Tag: families

Hard Times and Heating Homes

  • 31% of low-income people said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of time. (Photo by Gerald Downing, courtesy of FEMA)

Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:

Transcript

Now that the price of oil has
dropped, the cost of heating your home
won’t be as high as experts were predicting
this summer. But millions of Americans
are still struggling to pay their heating
bills. Rebecca Williams reports in some
rare cases having your heat shut off can
mean being evicted from your home. And,
in the worst case, it can even mean losing
your children:

Demetria Salinas has three kids. Money is tight and she’s worried about
getting through the winter.

“I’m kinda nervous because I mean what if we don’t have enough to pay the
bills, then what do we do?”

She says she tries to save on heat by putting extra sweaters on her kids, and
turning the furnace off.

“Put the gas on for a little bit and turn it off, and when it gets a little bit
colder, put it back on. But it does definitely mean layering up, even in the
house.”

She says that’s hard on her kids.

Many parents are in these impossible situations. The National Energy
Assistance Director’s Association has found low-income people often have
to choose between paying their heating bills and feeding their kids.

31% said they kept their home so cold it felt unsafe. 20% of low income
people said they had their electricity or gas shut off for some amount of
time.

Phil Thompson works for Capital Area Community Services in Lansing,
Michigan. His agency helps people pay their bills and talks with utility
companies to buy people more time. He says usually utilities won’t shut
heat off in the coldest days of winter.

“Most utility companies are sympathetic to the situation of not having heat
in the wintertime. There’s always those horror stories of a senior or
handicapped individual who froze because their utility was turned off.
They’re going to do everything they can to keep that from happening.”

But Thompson says he sees a lot of people get their heat shut off in the
spring, and it can still get cold then.

Now, in some states, if the heat is shut off – even for just a little while – you
can be evicted.

“In some cases where there’s small children it’s very possible that Child
Protective Services would get involved and possibly remove the kids from
the household when there’s no utilities.”

That’s right – the state can take kids away if the utilities are shut off.

We talked with foster care workers in several states, and they all said that
this is rare. They said they do everything they can to keep families together,
and they can sometimes help pay heating bills. But they also said a home
with no heat is often a sign that something else is wrong.

Andrea Yocum is an investigator with Child Protective Services north of
Detroit.

“Typically there’s other reasons why they’re removed for example, if the
family’s just not willing to pay their bills because they’re using the money
for other things like drugs or alcohol.”

But Yocum says sometimes it’s just not the family’s fault.

“I have had families that were evicted as a result of their landlord not paying
their bills, and utilities turned off the same because the landlord’s not taking
care of what’s happening within the home.”

If families are evicted, it can be temporary, maybe just a couple days until
the heat’s back on. But for families living in poverty, having the heat turned
off again can happen as soon as the next bill is late.

There is some good news this year. There’s federal money that states use to
help people pay their heating bills. Because fuel prices were expected to go
up, Congress doubled that pot of money this year. Most states are reporting
they’re in a better position to help people now.

But winter is just beginning and they’re already getting a lot more people
asking for help with their heating bills than in the past.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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THERE’S iPODS IN THEM APPLE TREES!

  • If you find a wooden apple like this one in a Vermont orchard, you can turn it in for a free iPod (Photo courtesy of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing)

Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:

Transcript

Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:

“Ooh that’s perfect! Perfect fall day. Little Chill in the air.”

That’s orchard owner Nick Cowles and we’re here with him at his orchard.

“Beautiful apple!”

Shelburne Orchards. Near Burlington Vermont.

“Looks out over Lake Champlain.”

And to hear him to tell it, an afternoon spent apple picking is pretty much as
good as it gets.

“Yeah. There’s something about gathering food with your family that’s primal
almost. I see people show up in their cars. The dad, the face is a little pinched. He
had to get the kids in the car. They didn’t really wanna come. His whole life is
stress. And then by the time, the difference in the face when he’s leavin’, it’s just
a whole different face.”

Everyone’s dream weekend, right?

Well. Not exactly. There is one group of people who just aren’t all that thrilled
about fall leaves and apple picking.

“Well yeah. The demographics of Vermont are a little scary right now. We have
the least number of folks in there 20s in the country.”

That’s Bruce Hyde, Commissioner of Tourism for the state of Vermont. He says
the 20-somethings are missing.

“I can understand after going to one of the great colleges we have in a rural state,
that a lot of folks wanna go and experience the big cities and sow their oats.”

And so, as the guy in charge of tourism, Bruce has a mission.

“We’re really trying to attract more young people to the state of Vermont.”

And here’s what he’s up against.

Lulu Miller: “Just wondering if you guys have any plans to go apple picking this
season?”

Student: “Not really. I’m not really into apples.”

Miller: “No?”

Student: “My age? It’s kind of about the debauchery. Sleeping in on Saturdays.
Not going apple picking with the folks. You know?”

I’m talking to college students in a park near New York University.

Student: “It’s not something that I would hear my friends being like, ‘can’t hang
out on Saturday! Going apple picking!’ I just can’t imagine that coming out of
their mouths.”

So what’s a commissioner of tourism to do?

“We were trying to figure out, what’s a way to get more young people into the
orchards? So we came up with an idea. A cute little idea.”

If apples just weren’t enticing enough to lure people to Vermont, Comissioner
Hyde thought, maybe there’s something else they’d prefer to find in the trees.
Like…

“An iPod!”

That’s right in the apple trees of Vermont.

“Macintosh. Courtlans. Red delicious.”

You can find iPods.

“Nano’s. A couple of touch’s. And the just the classic iPod.”

Now they’re not actually dangling from the trees.

“What we did is we made up wooden apples. They have the state seal on them.”

And if you find that, you can turn it and get an ipod.

“Yeah. And it really has brought a lot of people into the orchards. We haven’t
done any kinda survey. But the response I’ve heard from orchards is they’ve
never seen so few apples left on the trees.”

Orchard owner Nick Cowles agrees.

“Lotta people know about it, have heard about it. ‘Come on mom, lets go look
for the iPod!’ It’s a great program. It does what it set out to do. It really helps the
orchards. They’ve been very smart to do this.”

So what do the college students think?

Student: (laughs) “They’res gonna be iPods with apples!? No way!”

Miller: “Would that make you go? Would it up the ante at all?”

Student: “It absolutely does. I would definitely go apple picking if there was a
chance I could stumble across an iPod.”

But not all of them feel that way, in fact many of them pointed out that luring
people with iPods sounds so wrong. Kinda grinds against the notion of getting
people out into nature.

“Does that feel wrong? No.”

Orchard owner Nick Cowles.

“In my estimation, anything that brings families together, outside, doing
something like that – it doesn’t get any better than that. They’re out in the
orchard, runnin’ around, picking apples – that’s healthy. They’re doin’ it as a
family.”

(boys laughing. “Hey find me an apple!”

Apples. iPods. Whatever it takes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lulu Miller.

(sound of biting an apple)

Related Links

Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

Commentary – Learning From Dog Culture

  • Kyle's dog, Lucy, playing on a tennis court. (Photo by Patrick Sweeney)

For most people – meeting a stranger on the street isn’t something that conjures up the warm fuzzies, but if the stranger happens to be a cute dog that’s a little different. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator and new dog owner Kyle Norris wonders why this is:

Transcript

For most people – meeting a stranger on the street isn’t something that
conjures up the warm fuzzies, but if the stranger happens to be a cute dog
that’s a little different. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s commentator
and new dog owner Kyle Norris wonders why this is:


At age 30, I’m new to dog culture. Growing up my dad was pretty much
allergic to everything with fur. My childhood pets were goldfish, Lizzy the
lizard, and a tiny turtle we found in a neighbor’s pond. Lucy’s the first real
pet I’ve ever owned.


Lucy is 100-percent mutt. When I first saw her last year, my heart melted
into a puddle. She was this trembling little fur-ball with deep-brown,
gumdrop eyes. In the past year, she’s grown into a sweet, skinny, medium-
sized pup.


The thing that struck me the most as a new dog-owner was the way
strangers responded to her.


This summer I was walking Lucy through a campground with my girlfriend. We passed a
man in a lawn-chair, clutching a cold one. He looked up, “That’s a good-
looking dog you got there, lady.”


Compliments like that are small potatoes for Lucy. Another time, my
girlfriend and I were walking the pup downtown. We passed a fancy
restaurant with sidewalk tables. Suddenly this glamorous-looking woman
cried out-loud. “Well hell-o gorgeous!” It caught me off-guard. I thought
she was talking to me. For that frozen moment of time, I felt slick, and then I
watched her bend down and nuzzle Lucy’s face.


People pour their love on Lucy like butter. “Love” might not be the right
word. Maybe it’s adoration or a combination of warm gooey feelings.
Whatever it is, these people open a floodgate inside themselves, and they
do it in a way that they’d never do with human strangers.


Maybe it’s easier to open-up to creatures. The dog on the street wants very
little from us, and that is refreshing.


Sometimes the dog-walker can use this point to their advantage. On
weekends, my sister used to borrow Lucy with the hope of meeting guys.
They would walk into the heart of downtown, where things were buzzing
with foot traffic. They’d loop the main drag and then hit the smaller side
streets.


It didn’t take long until my sister became frustrated. Potential boyfriends
didn’t even notice the pup. Instead, sorority girls, couples, and families
threw themselves at Lucy—not exactly the crowd she was going for.


My sister has this theory about why people open-up to animals and not each
other. She says, “Animals are free love tied to the end of a string.”


At first, I felt funny when people gave Lucy their “love-fests.” I was on
the receiving end of their attention but I wasn’t really the recipient. Now I
appreciate their interactions for what they are—good intentions released
into the world.


I know the ability to open our hearts in us. I experience it through Lucy
every day. I just wonder why we can’t be this open and generous with one-
another. Or maybe we could. If we were cuter, fuzzier, and didn’t talk so
much.


Host Tag: Kyle Norris is a freelance writer, who lives with her puppy in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.

Report: Commute Times Trending Upward

  • A new study calls for more investment in public transit to reduce commutes and congestion. (Photo by James Lin)

More and more cities are experiencing serious traffic congestion. A new report looked at travel data from 2003 and found that, without massive investment, our daily commutes are likely to increase. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has more:

Transcript

More and more cities are experiencing serious traffic congestion.
A new report looked at travel data from 2003 and found that, without
massive investment, our daily commutes are likely to increase. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has more:


The new study from the Texas Transportation Institute suggests the nation
would have to build five thousand miles of new roads every year just to keep
pace with the growth in car traffic.


Alternatively, they say massive investment in public transit could keep the
problem from getting worse. But co-author Tim Lomax says we’re not paying enough through
gasoline or other taxes to make those big investments.


He says one reason is that we often don’t calculate the cost of what he
calls the “congestion tax.”


“It should be pretty clear that we are paying for congestion right now.
We’re sitting in our cars. We’re not spending time with our businesses or
our families. We’re wasting gas because the operation of our vehicles is
inefficient.”


The Texas researchers say those costs add up, to the tune of about three
point five billion hours worth of traffic delays each year. The study also recommends that traffic engineers raise tolls in some cities and work to curb suburban sprawl in less developed areas.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Part 1: Selling the Family Farm to Developers

  • A former farm field in Central Ohio ready for development. It's an increasingly common sight in this area. This land is right next door to a dairy. Worried about his new neighbors, the farmer is planning to sell. (Photo by Tamara Keith)

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than 9-thousand acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their land. In the first of a two-part series on farmers and the decisions they make about their land, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made the difficult choice to sell:

Transcript

In the Great Lakes region, farmland is rapidly being developed into homes, office parks
and shopping centers. Nationally, farmland is lost at a rate of more than nine-thousand
acres a day. But in order for this development to happen, someone has to sell their
land. Tamara Keith introduces us to some farmers who have made that difficult choice:


At a busy intersection in a newly suburban area, a red barn and white house sit back
off the road. Lush green pasture land hugs the old farm buildings. But the days are
numbered for this bucolic scene.


(sound of construction)


Across the street dozens of condos are under construction… and farmer Roy Jackson has
put this 216-acre farm in Central Ohio under option for development. As soon as the
developer gets approval to build, Jackson’s farm will be no more.


“I’m a third generation farmer and you put your roots down and to see your land be
developed is something I have seen coming, but to actually see it happen across the
road; it’s a sad thing, but it’s progress.”


Sitting on his front porch, Jackson looks our on a neighborhood where once there were farms.


Jackson: “At one point we farmed over 1500 acres and now we’re down to about 300.”


Keith: “What happened?”


Jackson: “We’ve lost a lot of it to development. In the estate of my mom and dad
we had to sell that to settle the estate and that was part of it as well.”


Like many in agriculture, Jackson didn’t own all the land he farmed. He was leasing
it and when the owner decided to sell for development, Jackson was out of luck. Now
he says there’s not enough land left to farm profitably.


“I have a son that wants to farm with me and to do it here, there just isn’t enough
land to sustain two families and make a living for both.”


So, he’s found a big piece of land down in Kentucky, in an area where land is still
plentiful and development pressures are distant. He’s leasing it with an option to buy.
Soon Jackson and his son will have the cattle ranch they’ve been planning for years.
It just won’t be in the state where his family has farmed for three generations.


(sound of heavy machinery)


Workers operate backhoes to grade the ground in an open field that will eventually
be home to some seven-thousand people in a new development. Retired farmer and
agriculture educator Dick Hummel recently sold a portion of this land, allowing
the project to move forward.


“I had some people critical of me because I was going to sell farmland, but on
the other hand, I really didn’t. I traded. You just have to accept that in this
community because that’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has happened. Plus
the fact, it’s been pretty tough farming and this has given a lot of farmers a
chance to sell some land for some excellent prices.”


Hummel sold about 100 acres of farmland and bought some new land – 77 acres –
farther out in the country. His father had bought what Hummel calls the “home farm”
in 1935, and that family history weighed heavily on Hummel when he was deciding what
to do.


“It was harder to decide to sell that land because it had been in my family for many
generations than it was the agricultural part.”


His father bought the land for 100 dollars an acre and Hummel was able to sell it
for a whole lot more. Asked why he sold, Hummel’s answer is simple.


“The offer. I hadn’t thought about selling at all. I didn’t even know that they
would want any of this particular land ’till all at once there were others that
were selling for a price. I heard about that, and first thing I knew, a heck of
a lot of land in this area was selling. So you compare notes as to prices, et
cetera and so forth, and that’s how it happens.”


Hummel says he wasn’t pressured to sell. He’s well past retirement age, and
he says it was the right decision personally. And such is the case for most
farmers who sell their land for development, says Sara Nikolich, Ohio director
with American Farmland Trust.


“You’ve got acres of farmland that can be sold for 20, 30,000 dollars an acre at times.
For a lot of farmers that’s their retirement they’re sitting on, and when you have
development surrounding you and you don’t have any public policy to promote agriculture
and perhaps you don’t have any heirs, you don’t have any options available to you other
than development.”


And so, the personal decisions of individual farmers are transforming some of the
nation’s rural landscape into suburban landscapes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamara Keith.

Related Links

Pets Help Children Cope With Disease

There’s growing evidence that having pets is good for the well-being of their humans. A new study looks at the effect of pets on the lives of chronically ill children. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

There’s growing evidence that having pets is good for the
well-being of their humans. A new study looks at the effect of pets on
the lives of chronically ill children. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tracy Samilton reports:


This study of children living with diabetes was performed by researchers
at the Human-Animal Bond Initiative at Michigan State University. It
found that the children who had close, loving relationships with their
pets had better coping skills and were better at actively managing their
disease than other children.


Researcher Linda Spence says that may be because pets can improve children’s self-esteem and
reduce stress.


“They are consistently there, no matter how awful a day you have. When you come home, they’re
as happy to see you as if you were some sort of celebrity.”


Spence says the next step is to find out what these families are doing
that encourages their chronically ill children to develop close
relationships with pets. She suspects such families treat their pets as
members of the family rather than just animals.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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A Brighter Future for City’s Forest Preserves?

Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:

Transcript

Elected officials say politics and mismanagement have led to the decay of
forest preserves around one of the Great Lakes region’s largest cities. They
say a shift in control of the forest preserves and 100-million dollars will
correct the problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton reports:


Cook County’s Forest Preserve District manages 68-thousand acres of
forest preserves in and around Chicago. Commissioner Forrest Claypool
says something needs to be done soon because years of mismanagement
have left the land and its facilities in horrible condition.


“How can you possibly serve in the summertime these thousands of
families who come into the forest preserves and not provide decent
restrooms – not to mention bridges that are about to fall apart, not
to mention picnic shelters that are burned and falling down, and so
covered with gang graffiti that they’re intimidating and create an
impression of this unsafe place to be.”


Claypool says the Cook County Forest Preserve has been a dumping
ground for political patronage… including a recent financial scandal
which cost the agency almost 20-million dollars.


Three county commissioners say they have a 100-million dollar plan to
fix the dilapidated facilities and clean up the forest preserves… all
without raising taxes. The plan calls for borrowing the money by issuing
bonds. But that means they’ll need the Illinois governor’s approval.


County officials say they would save money by gutting that “bloated”
administration of the Forest Preserve District and turning over many
of its responsibilities to the county.


But nature advocates are wary that the shift in control might compromise the forest
preserve’s mission of holding and acquiring natural land.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.

Bigger Homes, Better Living?

  • American houses are getting bigger and bigger, but some architects question whether more square footage leads to a happier life. Photo by Lester Graham.

Although family size is growing smaller in the U.S., house sizes are growing larger. The square footage of a home built in the 1950’s seems tiny compared to the houses typically built in the suburbs today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the trend of ever-larger houses:

Transcript

Although family size is growing smaller in the U.S., house sizes are growing larger. The square
footage of a home built in the 1950’s seems tiny compared to the houses typically built in the
suburbs today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the trend of ever-
larger houses:


There’s no one answer as to why we’re building bigger houses. For some people, it’s a matter of
investing. Housing prices continue to rise and bigger houses sell well. People trade up. But…
for some homebuyers, it’s more than that. It’s a statement.


Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Home Builders.


“A lot of that could be a status symbol. Move out of the city; move into a rural-like area because
‘I’ve made it,’ because ‘This is my dream.’ It used to be people would move up, sell their homes
every seven to ten years. That’s changed now and the sale of homes is now three to five years.
You build up the equity in a new home or an existing home, you have the opportunity to build or
move into something else later. It is an investment.”


Investing in a house only explains some of the reason houses are getting larger. Another reason is
government. Local governments are zoning residential areas into large lot subdivisions. Egbert
says that means the builder has to build a big house, just to recoup the cost of the sizeable piece
of land.


“That is a preclusion, a prohibition against Smart Growth. When they have large lots sizes, it
absolutely dictates and mandates that anybody who moves in there is going to have a large
home.”


It’s an attempt by towns to keep out lower-income people who might build homes that lower the
property values of a neighborhood.


But there’s a demand for the bigger houses and it doesn’t seem to be letting up. So, cities and
towns zone for them, builders build them, and people buy them – bigger and bigger.


Linda Groat is a professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture. She
says it’s not too surprising. People feel less connected to the community at large because they
move often, drive somewhere else to work, and see their home as a refuge. Home is where they
can relax and escape from the rest of the world.


“There may be, on the part of some people, a feeling of need to really make it more of a castle to
compensate for what feels more complicated or out of control in the larger world.”


We feel we need private places that we can call our own. But there might be social costs to that
refuge. There’s often little interaction with neighbors and the rest of the community in which we
live. And Groat says even within the home all that space means family members don’t have to
bump into each other on the way to the bathroom. Groat says in the new large suburban homes,
sometimes derisively called McMansions, everyone can pursue their own activities in different
parts of the house.


“If you buy a McMansion and the master bedroom is off on one wing and or a different floor and
the kids are off in huge rooms way on the other side of the house, is that really going to foster
family connection?”


Some architects are becoming aware the scale of housing is beginning to leave smaller
families with a sense of emptiness, not a sense of space. Sarah Susanka is one of the leaders of a
movement to re-evaluate the concept of whether bigger is really better. The first question is
“Why?” Why are we building bigger houses?


“Well, there’s obviously a large market for larger and larger homes. And my belief is that people
are trying to fill a void in their lives with the only tool that we’ve really defined for ourselves in
this culture which is: more. More stuff. More square footage. You know, more indication that
we’ve arrived. All that stuff.”


But Susanka says there’s a longing underneath all that, an idea that there should be some better
quality of life that’s not being satisfied by just more square footage. She’s the author of a series
of books that started with one entitled “The Not So Big House.” She argues that people can use
the money they’d spend on additional square footage for space that’s rarely used for better
designed spaces where they actually live day-to-day. She says if the house is an investment, then
it should be an investment in quality craftsmanship and better living, not just more space.


“When something is thrown together and just is sort of raw space, but not much else, over time
it’s going to degenerate. And, the amount of square footage obviously has a direct correlation
with the amount of resources it takes to build it. So by making something that’s tailored to fit – in
other words, not with excess material – and then that’s going to last a long time that that should be
the first step in sustainable design.”


Graham: “So, you suspect a lot of these McMansions or starter-castles, as you call them, aren’t going to be
around very long?”


“Yeah, I think in the long haul those are not going to survive in the same way and are probably
not going to be looked after in the same way over time just because they’re not as well put
together and they don’t have the charm that’s going to make somebody want to look after them in
the future.”


Susanka says using resources for bigger houses is not environmentally friendly and does not
necessarily mean better living. She says builders and homebuyers should think about it this way:
build the space you need and do it well and do it in a way that somebody in the future will want to
preserve.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Lead Poisoning Still Plagues Cities

It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since the United States government banned the use of lead-based paint in homes. Yet, more than 800,000 young children still suffer from lead poisoning. In some parts of the nation, more than one in four children under the age of six have elevated lead levels in their bloodstream. The problem is especially pressing in communities with older housing stock. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Edwards reports:

Transcript

It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since the United States government banned the use of lead-based
paint in homes. Yet, more than 800-thousand young children still suffer from lead poisoning. In some
parts of the nation, more than one in four children under the age of six have elevated lead levels in their
blood stream. The problem is especially pressing in communities with older housing stock. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Edwards reports:


Elaine Mohammed and her husband recently moved into a new apartment in the up and coming Rogers
Park neighborhood on Chicago’s far north side. It has a nursery for their baby, a study for Elaine to work
on her Ph.D. and a front-row view overlooking Lake Michigan.


The Mohammeds were just settling into their spacious new home when their pediatrician revealed some
alarming news. Their 10-month old son, Zachary, had elevated levels of lead in his blood stream.


“It was just horrifying. I mean, because I immediately thought of the extreme end – you know, that kids
get brain damaged from lead poisoning. And so that was our first worry, you know, is he going to
become brain damaged? Is he going to have problems learning to speak or is it going to affect his
physical development? And that’s an on-going worry because he may have problems once he goes to
school. He may have problems learning to read. He may have problems with attention, um, with behavior
problems, so that’s a big worry. That’s the biggest worry.”


(baby making noises)


Just outside the back door of Elaine’s apartment, Steve Mier, shows us the problem – chipping and
cracking lead-based paint. Steve Mier is the Assistant Program Director of the Children’s’ Lead Poisoning
Division for the Chicago Department of Public Health.


As we walk up the back staircase of Elaine’s building, he points to one of the tell-tale signs of lead paint,
something he calls, alligatoring:


“And what that is, as you can see here, that the lead based paint, or the paint itself, is starting to break up
very uniformly where it looks like its, uh, simply looks like alligator scales on the back of a back – where
the lines go up and down and sometimes across.”


“Ok, we can see inside here. We’re standing on the outside just on the staircase, but if we peak in this
window…”


“Ok, here in this window, well, you can see there’s a lot of deteriorated paint. Now when that lead starts
to turn to dust is when it poses a particular hazard to children because the dust, once you open that
window and close it of course, you get gusts of wind that go through and they can blow that lead dust
onto the floor.”


And that’s exactly what has Elaine Mohammed worried.


After learning about Zachary’s lead poisoning, inspectors from the department of public health tested her
home for lead. What they found was a virtual hot zone.


“In this apartment, it’s mainly the window wells, the balcony, all the paint in the kitchen and the rear
bedroom, which would be his bedroom. All that is all lead paint.”


The city of Chicago is notifying her landlord of the problem. Under city ordinance, all building owners
must come up with a plan to fix the building within 15 days of receiving notice from the city. Inspectors
then monitor the clean up plan to ensure it’s done properly and doesn’t stir up even more lead dust. The
city is also urging landlords to conduct yearly inspections of their buildings and to consider replacing
windows where necessary.


In the meantime, Elaine Mohammed’s number one priority is making sure Zachary doesn’t come into
contact with any more lead dust. That means cleaning the apartment constantly:


“And washing his toys all the time, and remembering to take my shoes off the minute I come into the
apartment and, you know, things like that. Wiping the window sills, making sure he doesn’t play in this
area.”


According to the city of Chicago’s Department of Public Health, Chicago has the most lead-poisoned
children of any city in the United States. The most recent statistics put the number at more than 55,000.


But the department says the numbers are probably a lot higher. That’s because only one out of three
children in Chicago is tested for lead. These high levels are due mostly to the thousands of old homes and
apartment buildings covered with lead-based paint.


But Chicago is not alone. Cities with aging housing stock like Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee have
high lead poisoning rates.


And states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin have rates that exceed the national average as well.


Northwestern University’s Dr. Helen Binns is an expert on childhood lead poisoning. She says the
problem of lead exposure isn’t just an urban one:


You know, there are homes in suburban areas that were the original farmhouse that was there. So, it’s not
city-suburb. It’s “look at your risk within your own environment,” particularly the home in which your
child is growing up. Or the home in which they spend their day care. Or the home that’s the
grandparents home.


Doctors are still trying to understand exactly how lead affects humans, but they do know two things for
sure: It takes just a small amount of lead to cause damage, and the effects of lead poisoning are
irreversible. Even slight exposure to lead during those crucial early years of a child’s development can
impede learning and alter behavior. That’s in part because once lead is in a child’s blood stream it’s
difficult to get out.


Again Dr. Helen Binns:


“The time at which it takes to release the lead is very long. The half-life of lead in bone is 20 years. So,
once you’ve released a threshold of concern level in the blood of a young child, they’re gonna be at that
level for a very long time.”


Treatments do exist to help lower those levels.


Good parenting is also a key prescription. Reading, talking, and playing games stimulates a child’s mind
and can offset some of the harmful effects of lead poisoning.


That’s a message Elaine Mohammed has taken to heart.


But it’s cold comfort when you’re spending your days and nights in a lead-ladened apartment.


So why not just move out?


“Because I don’t think – given that, you know, so many buildings are old buildings, that this problem, this
problem…I mean, I didn’t realize that it’s really, really widespread in Chicago. And I don’t know at this
point that moving to another building is going to protect us in anyway. Unless I can move to a very new
building, it may have exactly the same problems.”


So, for now, the solution is to clean, mop, sweep, and clean some more. It’s a round-the-clock war
against lead dust.


But it’s a war Elaine Mohammed vows to win.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Steve Edwards in Chicago.

The city of Chicago recently filed a federal lawsuit against several former manufacturers of lead-based paint. The city wants companies such as Sherwin Williams and Glidden to help pay for the cost of lead abatement.