From the Nov 13th issue of the New Yorker. One of the most gripping articles I have read in a long time.

Nigeria: The Megacity - Decoding the Chaos of Lagos
George Packer

The Third Mainland Bridge is a looping ribbon of concrete that connects Lagos Island to the continent of Africa. It was built in the nineteen-seventies, part of a vast network of bridges, overleaf, and expressways intended to transform the districts and islands of this Nigerian city--then comprising three million people--into an efficient modern metropolis. As the bridge snakes over sunken piers just above the waters of Lagos Lagoon, it passes a floating slum: thousands of wooden houses, perched on stilts a few feet above their own bobbing refuse, with rust-colored iron roofs wreathed in the haze from thousands of cooking fires. Fishermen and market women paddle dugout canoes on water as black and viscous as an oil slick.
The bridge then passes the sawmill district, where rain-forest logs--sent across from the far shore, thirty miles to the east--form a floating mass by the piers. Smoldering hills of sawdust landfill send white smoke across the bridge, which mixes with diesel exhaust from the traffic. Beyond the sawmills, the old waterfront markets, the fishermen's shanties, the blackened facades of high-rise housing projects, and the half-abandoned skyscrapers of downtown Lagos Island loom under a low dirty sky. Around the city, garbage dumps steam with the combustion of natural gases, and auto yards glow with fires from fuel spills. All of Lagos seems to be burning.
The bridge descends into Lagos Island and a pandemonium of venders' crammed with spare parts, locks, hard hats, chains, screws, charcoal, detergent, and DVDs. On a recent afternoon, car horns, shouting voices, and radio music mingled with the snarling engines of motorcycle taxis stalled in traffic and the roar of an air compressor in an oily tire-repair yard. Two months earlier, a huge cast-iron water main suspended beneath the bridge had broken free of its rusted clip, crushing a vacant scrap market below and cutting off clean water from tens of thousands of the fifteen million people who now live in Lagos.
In the absence of piped water, wealthier residents of the waterfront slum at the end of the bridge, called Isale Eko, pay private contractors to sink boreholes sixty feet deep. All day and night, residents line up at the boreholes to pay five cents and fill their plastic buckets with contaminated water, which some of them drink anyway. Isale Eko is the oldest and densest part of Lagos Island. Every square foot is claimed by someone--for selling, for washing, even for sleeping--and there is almost no privacy. Many residents sleep outdoors. A young man sitting in an alley pointed to some concrete ledges three feet above a gutter. 'These are beds," he said.
In the newer slums on the mainland, such as Mushin, rectangular concrete-block houses squeeze seven or eight people into a single, mosquito-infested room--in bunks or on the floor--along a narrow corridor of opposing chambers. This arrangement is known as "face me I face you." One compound can contain eighty people. IPublishn Mushin, Muslim Hausas from the north of Nigeria coexist uneasily with mostly Christian Yorubas from the south. Armed gangs represent the interests of both groups. On the night of February 2,2002, a witness told me, a Hausa youth saw a Yoruba youth squatting over a gutter on the street and demanded, "Why are you shitting there?"
In a city where only 0.4.per cent of the inhabitants have a toilet connected to a sewer system, it was more of a provocation than a serious question...
[To see the full article, click here]

Creative solutions for affordable housing....

We need more like this...

How about this for Railroad Square: an old brewery in Berlin ("Kultur Brauerei") converted to housing, restaurants and shops:
NOT more like this....

Here's a great one: Click here If you have thoughts or other examples about affordable, sustainable, livable housing, leave a comment.

Napa Regional Housing Need Numbers Cut by 75%

A Napa Register article (11/17/06) claims the county's regional housing needs numbers will be reduced by 75% for the next (2009-2016) planning period!! Here's the article:

Sunday, November 19, 2006 12:37 AM PST
A Bay Area planning agency has once again decided the unincorporated part of Napa County may need more housing -- lush vineyards, local agricultural protection laws and lack of sewer pipes be damned.

But this time, the Association of Bay Area Governments is backing off of aggressive demands for housing in the unincorporated county. This is welcome news for planning officials and others who have long lamented that state housing demands don't take into account the agricultural feel of the county.

This year, a change in state guidelines, so-called smart growth concepts and lobbying by rural counties have made an impression on ABAG, bringing about a preliminary 500 housing unit demand for the unincorporated county -- about one-quarter of what the state ordered in 2000.

The final state demands for housing in Napa County won't be given until 2008 -- after the association receives a number from the state Department of Housing and Community Development -- but a committee sponsored by the association, made up of elected officials from throughout the Bay Area, has managed to fashion a way of doling out housing responsibilities that leave rural, off-the-mass-transportation-grid counties like Napa in a better place than more urban areas next to ferry links and BART stations.

Ken Kirkey, interim planning director at ABAG, said the he believes the new formula is more fair.

"They've been looking at a wide range of issues to come up with a methodology that is consistent with local land use plans and policies, with regional growth policies and (with) state policies," he said.

Local politicians participated in the effort and favor the preliminary shift in requirements.

"The city and the county worked together on this effort," said Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon. "We sat down together (and) wrote a letter to (association) staff. When we went to the next meeting the (association) staff commented on how remarkable it was to get a letter with both of our letterheads on it."

Housing demands are especially challenging for the county, which in the past has had to contract with the cities to take on part of the state pressure placed on it. Napa Valley cities can zone for housing complete with things like hookups to urban water and sewer utilities, while the unincorporated county is more set up for agricultural practices than suburban subdivisions.

Not to mention that time after time, voters in Napa County have affirmed agricultural protections that keep housing growth within city limits.

"We've talked to (the association) numerous times about our concerns to try and protect agricultural housing, particularly unincorporated areas because we're not set up to handle housing," said Supervisor Mark Luce. " ... But the proof was in the pudding when their numbers were lower. We haven't protested too loudly given our concerns. If the state decides to go another way or things go south we've created a record to take this to the Legislature."

In October, Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, unsuccessfully tried to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign a bill that would have forced the association to consider local land use policies when it works with the state to dole out housing demands.

Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill because a 2004 state law allows regional planning agencies to consider local land use laws, and the governor wanted to see how that would affect the 2008 regional housing demands.

So far, it's been positive.

"It's good news for the citizens of Napa," Luce said

County Request For Proposals

SONOMA COUNTY COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION: Request For
Proposals & Technical Assistance Meeting
Technical Assistance Meeting:
December 6, 2006
9AM-12PM
Community Development Commission Office
1440 Guerneville Road, Santa Rosa

The Sonoma County Community Development Commission is issuing an
RFP for housing projects located within the incorporated
boundaries of the cities of Cloverdale, Cotati, Healdsburg,
Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Sonoma and the Town of Windsor.
Eligible housing projects are defined to include: new housing
development, acquisition and/or substantial rehabilitation,
moderate rehabilitation, acquisition of market-rate units that
will be covered by affordability restrictions after purchase,
and preservation of affordable units that are at risk of
becoming market-rate units due to expiration of affordability
restrictions.All applicants should attend the Technical
Assistance Session. Any applicant who cannot attend the
scheduled session should contact the Commission staff as soon as
possible. All proposals for Housing Set-Aside Funds must be
submitted to the Community Development Commission by January 7,
2007 at 5PM.

For more information, please contact Cindy Rich, Senior
Community Development Specialist at 707-565-7537.

Transitional House for sale

Molly Ackley, Housing Director at CAP-SC (formerly "Sonoma County PEO") has asked us to post a notice about CAP's plan to sell their Rinwood transitional housing property in Santa Rosa. They would prefer to sell the house to another non-profit that would still use the house for similar purposes. The house has been used as transitional housing for many years. We understand it has 4 bedrooms and 2 baths.

For further information, contact Molly Ackley at CAP-SC 707 579 5033 or e-mail her at mackley(at)capsonoma.org

Report: Fed'l Housing Cuts Cause Homelessness

A coalition of west coast social justice-based homelessness organizations released a report today that documents how more than 25 years of federal funding trends for affordable housing have created the contemporary crisis of homelessness and near-homelessness.
"Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures," documents the correlation between these trends and the emergence of a new and massive episode of homelessness in the 1980s which continues today. It particularly focuses on radical cuts to programs administered by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA), which administers funds for rural affordable housing. Available at www.wraphome.org, the report also demonstrates why federal responses to this nationwide crisis have consistently failed.
The report uses federal budget data and other sources to document that:
· HUD's budget has dropped 65% since 1978, from over $83 billion to $29 billion in 2006.
· The Emergency Shelter phenomenon was born the same year that HUD funding was at a drastic low point. In 1983, HUD's budget was only $18 billion, the same year that general public emergency shelters began opening in cities nationwide.
· HUD has spent $0 on new public housing, while more than 100,000 public housing units have been lost to demolition, sale, or other removal in the last ten years.
· Federal housing subsidies are going to the wealthy. In 2004, 61 percent of these subsidies went to households earning more than $54,788, while only 27 percent went to households earning under $34,398.
· More than 600,000 identified homeless students went to public schools in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the US Department of Education.
· Federal support helps homeowners instead of poor people. In 2005, federal homeowner subsidies totaled more than $122 billion, while HUD outlays were only $31 billion - a difference of more than $91 billion.
"Without Housing blows apart the myth that homelessness is about anything other than deep poverty, the lack of affordable housing, and misplaced priorities," said Brad Paul, executive director of National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness (NPACH). "Historic cuts to the HUD and USDA budgets have fueled the nation's low-income housing crisis, resulting in the suffering of millions. This report begins to set the record straight on the causes and solutions to homelessness."

Shelters can't discriminate

A federal appeals court ruled last week that a city-owned but privately-operated homeless shelter in Boise, Idaho must comply with federal Fair Housing rules. The court ruled that the shelter's "men only" policy violated the federal Fair Housing Act. The court also ruled that by providing chapel services and other religious activities, the shelter and the City of Boise appeared to violate the constitutional prohibition against "governmental indoctrination of religion." The full court opinion is at: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/0D7A8B3C1A68E5538825722100018A28/$file/0536195.pdf?openelement

Homeless Shelters Crowded...

From the 11/13/06 Press Democrat: Demand for shelter beds in Sonoma County outpacing additions in recent years

A cold, wet front that swept into the North Bay last week, dropping temperatures into the low and mid-30s, marked the first serious signs of winter weather this season, an annual shift that spells misery for the area's homeless.

The opening and expansion of several emergency shelters in Santa Rosa and Petaluma during the past few years have created space for at least 265 people that was not available five years ago, all of it available year-round. The county boasts emergency shelter for a total of 625 adults, children and infants.

But finding a bed remains a day-to-day proposition for many people without a home. Individual beds usually become available only as residents leave, or in some cases, when they are turned out for breaking rules like those involving alcohol, drugs or consistent use of the beds assigned them.

Santa Rosa shelters, hovering just below full for much of the past year, have been running at full capacity for the past few weeks, said Nick Baker, program director for the Catholic Charities Homeless Services Center, which handles intake for several local shelters.

The same is true at Petaluma's 2-year-old Mary Isaak Center, run by the Committee on the Shelterless, or COTS. In the past three weeks, there has been an upturn in demand, director Mike Johnson said.

The COTS' facility, with 100 emergency shelter beds, and Santa Rosa's Samuel L. Jones Hall, with 80, have proved crucial additions to the loosely coordinated countywide system.

"After living in the bushes all summer, I love this place," Edward Mayville, homeless since 1986 and a relative newcomer to what's known commonly as Sam Jones, said Friday.

Advocates for the homeless are hopeful space will be adequate for those who seek basic shelter - at least along the county's central corridor, where shelters and services are concentrated.

But there are always people sleeping outside, and a lack of services on the outskirts - especially in west Sonoma County and the Sonoma Valley - mean people there are more likely to be outdoors, some advocates said.

Click here to see full story

The Housing Bond (Proposition 1-C) Passes

California voters approved Prop 1C, the housing bond which will provide $2.8 billion for housing construction for homeless families with children, battered women, farmworkers, low-income seniors, and other low income peopole. Congratulations to all Prop 1C supporters on this victory for Californians in need! For details, see the Prop 1-C website: http://www.homes4ca.org/