My Topics in Sustainable Development class read more papers this week, and I am again posting the summaries I turned in. Shared Equity Ownership is a new concept for me, so I am still developing an opinion and the prompt was to write a critical analysis. But I enjoy developing or changing my mind about things and because alternative homeownership forms obviously work, it seems likely I will. The papers we read this week were:
“Recovery and renewal for survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Texas” by Kristin Carlisle.
“Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?” by Scott Campbell
“Shared Equity Homeownership”, Chapters 1, 2, 5 by the National Housing Institute
Kristin Carlisle (Topic: Plight of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Hurricane Rita in Texas.)
Summary
There has been an inadequate governmental effort to rebuild the homes, neighborhoods and lives of people who formerly lived in areas destroyed by the hurricanes. Those hardest hit were poor, and there have not been concentrated efforts by the federal government to fix houses and rebuild their neighborhoods, resulting in dislocation and worsened poverty.
My responses
This is really disheartening. While it’s surely helpful to dissect how the federal aide system could be improved, the ultimate problem is the lack of desire to improve it. It’s not the lack of desire to help from the “compassion fatigued”, but the lack of desire to help from the powerful “never cared.” In her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, the rise of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein said:
- ”The news racing around (a Hurricane Katrina shelter in New Orleans) that day was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, ‘We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.’ Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans’ wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: ‘I think we have a clean sheet to start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities.” All that week the Louisiana State Legislature in Baton rouge had been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a ’smaller, safer city’-which in practice meant plans to level the public housing projects and replace them with condos.”
Scott Campbell (Topic: City planners should define “sustainability” as achieving a balance of interests.)
Summary
Most planners have chosen a single planning priority-economic growth, social justice or environmental protection. The three corners of the sustainable development planning triangle represent the key goals in planning, and the three axes represent the three resulting areas of conflict and complement. The center, the balance, is “sustainability”. It may take a long time to reach the balance, to reach “sustainability”.
My responses
- The triangle is a good starting point for discussion. But I’m resistant to the author’s insistence that the definition of “sustainability” exclude the mythic, the romantic, the indigenous, as these lie at the heart of culture and I believe culture is the heart of the planet. But I liked the author’s method of discussing potential definitions by exploring what should be excluded.
- The author states that one way he measures social justice is intergenerational fairness. In a public policy class I took at the law school, one of the readings pointed out that it can be very difficult to strike a balance between the perspectives of growth economics and intergenerational fairness. In growth economics, the highest value is ascribed to what can be utilized today, which creates a fundamental conflict with the intergenerational approach. For example, the national deficit-legislators have consistently chosen to spend knowing full well it would have detrimental effects on future Americans.
John Emmeus Davis (Topic: Pros and Cons of alternative forms of homeownership.)
Summary
Shared Equity Housing creates access to homeownership for people whose incomes rise more slowly than consumer prices and defends against the ill-effects of rising property values and speculative buying. Any current lack of evidence about the effectiveness of alternative ownership systems indicates a need for further study, not an inherent lack of viability.
My Responses
- The alternative ownership forms seem to reach Campbell’s definition of sustainability. At the same time, the high level of involvement of a controlling entity in the third market is novel in the U.S. I tend toward favoring what Campbell calls an unrealistic and romantic notion, a city that is sustainable from the bottom-up through the collective effect of individuals making sustainable choices, rather than a city that is sustainable through a new form of top-down system.
- I have some gut-reaction reservations about the limitations on rights to use aspect of cooperative ownership because I live in a gated residential community (through acts of the fates) with neighborhood covenants and the restrictions on use frequently infuriate me.
- The author proceeds from the assumption that home ownership is something most people want to achieve, and it seems likely that’s true. But I’m currently speculative about the American notion of “owning your own home”, and question the value we ascribe to homeownership. Does aspiring toward homeownership make sense today in the same way that it did in the early 20th century?
Tags: forever housing, Green Cities, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, John Emmeus Davis, Kristin Carlisle, Naomi Klein, perpetual affordability, resale restriction, Scott Campbell, Shared Equity Housing, Subsidy Retention, texas, third market
