religious beliefs.
One inmate, Benjamin Burens, who practices a Native American religion, participated in InnerChange for a while, even though he is not a Christian. Burens testified that InnerChange staff pressured him to become a born-again Christian and criticized him for taking part in Native American rituals, labeling them a form of witchcraft. Burens was eventually expelled from the program.
According to the court record, non-evangelical Christians were commonly referred to by InnerChange staff as "unsaved," "lost," "pagan," those "who served the flesh," "of Satan," "sinful" and "of darkness."
This criticism of other faiths even extended to other Christian denominations. As Pratt noted, "Testimony revealed a constant tension between Roman Catholic inmates involved in InnerChange and the chronic problem of InnerChange volunteers criticizing Roman Catholic beliefs and practices.... InnerChange's Field Guide clearly warns that non-Christians and those who desire time to observe faith practices not included in the InnerChange program, e.g., Roman Catholics who wish to attend Mass or Native Americans who wish to participate in the sweat lodge ceremony, may do so only if those observances do not conflict with the InnerChange program requirements."
Pratt found this reliance on conversion clear evidence of InnerChange's sectarian character.
"To anyone well-acquainted with the program -- as are the state Dept. of Corrections management team and the InnerChange staff -- the object of the InnerChange program is to change inmates' behavior through personal conversion to Christianity," he wrote. "InnerChange's position that no one actually is required to convert to pass through the program is mere formalism. Every waking moment in the InnerChange program is devoted to teaching and indoctrinating inmates into the Christian faith."
AU had also raised issues of unequal treatment among inmates, based on their willingness to conform to the evangelical atmosphere of InnerChange. Again Pratt found this argument compelling.
InnerChange inmates enjoyed perks and benefits that are significant to an incarcerated population. <font color=red>
The special unit for InnerChange inmates featured private toilet facilities and cells with wooden doors instead of steel. The environment was generally safer, and inmates were entrusted with keys to their own cells. InnerChange inmates had extra contact with their family members and even gathered together to watch movies on weekends.
But InnerChange inmates got an even bigger benefit: access to special classes that made parole much more likely. Treatment classes are a condition of parole in Iowa, and most inmates must wait until they approach their release date to take part in them. InnerChange inmates got the classes earlier, significantly increasing their odds of being granted parole.</font>
In an attempt to defend the program, Earley and other Prison Fellowship officials insisted that taxpayer money was funding only the secular aspects of InnerChange. AU attorneys attacked this assertion, quoting Prison Fellowship Ministries' own materials to prove that there are no secular aspects to InnerChange.
AU cited an InnerChange document that asserted, "All programming all day, every day is Christ-centered." The organization also noted that Prison Fellowship was trying to have it both ways: bragging to its fundamentalist Christian supporters about the program's religiosity and then playing it down before government officials to get more tax support.
In fact, even a cursory glance at the organization and its materials exposed InnerChange's ties to evangelical Christianity. Its website states upfront: "The InnerChange Freedom Initiative (IFI) is a revolutionary, Christ-centered, faith-based prison program supporting prison inmates through their spiritual and moral transformation."
It adds, "IFI is an integral part of bringing a biblical sense of justice to correctional facilities in America. We are confident that the results will matter. States will realize a spectacular reduction in the rate ex-offenders are returned to prison and Prison Fellowship through equipping, exhorting and assisting the local church to minister to prisoners, victims and their families will realize souls won for the Kingdom of God."
The Web site emphasizes InnerChange's reliance on the "transformational model" of rehabilitation. This model, InnerChange asserts, "tries to help inmates' change by identifying sin as the root of their problems. It encourages inmates to turn from their sinful past, see the world through God's eyes, and surrender to God's will. This model promotes the transformation of the inmate from the inside out through the miraculous power of God's love."
All paid staff and volunteers at Prison Fellowship and InnerChange must agree with the organization's view on theology. Staff members must sign Prison Fellowship's Statement of Faith, which reflects fundamentalist beliefs. Non-evangelicals and non-Christians are not hired.
Pratt had no problem debunking claims that InnerChange has secular components. "The overtly religious atmosphere of the InnerChange program is not simply an overlay or a secondary effect of the program -- it is the program...," he wrote. "Here, every activity -- worship services, revivals, community meetings, daily devotionals -- is organized and developed by the InnerChange program and is designed to transform an individual spiritually. Even the otherwise traditional rehabilitation classes themselves, as set forth above, have been turned into classes intended to indoctrinate inmates into the Christian faith."
With so many of their key claims left in tatters by the decision, defenders of InnerChange were left clinging to a frequent fallback position: InnerChange should receive tax funding because it reduces prisoner recidivism.
Responding to the ruling, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, told Baptist Press, "A federal judge finds a prison rehab program that actually works and has much lower recidivism rates than other programs, and so he declares it unconstitutional because it dares to bring a faith element into the program."
In fact, there is no objective evidence that InnerChange works or reduces recidivism. In 2003, Colson released what he said was statistical validation for this claim, trumpeting a study purporting to show that inmates who took part in InnerChange returned to prison at a much lower rate than those who did not.
The study made a big splash in the media, but the claims quickly evaporated. Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California-Los Angeles, examined the data and found it to be statistically invalid. Prison Fellowship had excluded all the prisoners who did not finish the program, in essence kicking its failures out. When all of the participants were added back in, Kleiman found that InnerChange participants actually returned to prison at a slightly higher rate than a control group.
Nevertheless, program supporters like Land continue to dutifully regurgitate the assertion that InnerChange has shown startling rates of success. Although without foundation, this claim has undoubtedly helped the program spread to other states. InnerChange now receives tax support in Texas, Kansas and Minnesota, and a program that Prison Fellowship claims is privately funded was launched in Arkansas just days before the ruling came down.
In addition, InnerChange hopes to make inroads into the federal prison system. <font color=red>
In March, the U.S. Justice Department announced it was soliciting proposals for a "single-faith" prison rehabilitation program to "facilitate personal transformation for the participating inmates through their own spirituality or faith...."</font>
The solicitation listed 10 requirements that interested groups must have -- all of which just happen to mirror the features of InnerChange. Earley seemed to get the message, telling The Washington Post that his group is "very interested" in the proposal.
Americans United has been communicating with the Justice Department, trying to persuade it to fix the proposal's constitutional defects. The ruling in the Iowa lawsuit, AU attorneys say, will help them make the case.
The Justice Department's interest in "faith-based" rehabilitation isn't surprising. The current director of the Justice Department's Task Force On Faith-Based And Community Initiatives is Steven T. McFarland, a former lawyer with the Christian Legal Society who also served as vice president for program and partnership development for Prison Fellowship International from 2002-05.
The Iowa ruling could also have broader implications for the entire "faith-based" approach to other social service programs. Faith-based funding assumes that religious content can be legally underwritten by taxpayer dollars. The Iowa decision casts serious doubt on that claim.
Americans United chose to litigate against InnerChange, in part, because it was an opportunity to bring a test case against the faith-based initiative. For years, initiative backers have insisted that the religious component of faith-based services can somehow be isolated and government money directed only to what remains. AU has argued that most faith-based plans are so saturated with religion that tax funding cannot go to them. This ruling upholds AU's argument and can only be seen as a blow to one of the key features of the Bush initiative.
"This decision should strongly bolster our efforts to rein in faith-based funding," said Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex Luchenitser, who is lead counsel in the Iowa case. "The court's decision makes clear that the government cannot provide any support whatsoever to a program that proselytizes those it claims to serve, or coerces them to take part in religious activities or discriminates against those who refuse to adopt its religious teachings."
Luchenitser was joined on AU's litigation team by AU attorney Heather Weaver and Iowa civil rights attorney Dean Stowers.
Federal lawmakers who back the Bush faith-based initiative are well aware that the decision spells trouble for their agenda. On June 7, three House Republicans, Joseph R. Pitts of Pennsylvania, Trent Franks of Arizona and Steve King of Iowa, hosted a briefing with Earley in the Capitol to discuss the ruling and possible remedies. An attendee provided notes to Church & State.
<font color=red>
Earley called the decision a "direct assault on the faith-based initiative" and went on to insist that the main purpose of InnerChange is not conversion. He and the House members attacked Americans United and AU Executive Director Barry W. Lynn by name. They also overstated the reach of the decision, insisting that it puts prison chapels at risk. Franks went so far as to assert that advocates of separation of church and state will not rest until they remove religious symbols from the headstones at Arlington Cemetery.</font>
Participants discussed a possible legislative response from Congress but decided to wait until the appeal is heard. One participant remarked that this case is one they "must not lose." (Pitts later attacked the ruling during a speech on the floor of the House.)
The ruling can also be seen as a blow to Colson's larger ambitions for society. For years, Colson and his backers have talked about saturating public institutions with the proper "biblical worldview" -- one of fundamentalist Christianity. Colson focused on prisons in part due to his personal history but also because prisons are a soft target. Public opinion leans toward a punishment model of corrections, and many rehabilitative or work programs have dried up in recent years. Recidivism rates remain high, leading some to back just about any approach that promises to prevent inmates from committing new crimes once they are released.
What lies ahead for the Iowa case? <font color=red>
Judge Pratt, aware that his decision would be appealed, has temporarily stayed his order. If the ruling is sustained by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Newton officials will have to disband the program. In addition, Prison Fellowship will have to repay the state of Iowa $1,529,182.70. This type of repayment, called "recoupment," is unusual. In this case, Pratt said, it is justified for two reasons: First, as Pratt put it, "the severe nature of the violation." Secondly, the judge noted that InnerChange officials should have known their program was constitutionally suspect. He pointed out, for example, that corrections officials in California provided the group with a detailed memo explaining why that state would not fund the organization, citing constitutional concerns.</font>
Americans United's Lynn hailed the opinion, saying it should stand as a warning to religious leaders tempted to take taxpayer funding.
"There is no way to interpret this decision as anything but a body blow to so-called faith-based initiatives," Lynn said. "Tax funds cannot underwrite conversion efforts." Continued Lynn, "Government has no business paying for religious indoctrination and conversion programs in prisons or any other tax-funded institution. Furthermore, church leaders who take faith-based funding may find that they've made an expensive misjudgment if their 'faith-based' funding is challenged."
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/40324/
<hr size=4 align=left width="74%" noshade>
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77070
First US Military Wiccan dies in Combat.....
Thursday July 06, 2006 03:27
Sgt Patrick D. Stewart died last September 25th in Afghanistan while serving the US military in Afghanistan. He was attached to the Nevada national guard and the helicopter he was travelling in was target of a rocket-propelled grenade. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze star, a distinguished veteran who had served in the US military mission to Korea and active combat in Operation Desertstorm.
Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart like any other distinguished combat veteran gets a memorial in his home town, though his body was cremated and his ashes scattered by his widow Roberta Stewart in Reno.
Last May 31st she organised a memorial of her own to protest a decision by the US "department of Veterans Affairs" who have refused to honour her husband's wishes that a pentacle be put on his stone. This constitutes a breach of the 1st amendment, as Wicca has been accepted by Federal Courts as a religion since 1995.
[img: Mrs Stewart July 4th in Fernley Nevada addresses a crowd of supporters]
"Whatever one's opinion might be about the Wiccan faith, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that the First Amendment to our U.S. Constitution provides for religious freedom for all individuals of all faiths -- whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, Wiccans and others," wrote constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead a noted figure in Christian evangelical circles in an online essay for ChristianityToday.com on June 5.
he went on to write "... The only way that freedom can prevail for Christians is for Christians to stand up and fight for the minority beliefs and religions of others."
At present a total of 37 "faith" symbols are used for War Veteran Memorials in the USA. The majority are christian based variations of the cross, Kathurlicks like to see the bloodied body of Jesus hanging there all in pain, whereas Protestants prefer a plain cross to symbolise resurrection. Jews and Muslims of course have the Star of David and Crescent Moon respectively. Mormons and Masonic symbols have long been accepted. Since Wiccans applied 7 years ago to see the pentacle included in faith based symbols on burial or memorial markers, the US war veterans department have moved to add a Buddhist wheel, a star with nine points for Baha'i believers and even invented a symbol for atheists which looks somewhat like an atom, but the pentacle has not yet been seen.
Sgt. Patrick Stewart's widow and mother to his two children (also wiccan) is quick to point out that his faith was registed on his military ID or "dog tags" as they are informally known. She insists everyone knew he was wiccan.
Speaking to a rally in support of her petition and her dead husband's wishes on US Independence Day she said :-
"Today, we have honored his memory and the freedom of all faiths in the manner in which he would have wanted,"
"In that spirit, we call for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to end its discrimination and be held accountable for upholding the freedom of religion ... (that has) been granted to all of us as unalienable by the rights of the United States' Constitution."...."In life, Patrick was my heartmate, my best friend and my confidante," she said before ending the service with a moment of silence for all of America's fallen soldiers....."He was a compelling and passionate man, a brave person who stood tall and proud. He was strong in his convictions, and he loved his country," she said. "He loved the freedom of the great outdoors, of the mountains and the wide-open skies. He loved the freedom that was the foundation of America"
A retired US military chaplain Rev. Maj. Bill Chrystal added :-
"Let us honor them by fighting for the rights they held so dearly," Chrystal said. "In Pat's case especially, may we never tire until all are free to worship as they please and, when the time comes, to rest under the symbol of the faith that sustained them in life and gave them hope in death."
There are some who believe that the US military is shy to include the symbol because of its association amongst fundementalist christians, (many of whom enlist) with devil worship.
Wiccans thought would be quick to discount such allegations. The Rev. Selena Fox is pastor and senior minister of the "circle sanctuary" one of the USA's oldest and most established Wiccan worshipper groups, and claims that 2 other Wiccan widows also wish see their husbands' markers bear a Pentagram. If so, Sgt Stewart was the 3rd Wiccan to die, but only the first to be officially dog tagged.
Jo Schuda a spokesperson for the Veterans Assocation has argued that lack of a central hierarchy (perhaps on the lines of an annual druidic meeting near lambay volcano) has hampered the religious denomination in its dealings with the US military. However the lack of a "wiccan pope" or "chief rabbi wicca" has been overcome she insists and claims 2 requests for Pentagrams will be honoured by October.
Wicca is a peace-loving religion and preaches pacific solution to conflict, except when dealing with left hand path insurgents who resist the emergence of democracy.
bless you all.
here endeth the lesson.
passeth the plate
.:.
Independent Media Centre Ireland
http://www.indymedia.ie
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/77070
Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.
<hr size=4 align=left width="74%" noshade>
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/04/HOG86HFNDU1.DTL
The little house that roared
A tiny cottage designed for Katrina survivors offers the Bay Area a few clues about disaster relief and affordable housing
Susan Fornoff, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 4, 2006
The Gulf Coast's unique housing crisis has given birth to a cute, yellow, 308-square-foot house known as the Katrina Cottage, which has put a smile on the face of just about everyone who traipsed across the white-trimmed threshold to see how the concise layout could shelter a family of four under its charming pitched roof.
Inside on the walls, at showings in Orlando in January and Ocean Springs, Miss., in February, architectural drawings by cottage designer Marianne Cusato and South Carolina architect Eric Moser detailed how various models of the Katrina Cottage could serve as a "Grow House" that would over time be expanded to a bigger house, or maybe even just provide a rear guest cottage to a new house to be built at the front of the lot.
Outside on the broad front porch, visitors lingered on its built-in benches.
"Everyone walks through and says 'Wow, it's so big,' " said Cusato, a New Yorker whose design was the first to be built of more than 100 created for the Mississippi Renewal Forum under the leadership of New Urbanism co-founder Andres Duany last fall. "Three hundred square feet and they say it's big."
It's big enough to make people stop and think, especially here in the Bay Area. Will we be able to get one of these instead of a travel trailer when the Big One knocks down three or four times as many dwellings as Mississippi lost in Katrina? And with an adorable, friendly structure like this costing only about $35,000 to build, why must Bay Area starter homes cost half a million dollars?
The answers are -- as usual when talking about Bay Area housing -- a little depressing and more than a little complex.
That is, where answers exist.
--How it shakes out--
If the federal government knows how it's going to house all of the Californians who will be displaced by the Big One, it's not saying yet. The Chronicle reported just last month that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff several times to show her the Federal Emergency Management Agency's earthquake relief plan and been put off.
According to the latest report from the Association of Bay Area Governments, a plus-7.0 quake on the Hayward Fault will render 155,000 housing units uninhabitable, displacing 360,000 people and putting 110,000 in need of publicly provided housing. Loma Prieta, by comparison, made 16,000 homes unlivable; Northridge, 46,000.
That report encouraged property owners to retrofit buildings before the Big One hits; it offered no solution to the inevitable housing crisis except to say that shelters operated by the Red Cross that typically stay open four to six weeks after a disaster will have to stay open longer.
After that, well, there's the FEMA travel trailer. A whole bunch of them, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
"Studies show that when you put a bunch of these trailers in an area, crime will be high and it's going to be a bad area," said Jason Spellings, the Jackson, Miss., builder who put the Katrina Cottage together with design assistance from local architect Michael Barranco. "You put one on your property and your property value starts going down immediately; they can't hold the land value."
"You can get a free trailer for 18 months if you qualify, and it's a lousy place to live, but it's free," Cusato said. "This cottage is durable, the quality of life is better and it's not going to blow away in the next hurricane, so why don't you want this?"
Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran told FEMA she'd prefer more cottages and fewer trailers -- "This has a lot more character and a lot more soul than a FEMA trailer," she told the Biloxi Sun Herald last month -- but the government agency has declined to assist. Emeryville architect Christopher "Kit" Ratcliff said he could see why after viewing the plans.
"One of the problems that I see with it, and I probably shouldn't say this, is that it looks nice," Ratcliff said. "I think the government has a very hard time giving things away to people or underwriting things that go beyond some sort of bureaucratically understood minimal gesture.
"I think this is a nifty little design, and I think it's really hitting a good need and it's a wonderful thing to offer people. I was fantasizing myself about how you'd add on to it, and I think you can. And I can think if the Hayward or San Andreas fault really busts loose in this part of the world, there'd be a lot of people who have a plot of land who'd like to have something like this on it quickly."
Ratcliff is president of the Bay Area's only 100-year-old architectural firm, which was started by his grandfather, Walter, just before the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. That was the year the San Francisco Relief Corp. built more than 5,000 structures of 140 to 252 square feet, along what is now Park Presidio Boulevard, that have become known as the "earthquake shacks."
These were intended to provide temporary shelter, but temporary defies definition sometimes. Who hasn't rented an apartment just until they found something better, and lived there five years or more? Whose child hasn't attended class in a so-called "temporary classroom" that has been in use for a generation?
San Francisco architect Mark Miller and his firm, MKThink, found that 76 percent of such structures overstay their intended welcome, and has developed a modular solution he calls "classroom in a can" that is flexible, portable -- and also bright, a quality he finds essential to disaster recovery.
"How do you bring normalcy back to people's lives -- this is a lot of what the struggle is in New Orleans," Miller said. "There's so much talk, so much angst, all these contests, and the No. 1 thing people are looking for is to get on with life. That's what this cottage is, a base to rebuild a life. And for disaster relief, I think it's really appealing.
"When the trailers arrive fast and give people a home that's dry and safe, that's a good thing, but they tend to linger. This is little and it's cute and it's yellow and it's well thought out, and you wouldn't mind if it did linger."
Said Spellings, the cottage builder, "In 1992, Andrew hit Florida and I was in college and helped with the cleanup. There are still people in FEMA trailers in and around Homestead, Fla."
Well, there are still people in earthquake cottages in San Francisco, according to the Western Neighborhoods Project Web site,
http://www.outsidelands.org, which reports that 5,000 of the structures were hauled off to various parts of the city, where 23 still stand. Fortunately, they were made of durable materials, with fir flooring, redwood walls and cedar-shingled roofs, and were easily and attractively expanded into larger homes.
Those went for about $100 in 1906; Cusato's cottage can run as much as $148 a square foot. Spellings, driving down Highway 495 to the Gulf Coast behind a more cheaply made manufactured home, noted such details as his cottage's $450 Spanish cedar door, compared with the home's door that "probably cost $100."
"Also, when you build a 300-square-foot house, the price per square foot is going to be as high or higher than that of a 1,500-square-foot house, because you're buying the same kitchen and bathroom over and over," he said. "In Mississippi, $148 a square foot is very high. So we have to get the price down. One way is to go to 600 square feet. Another way is to go to a factory setting for production and buy in bulk."
--Nowhere to grow--
Ah, to find a house in the Bay Area at $148 a square foot. The way that the Katrina Cottage reconnected coastal residents to their community's history got San Francisco architect Miller fantasizing about building a modern little three-story house of maybe 700 square feet in the city.
"If you build it prefab, you could get the cost down from $500 a square foot to $200 a square foot," Miller said. "I don't think it's out of the question."
Generally, though, the 700-square-foot home in the Bay Area will be a condo, with no possibility of expanding in any direction. Remember what used to be known as the starter home? Asian Neighborhood Design architect Rose McNulty lives on a 103-year-old property in San Francisco that started with a 600-square-foot house in 1903, with an 1,100-square-footer to follow in 1910.
"My immediate reaction to the 'Grow House' plans is that city planning and building departments in California won't like the hodgepodge nature of the houses being built over time," McNulty said in an e-mail after viewing Cusato's drawings. "Perhaps in less urban areas they would grant permits for all phases, with the understanding that it would not all be built at once, but cities (and especially San Francisco) usually want more control over what is built."
That's where zoning comes in, said Karen Hester, the founder of Temescal Creek Cohousing.
"Where I live is zoned R-35, which means that you can only cover half of the lot size with buildings," Hester said via e-mail. "So you might be making a commitment when you buy a tear-down and replace it with a 'grow' cottage to only have a 1,000-square-foot house, no matter that you later win the lottery, unless you build up" and add a second story.
Not only that, said San Francisco architect Neal Schwarz, associate professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, "The 'Grow House' is based on a suburban model of development in which land is at less of a premium. That fact alone makes it difficult to imagine this as an applicable strategy for the Bay Area.
"That said, the project is refreshing in its potential to counteract the disturbing tendency we see in the Bay Area toward monster homes. We increasingly define ourselves through square footages. Developers, of course, feed into this psychology, ever expanding our expectations of home just as McDonald's expands our expectation of the size of drink we need with our burger and fries."
It's a safe bet that there's not a developer in Northern California who would plan a community of expandable Katrina Cottages. One developer who is using modular construction methods to reduce costs and increase speed, Greg Francis, is working at the ultra-high end of the market.
"This year we will build five custom homes using the modular system of building," Francis said in an e-mail. "They will be built in factories in Nebraska and Colorado and shipped to our area 80 percent to 85 percent complete. Their prices will range from $1,100,000 to $3,500,000."
It's not that there's not a market for $35,000 expandable houses, of course -- there's just not a market for $35,000 expandable houses that cost $500,000 because of all of the expenses added to the builder's objective of making a profit.
"If you look at land prices in the Bay Area, a lot costs probably a minimum of $200,000," said Cindy Siwecki, vice president of marketing and research for the Reiser Group, an integrated sales and marketing resource for builders. "By the old formula, the price of land times four is usually what the cost of the house would be, or with a finished lot, the price times three. So you can't build something that small here. You can't take a 300-square-foot house and put it on a $200,000 lot.
"The cost of new has gotten very, very expensive. These places affected by Katrina, they don't have the same high land cost, the same infrastructure. Here, a building permit in some cities is $100,000 to $150,000. So you're looking at $300,000 and you haven't even poured foundation yet."
And so, times four, the house needs to cost $1.2 million.
That leaves the government to subsidize starter projects. An article in The Chronicle on Feb. 23, "Urban housing success story faces budget ax," featured well-designed mixed-income housing projects that have been built using Hope VI grants, but the Bush administration seeks the elimination of that program.
Cusato is working on private funding and mass manufacturing to churn out her Katrina Cottages for Mississippians. "I'm having a hard time building these down here because of the politics, but I may be putting 2,000 of them in Ghana," she said. "A developer in Virginia wants to do some as affordable houses. People see it and realize it's a dignified way to live."
Resources
To see all six versions of the expandable "Grow House," and for more information about New Urbanism, visit http://www.newurbanguild.com. The New Urban Guild also is issuing a series of plan books containing more small designs.
For more information on the earthquake cottages, visit http://www.outsidelands.org. more cottage photos and information about architect Marianne Cusato, visit http://www.cusatocottages.com. more information about MKThink's "classroom in a can," visit http://www.mkthink.com. S.F.
E-mail Susan Fornoff at sfornoff@sfchronicle.com.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... HFNDU1.DTL
©2006 San Francisco Chronicle <p>
<div style="text-align:center">
dictionary.com |
encyclopædia dramatica
"he is the godamn batman! thats why! if he can breath in space you damn bet he can wear a panty on his head!" glu-glu</div></p>
Edited by: pd Rydia at: 8/28/06 20:04