Home designs for humanitarian crises, or "What do IDPs and hipsters have in common?"

A friend at school asked for a book suggestion last December as part of her effort to find the perfect Christmas present for her architecture and development inclined SO. By chance, I actually had a book on hand for exactly this situation! Architecture for Humanity collected information on dozens of innovative, low-cost, "sustainable" designs for habitable structures back in 2006 and featured them in a handbook called Design Like You Give a Damn.

Someone had bought it, presumably used it, and discarded it at the end of my freshman year of college at Santa Clara. After haggling with the book-nazi in the basement of our student center (not the nice gray-haired woman, the other old guy that didn't smile) to sell back my calculus text for more than $10 - and failing - I found this gem on the FREE table. It was brilliant. I read the book cover to cover and shared it with a few people, and I wound up working on our school's Solar Decathlon team the next year because I thought the whole idea was so nifty. After suggesting the book I read through it again, and I've been following their work for the past few months.

By The Books, or "Welcome to the District (Part 2)"

Let's start this introduction with a basic profile before we get into the gritty stuff.

Hey look the Census made a profile graphic for just the occasion!

The District of Columbia is home to approximately 618,000 residents as of July 2011. Of that number, 50.7% are Black or African American, 38.5% are White. 9.1% are Hispanic or Latino (among all races) and 3.5% are Asian. The total population of the District grew by about 2.7% between the 2010 Census and the July 2011 survey. The federal District itself is only 68 square miles, including about 7 square miles of waterways.

One of the most interesting demographic features of Washington is the age distribution of its residents. Nationally, 24% of American residents are below the age of 18 years; but in the District of Columbia this rate drops to 16%. That means there aren't a lot of kids or teenagers around. Nonetheless the median age of Washington is 34 years, the lowest of any US state.

"So... DC is full of mid-thirty year olds," you might suppose. Cool, a young city! In reality though, the city is even "younger" than that. Who likes population pyramids?!

Things people don't tell you about "City Life"

• It's not possible to get rid of fruit flies.
• Doing your laundry regularly will break your bank. Since when does a wash cycle that holds half of your darks cost $2.50??
• Dress shoes (and all shoes) do not last long against 4 miles of pavement each day.
• It is absolutely possible to find any manner of "ethnic cuisine" within 6 miles of any point in San Francisco.
• When people say "excuse me" and a) don't immediately pass you, and b) are not holding a map or fanny pack, it's usually best to walk away (this based on statistically significant findings). I'm still having trouble with this one.
• Traffic signals can be useful recommendations for pedestrians and vehicles, but no more than that. If you live near a large traffic signal, however, it can serve the additional purpose of colorful dance lighting in your living room.
• Dancing on the center dividers of busy commercial streets is really no big deal, but you are not allowed to dance in MUNI buses or railcars. Hypocrites!
• "People on the bus" can be an incredible source of endless entertainment, but you must be equipped with earbuds or large headphones at all times; small headphones do not work, and books (hah, books....yeah right) are only to be read when qualifying earphones are available. They must be easily accessible and able to be fitted within no more than 5 seconds, as this is the longest break you will ever experience in a conversation you do not want to be having on MUNI. It's also become apparent that the other end of the earphones do not need to be plugged into anything in particular, but if your trickery is revealed to your new-found BFF, you best be getting off the bus lickity-split.
• Night Owl MUNI buses run time trials through the Richmond District. If there are less than 5 individuals on a given bus after 1am, a 25mph speed limit is really a 60mph speed limit, and hills, stop signs or other bus stops are only obstacles to the finish that deserve no attention.
  
• There are coyotes in Golden Gate Park and they eat small animals. Reportedly, they got bored with the people in Marin and decided to walk across the GG Bridge awhile back. Having found plenty of garbage cans and squirrels, and no competition from the local raccoon population, they decided to stay in town and enjoy their newfound dominance on the top of the food chain. Now when they get deported, they just cross the bridge again AND THEY DON'T EVEN PAY THE TOLL!
• Never ever expect it to be hot; but when it is, San Franciscans will freak out and fight each other. Symptoms include a general 40-pt drop in IQ among drivers, excessive testosterone for everyone, shouting arguments about philosophical theories between the homeless and businessmen, and an immediate tripling of "The end is nigh" signs on Market Street. Everyone seems to be happiest with the high 60s - so for the love of God, get your ass into the carbon market America!
• It's surprisingly easy to find people who work for local government, to the point of paranoia. We seem to be everywhere, and with 26,000 City employees, we really are.
  
• Don't mess with the bearded homeless guy.

Bluegrass Love, TARP and Archduke Ferdinand on Debt

This past weekend marked the 10th Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival - or perhaps more accurately, this past weekend was engulfed by the 10th Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I say that because I can't think of a better word to describe 800,000+ people pouring into Golden Gate Park, forming a fluid mass that swelled to fill every space within the fenced event zone that included 6 stages, expensive heart-congestive food, and Randy Newman on a baby grand.

Between the aforementioned stud, Joan Baez, Fountains of Wayne (who indeed sang "Stacey's Mom") and Elvis Costello - who broke it to the crowd that the Padres would not let the Giant's choke, no matter how hard they tried - it was a good weekend that only demanded an 8 minute walk from our apartment. But above all others, a short feisty soul-singer made quite the impression as thousands of us danced till darkness, despite the San Francisco Mist. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings wrought their funk upon the masses for 1 1/2 hours without missing a beat - and oh my, that woman can sing. Somehow the program either acquired a permit or convinced the police that it was not worth their efforts to fight, but a few friends and I brought wine and champagne to drink out of plastic glasses on a picnic blanket and no one even blinked - mostly because they were too busy with the music and enjoying their own.

Endorsement #2 is going to Gaspare's Pizza House for their feta cheese & sun dried tomato pizza, the coffer of easy red wine and the 25cent-for-three-songs personal jukeboxes at every table.

Endorsement #3 is going to The Blarney Stone Irish pub on Geary St. with the free air hockey and shuffle board, whose barkeep cut all of their prices because of the Giants' victory ("obviously!" he says).


Besides the music, and besides the pizza and pressed grapefruit-vodka drink, I learned two very interesting pieces of political knowledge this weekend. Firstly, Germany just completed its last $92 million installment of its World War One reparations debt [1]. This was a little surprising to me, considering that I studied in Germany and still talk about German politics and their war guilt and such, but the fact that they still had tens of millions of $ in war 90 year old war debt – let alone that they were close to actually repaying it – was never really discussed. And for good reason perhaps, as the state is attempting to cut spending and every dollar is being watched. Nonetheless, according to my experience and the more reliable polling data in-country the German populous has almost entirely missed the memo, and most don’t know what the Treaty of Versailles was or demanded! (for the record, it demanded Germany pay around $400billion in today’s dollar value for “guilt”)

What this means for all of you history buffs out there who connect the first War with the Treaty, the near-failed German republic, the rise of Hitler, the second War, the end of Hitler, and everything stemming from the Marshall Plan, is that WWI ended yesterday.


Secondly, TARP worked?! The two year term for the controversial bailout/regulatory program (Troubled Asset Relief Program) officially came to a close this Sunday [2], and the initial performance review suggests that despite all of the absurd and often obscene rants – and the legitimate concerns – against the program, it seems to have been incredibly successful. Instead of the hundreds of billions of dollars so many thought it would cost, it may be closer to $50b-$70b with a possibility of making a return profit. That may still seem a little “out there”, but consider that there was no economic ruin, market collapse, 30% unemployment or returning of the Messiah before the Horsemen, and the market is actually recovering (though with hardly any of the jobs we had all hoped for…). It seems everyone is a little tongue-tied after railing against it for so long as the epitome of government failure.

Pretty neat weekend :)

Housing Hunt: OH YEAH!

"Is it... too expensive?" he asked. The man fidgeted with the paperclip between his fingers, pulling it apart and bending it hastily and absentmindedly into abstract figures like a balloon animal. "It's too much, isn't it? Right?" His snappy suit and well groomed hair contrasted sharply with his anxious ticks, but even more so with the apartment. Paint seemed to be somehow melting off the wall in the awkward kitchen, the large wooden floor of the living room warped just enough to make the guests occasionally stumble unexpectedly, a finish of dust had permanently settled into the shelves and the bath, and a single light struggled to cast its rays into the corners of a dim bedroom. I looked out of the one 6x20" windows onto a small cement patio with a sad, crumpled barbecue leaning against the wall.

He stared at me. "Well, I mean ... I wouldn't say..." I stumbled for the words to say yes, without actually saying so. Come on, I urged myself, four years of political studies. This should be EASY. "It's not what we were expecting from the photos, but it definitely has some ... HOMEY character to it. We might be able to work with that."

"Have I shown you the cellar?"

"We were hoping for ... excuse me?"

"The cellar. This floor comes with a basement. Or something."

"A basement or something? Aren't we on the second floor?" This was true, to a point. The apartment was on a steep hill in the Inner Sunset, and this level could conceivably have a 'cellar' of sorts. He walked to a door in the wall of the bedroom, with one of the other prospie renters and I trailing close behind, excited for the promise of more floor space. The man in the suit put his paper clip in his pocket and opened the door.

It was a personal Bat-Cave. The dark 'room' spread into the shadows along a cement walkway. We bowed our heads beneath exposed wooden supports, and turned right into something once related to a large hardwood storage closet that was now filled with dozens of carpets and wires and pipes, and in the back of the room a very small red door stood two feet off the floor. I climbed through the dark mess, gripped the brass handle and twisted. And twisted. And twisted more. The handle spun several times, I pulled back, and it simply came loose so it was dangling in place.

"Oh that door is locked," the manager explained shortly.

"How is it locked?" I laughed. "The handle isn't secured"

"It's locked form the other side."

"Oh does it go to the other units then?" the other guy reasoned.

"No."

"Then... where-"

"So this hallway here stretches back to the granite in the hillside." He directed our attention to the black corridor. "I should really put some lights in here now. Anyway, your welcome to check it out." Curious, I stepped carefully down the walkway, then fumbled down the walkway, then followed the wall down the walkway, and all the while the ceiling got lower and lower until I was squatting on exposed rock - or at least what felt like exposed rock.

I walked back to the doorway and stepped into the dim light of the little bulb, and caught Chelsea's eyes. "So, how do you like it?" I asked.

"Um..."

"Yeah. Did you see the cellar?

"It has a cellar?!"

The search for affordable housing in San Francisco is a "trope". It's one of those thing that any Bay Area local will recognize when you drop it into a conversation. Think of it as looking for a particular antique in a market of pawn shops, except you don't quite know how to describe what you're looking for and the sellers are convinced that they have it, and so you have no power in negotiating.

To be fair, this apartment had a nice view, and was actually decent size. It was also almost $1400/month. The first apartment we viewed was a bit smaller. It's actually easy to imagine - think of your usual bathroom in a Starbucks or a Burger King. Now take three of those, put a big window in one, and that's the floorplan for a "Well lit 1BR with Kitchen". We viewed another 1BR in Sunset that was nice. It had new wood floors, soft lighting, and a $4250 deposit required. It's really hit and miss with the landlords too - we met one who managed an incredible apartment with views of GG Park, but he was a carbon copy of Sheldon Cooper, prohibited the lease paperwork from leaving the premises, and required the deposit to be presented in full on the spot to secure the place. Another one showed us around a comfortable apartment in a crappy building three blocks form the projects - with a window overlooking the district police station - but he was by far the friendliest landlord I've met.

After five days of viewings in a week, we finally agreed on a a second-floor Edwardian apartment in the Richmond District. Most days around here see fog or sun with an ocean breeze in the summer, but Fall (crossing fingers!) should be warmer. We move in Sunday morning, and I start work on Monday. So that'll be fun.

(The living room --> bedroom)