A mortgage program through Fannie Mae can help people buy older
homes and make them more energy efficient with one loan. (Photo by Lester
Graham)
As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills,
one loan officer in the region is promoting energy efficiency when
people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills, one loan officer in the
region
is promoting energy efficiency when people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
The government and government-chartered companies such as Fannie Mae offer Energy
Efficient Mortgages. But relatively few homeowners take advantage of them. Under the
program, new or existing homes are inspected and rated for energy efficiency. The
homeowners decide which energy-efficient improvements to do, and then roll the cost of
them into their mortgage.
Joel Wiese is a loan officer. He recently closed one of the few non-governmental
energy
efficient mortgages in the Great Lakes region.
“When you start looking at the total housing expense, utilities on top of the rest
of what
you’re doing, you’re basically going to spend less money than you normally would.
Because you’re reducing your utilities. Even though you’re increasing your mortgage
slightly, you’re reducing your utilities significantly. It’s a win-win.”
Wiese says there haven’t been more energy efficient mortgages in the region because
few
realtors, loan officers and lenders know how to use the program.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Proposals to build greenways in Detroit are raising interest, hopes, and concerns. (Photo by Val Head)
Many cities looking to revitalize their urban centers
have turned to greenways to spur economic development. Greenways are pedestrian or bike paths that typically run between parks, museums, or shopping districts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on hopes that greenways will breathe new life into one of America’s most blighted urban landscapes:
Transcript
Many cities looking to reviatlize their urban centers have turned to greenways to spur economic development. Greenways are pedestrian or bike paths that typically run between parks, museums, or shopping districts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports on hopes that greenways will breathe new life into one of America’s most blighted urban landscapes:
This abandoned rail line twenty-five feet below street level might not be many peoples’ first choice for a walk or a bike ride. But Tom Woiwode thinks soon it might be. Woiwode is the director of the GreenWays Initiative for all of Southeast Michigan. When he takes a look down this former Grand Trunk Western Rairoad line in Detroit, he doesn’t see the fast food wrappers, tires, and crashed and rusting shopping carts. He sees trees and grass and benches. And more importantly, he sees people, and places for people to spend their money.
“So maybe a bike repair shop, restaurants, some opportunities for music venues and those sorts of things, so people can ride their bike on down to the riverfront and along the way either stay here for lunch, or along the way stop and rest and enjoy the ambiance, or take their food and go on down to the riverfront where they can enjoy the extraordinary natural resources of the river as well.”
We’re standing near the city’s sprawling open-air produce market. It’s one of the most popular draws for people from inside and outside the city limits. When it’s complete, the greenway will link the market to Detroit’s greatest natural asset: the Detroit River. Greenways are a new redevelopment concept in Detroit. But elsewhere, Woiwode says, they’ve proven a well-tested urban redevelopment tool.
“In fact, back in the late 90’s, the mayors of Pittsburgh and Denver – two municipalities that are roughly similar in size to Detroit – both characterized their greenways programs as the most important economic development programs they had within the city.”
Minneapolis is another city that’s had success with greenways. In fact, backers of the greenway plan in downtown Detroit say they were inspired by a similar project there. Last month, Minneapolis completed the second phase of what will eventually be a five-mile greenway along an abandoned rail line much like the one in Detroit. It’s called the Midtown Greenway. And it’ll eventually link the Chain of Lakes to the Mississippi River thruogh neighborhoods on the city’s south side.
Eric Hart is a Minneapolis Midtown Greenway Coalition board member. He says even the greenway’s most avid supporters joked that people might continue to use it as a dumping ground for abandoned shopping carts like they did when it was just a trench.
“Since then, since it was done in 2000, there’s been a lot of interest in the development community to put high-density residential structures right along the edge of the greenway. And it’s viewed more like a park now.”
Since the first phase was completed in 2000, one affordable housing development and a 72-unit market-rate loft project have been completed. And five more housing developments – mostly condos – are in the planning stages. Hart says people use the greenway for recreation and for commuting by bicycle to their jobs.
Colin Hubbell is a developer in Detroit. He says he’s all for greenways, as long as they’re not competing for dollars with more pressing needs in a city like Detroit: good schools, for example. Or safe neighborhoods. Hubbell says the question needs to be asked: If you build it, will they come?
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure, if, given the perception problem that we have as a city, how many people on bikes are going to go down in an old railroad right away, I’m not sure even if that’s the right thing to do, given the fact that – I mean, we have a street system. And just because there’s a greenway doesn’t mean if somebody’s on Rollerblades or a bicycle that they’re not going to stay on a greenway.”
Hubbell says Detroit already has a lot of streets and not much traffic – leaving plenty of room for bicyclists. Hubbell says it might be cheaper to paint some bike lanes, and put up signs. But he says connecting the city’s cultural and educational institutions, the river, and commercial districts with greenways is a good idea – as long as they’re running through areas where people will use them.
Kelli Kavanaugh says that’s exactly what’s happening with greenway plans in the city. Kavanaugh is with the Greater Corktown Economic Development Corporation in southwest Detroit.
“You can’t just stick a greenway in the middle of a barren, abandoned neighborhood and expect use. But when you put one into a growing neighborhood, a stabilizing neighborhood, it really works as another piece of the quality of life puzzle to kind of support existing residents, but also attract new residents to the area. It’s another amenity.”
Greenway backers say for a city struggling just to maintain its population, Detroit can only benefit from safe, pleasant places to walk and bike. And if other cities are any indication, they say greenways should also help bring another kind of green into Detroit.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
Urban sprawl sometimes conjures up images of subdivisions sprouting
up in cornfields. But land use experts say the term should also include a
focus on the central cities that are left behind.
(Photo by Lester Graham)
Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White flight began the exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in perpetuating sprawl. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often overlooked:
Transcript
Experts seldom talk about one of the driving forces behind urban sprawl. White
flight began the
exodus of whites from city centers, and racial segregation is still a factor in
perpetuating sprawl.
In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the issue that’s often
overlooked:
Land use advocates argue that urban sprawl and deteriorating inner cities are two
sides of the
same coin. The tax money that pays for new roads and sewer systems for sprawl and the
investments that pay for new strip malls is money that’s spent at the expense of
city centers
because it’s not invested there.
For the most part, all of that investment is made in communities that are
overwhelmingly white.
Those left behind in the cities are often people of color who are struggling with
high taxes to pay
for the deteriorating infrastructure and government services designed for
populations much larger
than are left today.
White flight was aided by government and business institutions. Government home
loans for
veterans of World War II that made those nice subdivisions possible didn’t seem to
make it into
the hands of black veterans. Banks often followed a practice of redlining. And
real estate
brokers also worked to make sure the races remained segregated.
Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies
Center. Farley says today, when planners and government officials talk about white
flight and
segregation, they talk in the past tense. They don’t like to acknowledge that
racism like that
still exists…
“Well, I think there is a lot of effort to underestimate the continued importance of
racial
discrimination and the importance of race in choosing a place to live. There’s been
a modest
decrease in segregation in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, it would be a serious
mistake to
overlook the importance of race in the future of the older cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.”
Farley says as recently as two years ago a federal government study looked at real
estate
marketing practices and found there were still “code phrases” that indicated whether
neighborhoods were white or black.
“Subtle words would clearly convey to white customers the possibility that there are
blacks
living there, the schools aren’t in good quality. And the subtle words could convey
to blacks
that they wouldn’t be welcomed in living in a white neighborhood.”
In the North… racism has evolved from overt to covert. It’s a wariness between
the races not talked about in polite society. It becomes more evident as solidly
middle-class blacks begin to move into older suburbs and whites flee once again to
newer
subdivisions even farther from the city core.
Land Use and ‘Smart Growth’ advocates say it’s time to face up to the continuing
practice of
segregation. Charlene Crowell is with the Michigan Land Use Institute. She says it
starts by
talking about the fears between white people and black people.
“By not addressing those fears, the isolation and the separation has grown. So,
until we are able
to talk and communicate candidly, then we’ll continue to have our problems.”
But it’s uncomfortable for most people to talk about race with people of another
race. Often we
don’t talk frankly. Crowell says we’ll be forced to deal with our feelings about
race sooner or
later. That’s because as more African-Americans join the middle-class, the suburbs
are no longer
exclusively white…
“My hope is that those who feel comfortable in moving further and further away from
the urban
core will come to understand that they cannot run, that there are in fact black
homeowners who
are in the suburbs and moving into the McMansions just as many whites are. And we
all have to
look at each other. And we all have to understand that this is one country and we
are one
people.”
In cities such as Detroit, white flight led to rampant urban sprawl in the
surrounding areas
and left huge pockets of poverty and streets of abandoned houses in the inner city.
Heaster
Wheeler is the Executive Director of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP. He says
while his
constituents often worry about more pressing urban issues, he knows that it’s
important that
African-Americans living in the city recognize farmland preservation and urban
revitalization
are connected. The investment that paves over a corn field is investment that’s not
going to
rebuild the city. But… black politicians largely have not been
involved in land use issues and usually they’re not asked to get involved…
“There is a racial divide on this particular issue. Often times African-Americans,
people of color and folk who live in the urban centers are not present at the
discussions about
Smart Growth.”
Wheeler says policymakers on both sides of the racial divide need to recognize that
land use
issues are as much about abandoned city centers as they are about disappearing
farmland…
which could put urban legislators and rural legislators on the same team. That’s a
coalition
that could carry a lot of sway in many states.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Urban sprawl doesn't just alter the land in the suburbs. Central
cities are affected by the loss of investment when people leave the cities
and tax dollars are instead invested in building roads and sewers in the
surrounding areas. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts. Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham looks at the divide between city and suburb:
Transcript
Concern about urban sprawl is often limited to the loss of farmland, traffic
congestion, and unattractive development. But urban sprawl has other impacts.
Building the roads and sewers to serve new subdivisions uses state and federal tax
money, often at the expense of the large cities that are losing population to the
suburbs. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
looks at the divide between city and suburb:
What some people call urban sprawl got started as the federal government’s answer to
a severe housing shortage. There wasn’t a lot of building going
on during the Great Depression. At the end of World War II, returning GIs needed
houses.
Reynolds Farley is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Population
Studies Center. Farley says the federal government offered veterans low-interest
loans and developers started building modest homes on green lawns on the edge of
cities. But because of discrimination, the loans didn’t as often make it into the
hands of African-American veterans. Instead of segregated neighborhoods in the
city, segregation lines were newly drawn between city and
suburb.
“Very low-cost mortgages accelerated the movement of whites from the central city
out to the suburbs… built upon the long racial animosity that characterized cities
beginning at the time of the first World War and continuing, perhaps up to the
present.”
With segregation, there was a shift of wealth. Farley says jobs and purchasing
power were exported to the suburbs with the help of the interstate highway system.
And big new shopping centers displaced retail in downtowns.
People with low-incomes, often people of color, were left behind in cities of
abandoned houses and vacant storefronts that often didn’t have enough tax base to
maintain roads and services.
John Powell is a professor at Ohio State University. He’s written extensively on
urban sprawl and its effects on urban centers.
“So, we move jobs away, we move tax base away, we move good schools away and then
the city becomes really desperate and they’re trying to fix the problems, but all
the resources have been moved away.”
With no way found to fix the cities, whites have been moving out of cities to the
suburbs for decades. And now, middle-class blacks are moving out too. For some
metropolitan areas, leaving the city has become a
matter of income… although Powell says even then African-Americans have a more
difficult time finding a way out.
“Race never drops out of the equation. In reality, even middle-class blacks don’t
have the same mobility to move to opportunity that even working-class whites do
because of the way race works in our society.”
So, segregation continues. But now the line is drawn between middle-class blacks in
the older, inner-ring suburbs, whites in the outer-ring suburbs… and for the most
part in cities such as Detroit, poorer blacks left behind in the central city.
Smarth Growth advocates say part of the answer to urban sprawl is finding a way to
get more money back into the central-cities to make them more attractive to
everyone. That’s worked in cities such as Portland, Oregon and Minneapolis-St.
Paul. But those cities and their suburbs are predominantly white. For Northern
cities with greater racial divides, cities such as Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St.
Louis and Detroit it’s different. A lot of white suburbanites don’t want tax
dollars going to blacks in the city. And African-Americans in the city don’t see
urban sprawl as their issue, so ideas such as tax revenue sharing for a metropolitan
region are not a priority. The issue of regional tax equity that
works in predominantly white regions… becomes muddied by racial animosity in
segregated regions.
“Buzz’ Thomas is state senator in Michigan who has taken on the issue of urban
sprawl and its counterpart, the deterioration of city centers. Senator Thomas says
if state legislatures can’t find an answer to help cities, sprawl in the suburbs
will continue, paving over green space and farmland.
“You know, poverty and jobs and access to health care and access to quality
education are very realistic issues for cities like Detroit. But, a reality is they
go hand-in-hand with sprawl. As your black middle-class moves out of the inner city
because they’re not satisfied with those resolution to those issues. You know, it
links sprawl.”
Senator Thomas says legislators from rural areas and from urban areas are beginning
to realize they have a common issue. But before they can get to discussions of
regional tax equity, they first have to talk about the more difficult issue of
race…
“And have a discussion that might make me uncomfortable, that might make those
that I discuss it with uncomfortable. Only then, I think, can we really adequately
figure out how long it’s going to take us to resolve that issue.”
In the meantime, many cities are still losing population and revenue. Suburbs
continue to sprawl. And farms are becoming subdivisions, retail strip malls and
fast food restaurants.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
A new study puts nine Great Lakes cities near the top of the list of cities where transportation costs strain household budgets. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Rice reports:
Transcript
A new study puts nine Great Lakes cities near the top of the list of
cities
where transportation costs strain household budgets. The Great Lakes
Radio
Consortium’s Bill Rice reports:
The study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project in Washington
shows
transportation is the second highest household expense across the
nation,
led only by housing.
Michelle Ernst, who authored the study, says Americans spend an average
of
about 19 cents per dollar on transportation. She says cities that rank
high
tend to have less-than-optimal public transit.
“What we found is that investing in good public transportation
service tends to lower private costs, family costs for transportation.
And so
what we call for in the study is providing people with more
transportation choices.”
And not just public transit, Ernst says, but safe bicycle paths and
sidewalks as well.
Cleveland is among the top five cities where families’ transportation
costs are
exceptionally high. The list includes eight other cities in the Great
Lakes region.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Rice.
In recent decades, lead poisoning in children has gone down significantly. Some large cities have worked hard to eradicate the causes of the problem. But children in some areas are still being exposed to lead through old lead paint and other sources. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports the concern about continuing high levels of lead in children’s blood demands that those cities also tackle the problem:
Transcript
In recent decades, lead poisoning in children has gone down significantly. Some large
cities have worked hard to eradicate the causes of the problem. But children in some
areas are still being exposed to lead through old lead paint and other sources. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports the concern about continuing high levels of
lead in children’s blood demands that those cities also tackle the problem:
In Cleveland, school superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett has found a test that puts her
students in the top ten nationwide. But this is not something that she wants for her
students.
This test finds that 20% of children in Cleveland have too much lead in their
bloodstreams.
“One out of every five children tested in Cleveland has a lead level that exceeds CDC
guidelines. In some parts of our city, I would characterize it as an epidemic.”
Byrd-Bennett is especially concerned about recent statistics from parts of the city
where there are lots of older houses, but most people don’t have the money to get
rid of lead paint. In some neighborhoods, the lead blood levels exceeded federal
standards in about 60% of children tested. Byrd-Bennett says it’s intolerable.
“In a half a dozen other city neighborhoods, at least one of every four children
had an elevated level. We ought to be furious. We ought to want to…
I’m a product of the sixties… we ought to want to have a revolution about this.”
Byrd-Bennett believes high levels of lead in the blood makes it difficult for affected
children to focus, to follow directions, and ultimately, to stay in school. High lead
exposure has been linked to juvenile delinquency, learning disabilities, and lowered IQ
scores.
Dr. Bruce Lanphear studies environmental health at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He
says these problems are not only associated with high exposure, defined by the federal
government as over ten micrograms of lead per deciliter
of blood…
“But perhaps even more striking is if you look at children below ten micrograms per
deciliter… that is, children whose blood lead levels never attained or exceeded ten
micrograms per deciliter… so by all accounts would have been fine, based upon our
existing action level. And what we found is, our estimated deficit, going from less than
one to less than ten, or about ten, was fifteen points in IQ. Huge effects.”
That means even in cities where the percentage of children considered at risk of high lead
levels is low, there’s still reason to be concerned. And there are a lot of children
affected. For example, in Cleveland, nearly 14,000 young children could have low
levels of lead poisoning.
Still, David Jacobs, Director of Lead Hazard Control at the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development is hopeful…
“If we’re smart about this and we work together, I believe we can in fact make lead paint
hazards in our housing stock virtually disappear. This disease can go the way of polio.
We have the know-how now to eliminate this disease.”
Childhood lead poisoning has declined steadily since the 1970s. That’s when cars
stopped spewing leaded exhaust and lead paint was banned. But 40% of homes
around the nation still contain lead paint from the first half of the 20th century. Rather
than getting to kids after they’ve been poisoned, many cities are focusing on how to
prevent exposures in the first place. Parents, landlords, and public agencies usually
shoulder the costs of repainting walls and refurbishing windows. But Dr. Lanphear of
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital believes paint companies should help pay to fix the
problem, because they are partly responsible for it.
“And so all of the problems that we’re seeing today, because for the most part what we’re
dealing with is lead-based paint, has come about because of this deception. And so if we
need to look toward private industry to help us solve this problem, I would suggest we
know exactly where to begin. That may be difficult in the state of Ohio. We have a lot
of paint companies housed here, don’t we?”
Sherwin Williams and Glidden paint companies are both based in Cleveland. The paint
industry says it’s not their fault if houses are poorly maintained and not regularly
repainted. So far, forty lawsuits against lead paint companies have failed.
In the
meantime, some cities, such as Milwaukee and Chicago, have honed in on finding
funding and solving the problem. Cleveland and many other cities have not.
Matt Carroll, Acting Director of the Cleveland Health Department, says the time has
come…
“A lot of lead activity has been going on in this community for a long time. But as a
community have we said, ‘this is how we’re going to try to create a plan to address it?
This is our goal? This is our thing we’re going to say we’re going to accomplish by a certain date?'”
Cleveland city and county health officials are focusing on how to get rid of the lead
problem. They hope to better educate parents, to improve lead testing of children and
homes, and to clean up homes that are poisoned. Like many large and mid-size cities,
Cleveland has a lot of work ahead.
But at least they’re on the road. Many smaller cities and towns don’t even know if they
have a problem because so few children there are tested for lead poisoning.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.
Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community, residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer reports:
Transcript
Urban sprawl is affecting communities across the Great Lakes region. In one Ohio community,
residents are turning to their churches to fight back. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Schaefer reports:
Forest Hill Presbyterian Church was built in Cleveland Heights 100 years ago. Pastor John Lentz
says, in its heyday, some 15-hundred people regularly walked to church services every week.
Today, the congregation totals just 600. Lentz says it’s a constant struggle to replace those who
leave his flock for the greenfield developments that surround the urban center.
“Churches are anchors of communities and I think we need to be active in the kinds of issues that
affect our communities, like fair and open housing and education, and really make it our mission to equip
faithful people to, you know, walk the walk.”
He and other religious leaders have banded together to form the Northeast Ohio Alliance for
Hope. The group is working with 15 Cleveland suburbs, taking on issues like predatory lending,
school funding, and home repair.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Schaefer.
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.
This old industrial building once housed a company that manufactured refrigerator coils. Now, planners are hoping to revitalize it by making a place where artists can live and work. (Photo courtesy of the Enterprise Group of Jackson)
For many cities in the Rust Belt region, the glory days of manufacturing have long passed. These communities are now left trying to figure out how to revitalize their downtowns. One city is hoping a development for artists will create new life and draw people back downtown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:
Transcript
For many cities in the Rust Belt region, the glory days of manufacturing have long passed. These
communities are now left trying to figure out how to revitalize their downtowns. One city is hoping
a development for artists will create new life and draw people back
downtown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports.
The city of Jackson is in South Central Michigan, about an hour west of
Detroit. Four blocks from its downtown, next to the old armory and the
remains of an old prison wall, there’s a smokestack and a rundown complex of
industrial buildings.
(key & sound of door opening)
“The last company that was doing full blown manufacturing in this complex of buildings was Acme
Industries that focused on refrigeration coils. We’re gonna walk straight down here.”
(footsteps on stairs fade under)
Kay Howard is a ceramic artist. She and her husband Phil Shiban are getting a tour of the
buildings. Since the early 1900’s when this complex was built, it’s been home to many businesses,
but since the 1970’s, its been basically abandoned.
“At the top of the stairs step to the right. Don’t step on the white board. It covers a hole in the
floor.”
(steps & sounds of glass & floor tiles crunching
Green and yellow paint peels and curls off the walls. The floor is littered with broken glass from
the building’s windows. And there are piles of bird droppings, broken lightbulbs, and rotting boards.
But Kay Howard and her husband are thinking about living here.
“It has so much that can be held onto. I hate seeing buildings knocked down or left in disrepair
when they could be reused and revitalized, and this just screams to have something done with it.”
These buildings are slated to become the Armory Arts Project. The plan is
to turn this 147-thousand square foot complex into an arts facility. It
would become the home to cultural organizations, arts-friendly commercial
businesses, studio space, and residential units that designed to meet the
specific living and working needs of artists, musicians, dancers, jewelers
and the like. Neeta Delaney is the project’s director.
“The driving force behind this is community revitalization. The impetus for this whole development
was really the existence of several tax-free renaissance zones.”
A renaissance zone is what Michigan calls its tax-free areas that were
created to spur development. Delaney says the project costs would
have been around 14-million dollars. They’re whittling down the out of
pocket costs by packaging together tax credits they get for cleaning
up a old industrial site, for renovating historic buildings, and for
creating low income housing. However when they approached developers with
the idea, they were told there was no way to make a go of it. But a
non-profit group from Minneapolis called ArtsSpace Projects Incorporated had a
different opinion. Chris Velasco is the director of Artspace.
“It’s not going to nor is Artspace designing it to generate
Money, but it will cover its costs.”
Artspace has successfully turned dozens of dilapidated buildings in a
number of different cities into affordable places where artists can live
and work. He says while Jackson doesn’t have a reputation as a bastion for
the arts, their market research showed there was more than enough demand
for such a facility in the city.
“If we were to create a multi-purpose arts facility use space in there we would have arts and
organizations 3-deep for every space that we create.”
He says that’s because artists have a hard time finding affordable spaces
where they can raise their kids that can also accommodate the tools of
their trade such as kilns, 10 foot tall canvases, and metal working
equipment. And he says the Armory Arts Project could fill that need.
“Isn’t this gorgeous? Oh my. Oh, this is just awesome.”
Project director Neeta Delaney leads the group to the top floor of one of
the old buildings where sunlight is streaming in through the broken
windows.
“Isn’t it great? Oh my. It is so beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And you think about residential units
up here. Live-work space, you know. This has got to be ideal.”
“This is the space that sold us on the building.”
That’s Steve Czarnecki, the CEO for the Enterprise Group of Jackson. It’s the umbrella
organization for economic development in the area that oversees the counties renaissance zones.
“Because when we first came up here, what else could you imagine this to be except a
place for artists.”
And he says once they figure out how to lure artists to Jackson it will be
easier to lure desirable high-tech business and their employees to the community.
“I think we have to increase our Bohemian Index a little bit here to attract those kind of people.”
See, artists have a track record for moving into old warehouse and industrial areas where
rents are low, fixing it up, and making a community hip and attractive.
The rub is they often then get priced out of the market. But rent at the
Armory Arts Project, like other ArtsSpace projects, will remain low.
And for artists like Kay Howard and Phil Chiban, affordable housing is one
attraction of the project. They support themselves on his pension
payments and her pottery sales. But there’s another reason they’re
interested. The couple is drawn to the idea of living with other working
artists.
“You get kind of solitary as an artist and you really need that contact and comradery and so forth,
so the idea of living in a community-type setting with other artists is very exciting.”
And she’s also excited about the prospect of being part of a project that recycles an abandoned
building and one that could bring excitement to a
downtown in need of new life.
“This has character you can’t design or duplicate. And look at the metal doors. Isn’t this amazing?”
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
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.
A mortgage program through Fannie Mae can help people buy older homes and make them more energy efficient with one loan. (Photo by Lester Graham)
