A school bus is typically full of eager, excited kids.
But for the Flood family, a school bus is home. It’s a place full of the essentials: food, hot water, clothes and a place to rest.
During the summer of 2018, David Flood, who was working as a substitute teacher and studying for his master’s, had to quit his job. He needed to take care of his three kids and his wife, Jennifer Flood, who was too sick to work. Rent payments, student loans and hospital bills piled up, and the family was evicted from their home. They were left with only their car and a tent to sleep in.
“We didn’t think it would happen to us—but it did,” David Flood told Julie Atkins, the founder of Vehicles for Changes. “It’s not just the uneducated. I’m finishing my master’s degree. I had nowhere to work, so the skoolie enables me to get it done. I’m so relieved.”
In November 2018, their precarious sleeping situation changed, thanks to Vehicles for Changes, a nonprofit that outfits retired school buses for families experiencing homelessness.
The family moved into a “skoolie,” a term for a bus converted into a home. After being cramped in their car, the family had a chance to stretch out for the first time in months.
Vehicles for Changes launched in May 2018 by Julie Atkins, a journalist covering homelessness in Oregon and up and down the West Coast.
Oregon, like the majority of the United States, has seen its homeless population rise over the past few years. More people are living on the streets, in encampments and in their cars. During the 2016-2017 school year, nearly 23,000 Oregonian students experienced homelessness, according to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
There are a variety of reasons why more families and individuals end up without a place to rest their heads. The cost of living has risen dramatically while wages haven’t, shifts in the economy can create gaps in job opportunities and sky-high medical bills, even with health insurance, can send a family spiraling into debt.
Atkins started investigating solutions outside of homeless shelters and tiny homes, which each have their strengths and weaknesses
“We wanted to create a home that would last 30 years, that would truly be mobile and would take homelessness off the table for a child for the rest of their childhood,” Atkins told NationSwell.
She found a solution inside of a retired school bus.
“There are a lot of reasons why buses just make for a great canvas,” she said.
School buses go through rigorous safety inspections, have features like windows and roof exits and, at 240 square feet, provide a decent living space. The biggest bonus is that they’re drivable.
If a family can pack up and move without leaving their home behind, they’re able to find more job opportunities, Atkins explained. Low-income families often rely on temporary jobs, which means they move more frequently. But the costs of moving from place to place frequently can quickly drain a family’s savings; a bus provides more flexibility without the financial burden.
However, moving has its drawbacks. Children who switch schools are more likely to disengage and fall behind. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found a link between moving frequently as a child and higher risks of criminality, suicide and drug abuse. But many homeless children have already moved multiple times. It’s possible that not having to start over with a new living space holds an added benefit.
After writing a blog about her idea to convert buses into homes, a reader offered to fund Atkins’ nonprofit for the next five years, donating $25,000 each year. So, she got to work.
Each home costs about $25,000 to buy and build. Atkins works with a contractor to turn the buses into skoolies, adding a full kitchen, bunk bed, master bedroom and living space to each.
From there, the bus is leased out to a family, for free, for one year. Atkins will help the family find a place to park the bus, whether in an RV park, a designated safe parking lot or on private land. If the family wants to keep living on the bus, they have the chance to purchase it using a sliding scale, interest-free payment plan through the nonprofit.
For the Flood family, their bus has been life-changing. As they approach one year of living in their skoolie, they’re hoping to buy it, Atkins said. The family has found a community at the Jackson Wellsprings RV park. Since moving in, the three children have made friends, grown an herb garden and gained a sense of permanency. “Their life has changed dramatically as a result of this,” Atkins said.
“It made the little money we had stronger,” David told People. “It took the stress off of our lives. It allows us to breathe for a moment.”
Atkins understands bus life might not be for everyone. For some, it can act as a safe stepping stone back to living in a house or apartment. For others, if the space is manageable, it could serve as a permanent home.
Vehicles for Changes is currently finishing up its second bus and accepting applicants. It already has a third bus ready to be refurbished, but the nonprofit is in need of financial support.
Their goal is to finish two additional buses by the end of this year and complete five in 2020. Atkins said she also hopes to add solar panels to the roof to decrease energy costs and make the homes carbon neutral.
She sees buses as one simple solution to ending homelessness and hopes to see other communities replicating her work so more families can get off the streets.
“We know the buses exist. We know the need exists. We know that the money, $25,000 for a house, is a lot cheaper than any other option that anyone else has come up with,” she said. ”The goal is that every community out there who sees this as viable jumps in and starts this process themselves.”
More: These Austin Tiny Homes Could House 40% of the City’s Chronically Homeless Population
Tag: oregon
The Rx for Better Birth Control
Back in 2015, word was going around on social media claiming that Colorado — a state that battled high unwanted pregnancy rates for years — had reduced those numbers drastically by changing the way women accessed birth control.
The rumor was right.
Unwanted pregnancies among Colorado women ages 15 to 19 years old have dropped by 54 percent over the past seven years, thanks in large part to the state providing access to intrauterine devices, or IUDs, and long-lasting birth control. The move enabled another progressive bill aimed at reducing unwanted pregnancies to win universal support between Republicans and Democrats.
“I think that if I’m being really honest, we were pretty surprised at the robust bipartisan support we got on this,” says Sarah Taylor-Nanista, vice president of public affairs at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which oversees clinics in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. “We anticipated it to be a lot more controversial than it was, and it was really heartening to see it go through the way that it did.”
The bill, which was signed into law in June 2017 by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, allows women to receive a 12-month prescription of birth control pills or patch at no-cost after an initial, one-time, three-month prescription. The bill also required the state to cover three-month vaginal rings, which also prevent pregnancy.
A note from the state’s independent governing research body, the Colorado Legislative Council Staff, found that the change in the law would result in “minimal” impacts to the fiscal budget, although it could affect insurance premiums paid by the state, assuaging conservative fears that an exorbitant amount of state funding being funneled towards contraception.
“Sometimes it’s a long ways to the pharmacy,” says Sen. Don Coram, who sponsored the Senate bill and lobbied other Republican senators to view the bill through an economic lens. “The fact is that if you want to end a cycle of poverty, you prevent unplanned pregnancy.”
The bill passed the state Senate with bipartisan support, 22-11.
Coram, a self-proclaimed “redneck Republican,” extolled the social benefits of contraceptive accessibility, something usually heard from more progressive leaders.
“It’s just a common sense thing. I’m from rural Colorado where 70 percent of my district is federally owned land. I don’t have a Walgreens around the block,” he tells NationSwell. “And the fact is, birth control only works when you take it.”
Purple support
Polls conducted in 2014 by Planned Parenthood showed contraception is a nonpartisan issue nationwide — something Colorado legislators were able to use in their advantage. According to Colorado state Rep. Lois Landgraf, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill in the House, a bit of manipulative planning was required to get bilateral support.
“I’ll tell you one thing I did when [testimonies] were heard in the Senate: I asked Planned Parenthood to stay home,” Landgraf tells NationSwell. “As soon as they come to the House, people start thinking about Planned Parenthood and all the negative connotations that it has for some Republicans. Not as if their testimony wasn’t helpful, but if it leads one mind’s astray from the actual problem, there’s no value in it.”
Landgraf says that the bill was a “good bill for women and for men,” but preconceived notions about the organization needed to be erased. In their efforts to replace the ACA, Republicans on the national stage have argued for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, but swing states and districts overwhelmingly support Planned Parenthood’s mission of providing access to contraceptives.
That’s because increased accessibility is especially good for women in rural areas, says Erika Hanson, a legal fellow at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC).
“These types of laws disproportionately affects women in rural areas, because as with many for services in rural areas, it is very difficult for women to access healthcare,” Hanson tells NationSwell, adding that the NWLC offers a hotline specifically to provide assistance to women who have a hard time accessing contraception. “We hear from thousands of women who are having troubles getting coverage or getting access to birth control and often it is as simple as they can’t find an in-network provider that’s close enough to them. Or they’re getting the runaround from their insurance company about what pharmacy to go to, which may not be close.”
After some initial pushback from Republicans in 2015, the success of Colorado’s IUD program — including a savings of $111 million in birth-related Medicaid costs by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment — was enough to convince members of both parties in the state legislature that it deserved to be expanded.
Time bound coverage?
Washington’s tug-of-war over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has caused states to be wary of future legislation changing the existing contraception mandate, which requires insurers to cover all forms of contraception (though only from one manufacturer). That aspect of the bill has been widely praised among women for eliminating costs associated with getting birth control.
In 2015, during a heated partisan debate on whether privately-held companies should be forced to offer birth control coverage, 49 congress members signed a letter urging the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell, to provide a roadmap to insurers for 12-month contraceptive coverage for women across the nation.
No federal guidelines were issued as a result of the letter.
In response, several other states have also expanded coverage beyond federal regulations.
Traditional blue states, such as Oregon and California, have also made oral contraceptives and patches available for year-long prescriptions, a move that reduces unwanted pregnancy by 30 percent. That same study, conducted by the University of California San Francisco’s Bixby Center, reports that extended contraception coverage also lowers the number of abortions by 40 percent.
California also made it a requirement that insurance plans pay for all forms and all brands of birth control. Research shows that lack of brand choice causes two-fifths of women to go without birth control.
But women in states with expanded coverage are at-risk of losing it if their employer disagrees with the use of contraceptives for religious reasons. President Trump is expected to eliminate an Obama-era rule requiring employers to provide birth control through employer-sponsored health insurance plans. The new rule, which mirrors an earlier draft and is expected to be written any day now, would allow employers to omit birth control coverage from health insurance plans completely, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Democrats say 50 million women in the U.S. will be forced to pay for birth control out of pocket.
But the win for contraceptive rights in Colorado is not lost on Planned Parenthood’s Taylor-Nanista, who wants to continue the momentum of bipartisanship within the state and hopefully the rest of the nation, especially in a time where female contraception coverage is at stake.
“Many of our activists and patients are feeling really concerned and hopeless,” she says. “But I think this bill is a great example of what we can do when we think strategically.”
Mindfulness at Work: 7 Places Where Employees Benefit from Meditation
Mindfulness, the practice of being awake to the present moment, is now in vogue in American workplaces as varied as Google, Goldman Sachs, Aetna and General Mills. Backed by scientific research of the cognitive benefits of ancient Buddhist meditation, corporate types thinking of productivity and the bottom line quickly trained their workers how to focus using mindfulness. Outside of finance, tech and manufacturing industries, NationSwell found seven more workplaces where you find employees reaping the benefits of meditating on a regular basis.
1. Concert Hall
Where: Tempe, Ariz.
After studying mindfulness for four decades, Ellen Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is renowned as the field’s mother. Her concept of mindfulness differs from the common practice, in that she believes no meditation is necessary to change the brain’s chemistry; instead, she achieves mindfulness by existing in a state of “actively noticing new things,” she tells NationSwell.
As part of her research, she once split the Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra into two groups and instructed each to play a piece of music by Johannes Brahms, which she recorded. Langer asked the first group to remember their best performance of the familiar piece and try their best to replicate it. She told the other group of musicians to vary the classical piece with subtle riffs that only they would recognize. Langer taped both performances and played them side-by-side for an audience. Overwhelmingly, listeners preferred the second one. To Langer, it seemed that the more choices we make deliberately — in a word, mindfully — as opposed to the mindless repetition, the better our end-product will be. The most important implication for Langer came later, when she was writing up the study: In America, she says, we so often prize a “strong leader to tell people what to do,” but as the orchestra’s performance proves, when an individual takes the lead instead of doing what someone instructs her to do, a superior result is the likely outcome.
2. Primary School
Where: East Village, New York City
“The research is pretty conclusive: when kids feel better, they learn better. One precedes the other,” declares Alan Brown, a consultant with Mindful Schools where he offers mindfulness training to the private school’s freshman and sophomores. Brown incorporated a serious practice into his life at a week-long silent retreat, after “jumping out of my skin, reading the toilet paper, doing anything but to be with your own thoughts and with yourself.” He now teaches kids how to be attuned to themselves and recognize feelings that may be subconsciously guiding their lives, like when they’re hyped up with sugar or are stressed out about a test. (Solutions: spending a moment in a designated corner calming down, breathing through a freakout to restore higher cognitive functions.)
As someone in the caregiving profession, Brown reminds himself and his fellow teachers they need to adopt mindfulness practices as well. With them, “the way I interact with others comes from a place of much greater compassion for the kids: clearly this young person, who is not a fully-formed, self-regulating adult, is probably trying their best and probably has some really significant hurdles outside the classroom. I’m not going to let that get to me.” If teachers expect similarly enlightened behavior from their kids, Brown adds, they have to know, “You can’t teach what you don’t have in your own body” and better embrace a meditative practice to see the results at every desk.
3. Hospital
Where: Shrewsbury, Mass.
Modern mindfulness was formalized in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where Jon Kabat-Zinn created an eight-week meditation routine to reduce stress for the hospital’s chronically ill patients that’s now replicated worldwide. Back on the medical campus where it all started, a new mindfulness program is being offered this summer for the people on the other side of treatment: the physicians, nurse practitioners and care managers.
The Mindfulness in Medicine program works to combat the frequent feeling of dissatisfaction about a lack of patient interaction among doctors. Instructor Carl Fulwiler gives lectures about the clinical research on meditation’s benefits, teaches 90-minute workshops for busy staffers and leads full-blown courses for a dedicated few. His teachings focus on how to avoid burnout with strategic pauses; by taking a breath immediately prior to seeing a patient, doctors can focus solely on the interaction. “Often they’re thinking about what’s the next thing they have to do or the documentation. They’re not even hearing a lot of what the patient is saying,” Fulwiler observes. With mindfulness, they can see what “might be contributing to a bad encounter, what’s preventing us from being empathetic, compassionate and more efficient in our style of communication?” The whole interaction may be over in three minutes, but having that time be meaningful is vital for helping the healers themselves feel the rewards of a demanding job.
4. Government
Where: Washington, D.C.
Change rarely comes to our nation’s capital, but that’s okay in Rep. Tim Ryan’s mind. A meditative practice equipped him to deal with legislative gridlock and partisan bickering. The seven-term Democrat representing northeastern Ohio practices mindfulness in a half lotus position for roughly 40 minutes daily — a regimen he began after attending one of Kabat-Zinn’s retreats in 2008, after which he gained “a whole new way of relating with what was going on in the world,” Ryan tells The Atlantic. “And like any good thing that a congressman finds — a new technology, a new policy idea — immediately I said, ‘How do we get this out?’” Ryan first wrote the book “A Mindful Nation,” exploring the ways mindfulness is being implemented across America, and today, in sessions of the House Appropriations Committee on which he sits, the representative advocates for more funds to be deployed to teach meditation tactics. The money may not be forthcoming just yet, but that hasn’t stopped mindfulness from gaining more new converts like Ryan every day.
5. Police Department
Where: Hillsboro, Ore.
Last month, Americans watched videos of officer-involved shootings in Baton Rouge, La.; St. Paul, Minn; and North Miami, and they read about the five cops who died in a sniper attack in Dallas. While those crises were deeply felt by civilians nationwide, they were only a glimpse of what cops encounter regularly. “Law enforcement is a profession that is deeply impacted by trauma. On a daily basis, we bump up against human suffering,” says Lt. Richard Goerling, head of Hillsboro Police Department’s investigative division and a faculty member at Pacific University. “It doesn’t take very long for police officers’ well-being to erode dramatically,” he adds, ticking off studies that track early mortality and cardiovascular issues among public safety professionals.
Through the organization Mindful Badge, Goerling teaches several police departments in the Portland area and in Northern California how mindfulness can better cops’ performance: sharpening their attention to life-or-death details, cultivating empathy and compassion that’s crucial for stops and searches and building resilience before encountering trauma. The theory goes that once an officer receives mental training, he can sense when a stressor in his environment is activating his flight-or-flight reactions and then check those instincts. “If a police officer is in their own crisis,” Goerling suggests, “they’re not going to meet that person in a way that’s totally effective.” The lieutenant is aware mindfulness isn’t a cure-all for “a landscape of suffering,” but he believes it’s a first step to changing a “broken” police culture that takes its officers’ health for granted.
6. Athletic Competition
Where: San Diego, Calif.
BMX bikers may not seem like a group that’s primed for meditation, but when an elite biker stuttered with anxiety at the starting line, his coach James Herrera looked into any way to solve the problem of managing stress before a high-stakes event. Herrera soon got in touch with the Center for Mindfulness at the University of California, San Diego, and he signed up his seven-man team for a small study into the effects of meditation on “very healthy guys who are at the top of their sport,” lead author Lori Haase tells NationSwell. Over seven weeks, the bikers practiced a normal mindfulness routine, but with extra impediments like having their hands submerged in a bucket of icy water to teach them to feel the sensation of pain, rather than reacting to it cognitively. As the weeks went on, their bodies seemed to prepare for a physical shock, without an accompanying psychological panic. In other words, participants’ bodies were so amped up and hyperaware that they didn’t need to react as strongly to the stressor itself compared to an average person. The study didn’t test whether it made them faster on the course, but it seemed to suggest that reaction times could be sped up by using mindfulness to slow down.
7. Military
Where: Honolulu, Hawaii
Like cops, members of the military have much to gain from situational awareness. A couple seconds’ of lead-time for a soldier to notice someone in a bulky jacket running into a public square could prevent a suicide bomb from taking out dozens of civilians and comrades abroad. But that’s not all mindfulness is good for in a service member’s line of duty.
Before soldiers even leave home, they must deal with leaving family and putting other aspects of their lives on hold. To prepare soldiers for deployment, University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha offered mindfulness trainings at an Army outpost on Oahu to soldiers heading to Afghanistan. To fit the program into an already crowded training regimen, Jha drastically cut down the standard 40-hour model to an eight-hour practice scattered throughout eight weeks. Despite the stress of leaving that could sap the mind’s attention and working memory — “everything they need to do the job well when they’re there,” Jha notes — the mindfulness trainings prevented their minds from wandering. Tentative research Jha’s still conducting suggests those benefits persist post-deployment. Her session was just like boot camp, Jha found, only for the brain.
MORE: How Meditation Is Bringing Calm to San Francisco’s Toughest Schools
Street Books: This Library on Wheels Brings Great Reads to People Living Outside
For the past five years, Laura Moulton has spent her days in underserved areas of Portland, Ore., lending books to people living on the fringes of society.
Those living outside or in temporary shelters are usually barred from borrowing books from regular libraries because they lack the required documentation (such as identification or a home address) to get a library card. Additionally, their everyday lives often make it hard for them to return books in good conditions and on time, triggering hefty fines and dissuading them from the practice, Moulton, an artist and writing professor, explains.
In 2011, she launched Street Books, a bike-powered, mobile library to ensure the homeless community has access to literature.
“Being recognized and spoken to on the street and offered a book for someone who has really been struggling can be a really powerful thing,” Moulton says. “Books have the power to have us feel empathy and have us experience the thrill of a journey of someone else”.
So far, Street Books have served more than 5,000 patrons, many of which have become regulars.
Discover more about Street Books and its patrons by watching the video above.
A Better Way to Register New Voters, A Talking Cure for Homicide and More
Here’s What Happened When Oregon Automatically Registered Its New Voters, Washington Post
When you apply for a drivers license in Oregon, you’re now automatically registered to vote. State officials say the DMV program — the nation’s first opt-out law — is the simplest way to bolster voter rolls and keep addresses up-to-date — important in a state that votes by mail. So far, in the first week, four times as many new voters signed up as the Beaver State used to register in a month. It remains to be seen whether they actually cast a ballot.
This Police Department Stops Disputes Before They Turn Deadly, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
It’s a rule of thumb for criminologists that crime spikes in the summer: not only are more people outside, but heated arguments also sometimes lead to violence. In Rochester, N.Y., beat cops now track tiffs across the city and send a summary of the dispute to a central database, where analysts can predict which are most likely to escalate. While this predictive policing may sound like a real-life “Minority Report,” law enforcement’s seven-month-old strategy appears promising and is being looked at by other departments nationally, including Milwaukee.
After Rehab, This Valuable App Keeps Drinkers and Drug Abusers Sober, New York Times
A former addict walks out of rehab and is suddenly bombarded by temptations: old drinking buddies, familiar haunts, relief from stress and anxiety. A mobile app, A-Chess, checks in throughout the day to help alcoholics avoid the bottle. It’s pre-loaded with high-risk locations like bars and liquor stores the person frequented. When nearby, the app automatically sends a message, “Are you sure you want to be here?” and alerts other contacts the patient has pre-programmed, like his sponsor or a family member. Along with virtual counseling and other smartphone apps, these modern tools are helping with the hardest part of getting clean: staying that way.
This Is a Smart, Nonpartisan Way to Improve Local Government
What is the ideal size of government? Should decisions be centered in a strong federal branch or diffused across thousands of municipalities? Liberals and conservatives have duked it out over these questions ever since Patrick Henry demanded a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberty from a tyrannical president. But there’s a retro, nonpartisan answer that’s been tested recently to add to the expected pull between local, state and federal governments: a regional body. The model first arose in the late 1960s as cities confronted the rise of suburbs, and it’s making a comeback as dealing with a new era of climate change — flooding, regional transport and open space — becomes a top priority. NationSwell looked at how this system of metropolitan governance has changed two cities and could impact a third.
Metro Council, Portland, Ore.
Leave it to Portland, Ore.’s biggest city, to come up with a new way of doing government. The area features the nation’s first and only elected regional government, which coordinates planning across Portland plus 24 neighboring cities and three counties along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. (Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, have another notable Metro Council, but their board is state-appointed and has been criticized for a lack of accountability.) The core of greater Portland’s government is a Metro Council consisting of six nonpartisan representatives who direct more than 1,600 government employees: rangers for 17,000 acres of park land, economists, climate scientists, urban planners, mapmakers, garbage truck drivers and even animal keepers who staff the zoo. Among the challenges it’s dealt with? Everything from the boundaries of urban growth to retiring old elephants.
The body’s emergence dates back to more than half a century ago, when Portland residents first recognized the need to safeguard outlying forests and historic neighborhoods from population growth — in essence, preserving the attractions that were making the city a destination. At the same time, community members also wanted to see efficient government services, not the “wasteful, fragmented and uneven” delivery that Portlanders witnessed in 1960, according to a League of Women Voters mailer. After a regional vote, the body was officially set up in 1979. “Places in the west — and Portland’s a good example of this — were growing rapidly. This expansion tends to get people thinking regionally,” Kate Foster, an expert in regional governance, tells The Atlantic’s CityLab. Residents cared about “these gaps in service delivery at the regional scale, things like water, sewers, and roads. These are things that weren’t really thought of in the same way in the east.” That concern led to a new model, but today, “it’s oft cited, never copied,” Foster adds.
Unigov, Indianapolis
Indiana, as we’ve written before, has an intricate set of laws regulating the structure of local government that can lead to some incredible results, including one county’s precipitous drop in income inequality. Back in the 1960s, cheap, flat land at the midpoint between Chicago, Cincinnati and Louisville made Indianapolis a prime location for suburban sprawl. The result: 11 suburban towns popped up right outside the city’s downtown in Marion County. A state law passed in 1970 created Unigov, a unified structure that essentially consolidated most of the area’s municipalities under a city-county council with 25 seats. White flight in the postwar years led to a decaying urban core, but the new organization allowed tax dollars to flow regionally. (Nashville and Jacksonville took on similar unifications around the same time.) Some say that Unigov made Indianapolis “a city captured by its suburbs,” but others point to economic growth that resulted from cutting through the bureaucracy of 60 local governments, a population boom that rocketed it to the nation’s 12th largest city, increased clout on federal grant applications, streamlined services and created a revitalized downtown.
For all the positives, politics was never far from the decision to unify. Some insiders speculated Republicans had created Unigov to dilute the Democrats’ urban vote with conservatives in the suburbs (the GOP held power for 30 years). And to get the law passed, legislators settled on a big compromise: school, police and fire district borders stayed unchanged, allowing richer (and much whiter) suburbs to keep property tax dollars within their enclaves. “The spectre of racial integration … would have met instant death for the plan,” the head of the school board said at the time. That hasn’t changed much, but consolidation continues to have support, with the local police and county sheriffs joining forces in 2005 and the creation of a centralized fire department in 2007.
County Merger, Cleveland
After being a hot trend in the 1970s, the reorganization of local government had died down — until recently. On the shores of Lake Erie, Cuyahoga County residents are now debating how to merge the two cities, 19 villages and 38 townships around Cleveland. The change in thinking started slowly and has been discussed for more than a decade. Back in 2004, Cleveland watched Louisville merge with Jefferson County, Ky., as its own population packed up and left. It took notice and rewrote the county charter to switch from a three-member board to a more active 11-member council and a county executive.
But a full merger is still in the works. In 2012, engaged readers of the local paper, the Plain Dealer, sent in thousands of color-coded maps for how the county could be reorganized. If nothing’s done and things continue as they are, at least 10.5 percent of the region’s housing stock — about 174,900 homes — will sit vacant and abandoned. East Cleveland, a separate city, is looking at bankruptcy. Based on what the experts are predicting, Cleveland could be the next spot to try out a different system of government.
MORE: While Roads and Rails Crumble, These 3 Projects Are Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure
The Future of Housing Is Now. What Sustainable Homes Look Like
Every time your air conditioner or furnace rumbles on, greenhouses gases spew into the air. All those volts —about 10,900 kilowatt-hours per person — used to charge laptops and phones, light rooms, and keep the refrigerator running don’t come without an environmental cost. American electricity generation contributed 2.04 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, clouding the earth’s atmosphere with emissions and worsening climate change.
A hot new trend in architecture may offer one of our best hopes for significantly diminishing that pollution. “Passive house” construction — usually built without central heating or cooling systems — can reduce energy usage to net-zero or even net-positive, meaning a building generates more energy than it consumes. Applicable to both commercial and residential properties, passive construction centers on five key design elements: heavily insulated walls (sometimes up to 15 inches thick), an extremely tight envelope, triple-paned windows and doors that are outfitted with high-performance locks, high-tech ventilation and moisture-recovery systems filter the air and solar panels on rooftops.
“There are no drafts in the winter. And in the summer, it stays cool without strong air conditioning blowing on you,” Jane Sanders, a Brooklyn architect, tells the New York Post about her home. “This morning, there was jackhammering two doors down from me, but I could barely hear it. It’s so quiet that I feel like I live in the country.”
Some homeowners will take objection with the boxy design; others will balk at the price tag. But as more passive homes are built, architects are experimenting with chic design and developing cheaper construction methods. NationSwell looked into five of the most interesting passive houses in America today.
The Smith House, Urbana, Ill.
American designers first pioneered passive construction — then known as “superinsulation” in the early 1970s — after the oil embargo caused wild swings in energy prices. When conservation fell out of fashion during the Reagan years, the idea caught on among Germans in 1988, but it took until 2002, for the idea to return across the Atlantic. Katrin Klingenberg, a young German architect, and her now-deceased husband Nic Smith broke ground on the first American passive house prototype in Urbana, in part, because they could test the house against the harsh Midwestern climate. “I believe that climate crisis is real and that buildings need to do their part of reducing carbon emissions. The good news is that buildings have a lot of potential to do just that,” Klingenberg tells the Chicago Tribune. “We have to work a bit harder to get those reductions and invest a bit more upfront. But the reward is huge with long-lasting payback.”
Kiln Apartments, Portland, Ore.
Portland is undeniably at the center of the American passive house movement, with more than 100 certified buildings in its metro area, according to some counts. The Kiln Apartments, in North Portland, are one of the largest mixed-use buildings — 19 apartments above ground-floor retail — to meet passive house standards.
The Oregon city already has one of the strictest building codes in the nation, but these units save up to 75 percent more energy than equivalent ones. With many south-facing windows, the buildings is heated largely by the sun during the winter. Thick metal sunshades that look like modernist awnings block the sunlight during hotter months, when the summer sun rises higher in the sky. The four-story building does have an elevator, but because everything is about energy efficiency, residents are encouraged to take the stairs.
Habitat for Humanity Townhomes, Washington, D.C.
Demonstrating that passive house principles can be readily implemented, volunteers in the nation’s capital are building six townhouses for poor homeowners. Located in Ivy City, a portion of the structure was originally designed for the U.S. Solar Decathlon, a competition for college students to build the most energy-efficient home. Students from The New School and Stevens Institute of Technology put the one-bedroom together on the National Mall for under $230,000. After being moved northeast in 2012, a second story was added and Habitat for Humanity built a copy next door. Now, as the neighborhood gentrifies, the families in the six brick rowhouses have affordable rent and a a minimal utility bill. “I just remember thinking, we did it: a non-profit, affordable house developer can do this, even using volunteers with no construction experience,” Orlando Velez, manager of housing services at Habitat for Humanity’s D.C. chapter, tells ThinkProgress. “I started thinking, what’s everyone else waiting for?”
Uptown Lofts, Pittsburgh, Penn.
This 47-unit housing affordable project, provides greener living spaces to those who can’t afford a market-rate home. Split into two buildings across the street from each other, 18- to 23-year-olds who aged out of the foster care system live in the northern building’s 24 one-bedroom apartments; to the south, 23 affordable units go to people who make less than 60 percent of Pittsburgh’s median income. The $12 million project was also notable for being the first time any state subsidized a passive house with tax benefits.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony this February, the project was praised for realizing its ambitious goals with limited dollars. “How proud we are to help bring these buildings to reality,” said Stan Salwocki, manager at the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This project shows how cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient affordable housing can be done.”
Cornell Tech, Roosevelt Island, N.Y.
Still in the works, the world’s tallest and largest passive house began construction this June. Rising 26 stories above Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, the apartment tower will house about 530 grad students, professors and staff for Cornell University’s new 12-acre applied sciences campus. Since nearly three quarters of the carbon emissions in New York City’s come from heating and cooling its skyscrapers, school administrators hope this project will set a new standard for energy efficiency and gain the attention of engineers and designers across the Queensboro Bridge in midtown.
The construction “is a clear signal that in today’s era of climate change, it’s not enough to simply build tallest. To lead the market, your tall building will need to be a passive house,” Ken Levenson, president of NY Passive House, an advocacy group, tells The New York Times. The $115 million project is expected to open in 2017 and will save 882 tons of carbon dioxide annually — the equivalent of planting 5,300 trees, according to the university.
In These 8 States, Students Are Going to Be Served Healthier School Lunches
A new pilot program aimed at encouraging states to purchase locally-sourced food will bring more fresh produce to school meals across eight states.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin will be able to use some of their USDA Foods allocation toward unprocessed fruits and vegetables from local farms rather than going through the USDA Foods program.
The Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables, which falls under the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill), was created to not only promote farm-to-table meals, but also help schools strengthen relationships with vendors, growers, wholesalers and distributors, according to the USDA.
USDA Foods comprises about 20 percent of foods served in schools, with schools using their allocation from a list of 180 items including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, low fat cheese, beans, pasta, flour and other whole grain products. Under the new program, schools will be able to substitute those allocations for fresher, local options.
“Providing pilot states with more flexibility in the use of their USDA Foods’ dollars offers states another opportunity to provide schoolchildren with additional fruits and vegetables from within their own communities,” says Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. “When schools invest food dollars into local communities, all of agriculture benefits, including local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, food processors and manufacturers.”
States were selected on criteria including a commitment to farm-to-school efforts, previous promotion initiatives, the variety and abundance of fruit and vegetable growers in the state on a per capita basis, as well as how diverse the state’s educational agencies are in size and geography.
For states like Connecticut, the program not only promotes the local economy, but also helps children form more nutritional habits of buying fresh, local produce.
“Connecticut’s participation in this federal pilot is great news for our farmers, our economy and our children,” says Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Our state is home to thousands of farming operations responsible for billions in economic activity. By increasing the amount locally-sourced healthy food options for our students, we help lay a foundation for lifelong successful habits.”
MORE: The District Where Healthy School Lunches Are Actually Succeeding
This Company Wants to Bring Back American Bike Manufacturing
Americans are fast embracing cycling as a means of commuting.
But as more and more cities make room for bike lanes, the price tag that comes with the pedaling lifestyle is a hefty one. In fact, a conventional bike costs upwards of $1,000, while more specialized bikes can retail for more than $10,000.
Despite the popularity of cycling in the United States, 99 percent of the 16 million bikes sold across the country in 2013 were made abroad — mostly in China or Taiwan — according to the National Bicycle Dealers Association. But a Portland-based startup is looking to change that statistic by bringing back jobs to Oregon and creating affordable custom bikes all at once.
Circa Cycles uses a manufacturing process that can produce a 21.5-pound custom bike in just 10 hours or less, compared to the typical 50 to 100 hours of hand labor that other companies require to make an average bike.
Founder Rich Fox broke down the process of manufacturing a bike and then found ways to reduce the time required. “It goes together almost like a Lego set. It’s kind of like a combination of Ikea, and Lego, and Swatch, in a way,” Fox tells Fast Company.
The one-of-a-kind bikes are put together with a specialized glue used to construct race cars and airplanes. And rather than using a hand-painting process, Circa bikes are anodized at a Portland shop, allowing a customer to personalize the color. Fox uses all local milling and piping suppliers to ensure a fast turnaround.
Customers can also decide on size, handlebars, drivetrains and tires using computer-controlled milling (CNC) machines to produce customized designs in a short period of time. Frames cost $1,100 with the completed bicycle starting at $1,500.
“Typically, making a custom bike takes anywhere from three months, up to as much as five years,” Fox tells Fast Company. “So the idea that you can turn a bike around in less than 10 days — it’s pretty innovative to go from zero to bike that quick.”
While the price tag is still high, Fox hopes the more affordable option will encourage more cyclists to opt for an American-made bike. Ultimately, he hopes to bring more jobs back to Oregon.
“I moved to Oregon about 15 years ago and I really love it here, and I really wanted to contribute to the local community by creating something here to boost the economy,” he says. “I just wanted to make where I live a better place.”
MORE: What Has Two Wheels, Two Pedals and Can Boost the Economy?
The Innovative Combat Medic That Has Developed a Life-Saving Device for the Battlefield
For more than two decades, John Steinbaugh served as a Special Forces medic in the Army, and now he’s reinvented himself as an inventor.
Steinbaugh is the man behind the company RevMedx, which is developing new technologies to keep soldiers wounded at war alive. Back in February, NationSwell reported that the company’s first invention, XStat, was awaiting FDA approval, a hurdle it cleared in April. Now, RevMedx is gearing up to supply XStat to the military, plus developing additional technologies.
Steinbaugh’s innovation grew out of his observation that people have been using gauze to staunch bleeding for centuries, but the material doesn’t work well for wounds on certain parts of the body, such as the armpit and pelvis.
Steinbaugh tells Cat Wise of the PBS NewsHour, “Back in 2006-2007, at the height of the war, medics were getting fed up with the standard gauze. And we started seeing wounds that were much worse than what we were seeing at the beginning of the war. Medics were having more difficulties stopping the bleeding. And the way the medics described the device they wanted was fix-a-flat. So if you think of your tire, you inject the fix-a-flat into your tire, it finds the escaping air, it plugs it, and done.”
Steinbaugh couldn’t provide Army medics with fix-a-flat for people, but the product inspired his idea for a syringe loaded with tiny, compressed sponges that instantly expand when inserted into a wound, thereby stopping the bleeding. When Steinbaugh retired from the military he started RevMedx in Portland, Ore., and a $5 million grant from the Army sustained the company during the three years needed to develop XStat.
The sponges in an XStat are coated with blood-clotting medicine and expand 15 times their original size — applying pressure to the wound and stopping arterial bleeding within 20 seconds, according to testing the company has done. Additionally, each sponge includes markers detectable by X-ray so that surgeons can easily locate and remove them.
The company has starting shipping XStat to the military and is already modifying the idea for civilian applications, as well as developing a gauze with XStat sponges inside: XGauze.
Steinbaugh says, “Ever since the first day we started working on this, there’s been an immediate interest for other types of products, smaller shrapnel wounds, or small-caliber pistol wounds, and even in the civilian community, like law enforcement, or prison knife wounds and stabbings.”
MORE: Two Keys to the Future: 3-D Printing and Employed Veterans
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