I am working on my grant application for The Center For Crafts. The purpose is keyed to the foundational grant that is in process for the John Templeton Foundation. Preparing this grant application has been a great deal of work, and I still have more work to do. However, all will be for naught if I can not find two good persons to write an authentic recommendation for my work, as it relates to the current grant project, which is a community project.
Project Summary: Makers and Small Entreprenuer Identity Building
Project Objective: Build the community identity of designer artisans and grassroots entrepreneurs in my local community by creating a database of the alternative culture of small entrepreneurs and resources with a special focus on ceramics as my own orientation.
The main deliverable, within an 18-month time frame, besides designing the system, will be a brochure designed to visually emulate the Town Plan published by my Town government, but this will be a Community Map of artisans and grassroots entrepreneurs, a demographic not given emphasis in the Town and State Reports.
Data will include architectural design and construction resources relevant to the business in a home community design.
There will be an overlay related to the risk posed by rising seas, and other climate concerns, for which there is not enough publicly available data to date.
The concept of a residential-only housing community came about during the Industrial Revolution designed to house the workforces who commuted back and forth to corporate headquarters. The Industrial Revolution made cities unlivable and reduced the size of living spaces from graceful to tiny. Today we have tiny houses, but creative humans need space. While living space is being squeezed out of the contributor class, the ownership class plans large public facilities such as the eighty-million dollar school, which will likely be networked to the university system wherein resides the right to claim ownership of intellectual property rights per the use by the true author of publicly owned facilities. The ownership class knows it needs the contributor classes to maintain and expand its wealth, but creative development and opportunity require space in a secure environment free of the threat of intellectual property rights theft. One’s own space is the safest space and after that, a space shared with trusted associates selected by choice.
I am fiscally sponsored by the Field, an organization that offers Model A fiscal sponsorship that directly sponsors individuals. Most non-profits are using Model L fiscal sponsorship which allows the organization to channel non-profit funding to its own for-profit subsidiary. The for-profit subsidiary provides benefits, usually via government programs, to the targeted demographic served by the non-profit’s purpose.
The Boothbay Region Development corporation is seeking public funding to build a workforce affordable housing development at 3.5 the density of the surrounding area. To date, there is no information publicly available about the internal structure of the Boothbay Region Development Corporation but we are told that the corporation is targeting 40% public funding and 60% private funding which it will use to acquire property for a concentrated housing development that it will own, with some ownership opportunities at the upper economic end of the demographic served by the corporation.
The reason we have a wealth divide morphing into an ownership class and a renter-worker class in a centrally managed system is that what goes around does not come around. A human person and a corporate person should have equal access to non-profit funding to acquire home ownership. A nonprofit organization with the purpose to provide housing for the population whose income is at or below the median, ought to be able to use Model A to fiscally sponsor individual homeowners rather than functioning as a corporation that acquires massive real estate holdings and then rents to the lower half of the economy.
A suggested conceptual purpose of a non-profit is to support affordable businesses in a home- the whole package - but it begins with developing a supportive community network and that network is the narrow focus of my current grant application.
Those who do not like where the public-private state is going need a supportive network. The Boothbay Region Development Corporation is set up to build a housing concentration zone with most of the houses owned by the corporation. What if there were another option for a local housing zone with old-style New England rural density and each house was owned by individuals?
Being that the Legislation failed to address short-term rentals, it is necessary to have zones exclusive to local housing. In that regard the selectmen questioned the corporation how it would stop owners from renting housing they procured with subsidization. The Corporation said the owners would have to pay back the subsidy - an extremely weak deterrent.
The approach is wrong and has built-in opportunity inequities as a result. Regulating short-term rentals needs to be a general law. If it is imposed that owners in concentrated housing zones cannot partake in an economic opportunity that the surrounding area can, that is unequally reducing economic opportunities in housing concentration zone designated for those at or below medium income. This too will exacerbate the wealth divide permitting a wealth expansion opportunity for the top and denying it for the bottom. This is not to advocate a free for all for short-term rentals which got us into this mess, It is just an observation that it is typical of public policy that affordable housing is said to be protected by oppressing the economic opportunities within that class. The short-term rental effect should have been dealt with generally before passing a law that mandates overcrowding for housing for the below-median demographic.
Mumford makes it clear that the human domination of nature is connected with the human domination of fellow humans Dr Peter Chritchley LEWIS MUMFORD AND THE ARCHITECTONICS OF ECOLOGICAL CIVILISATION pg 9
Subsidized housing ownership already exists. One example is the Mount Desert Island Housing Trust which describes its purpose as “IHT envisions a future where MDI has a significant percentage of affordable year-round housing available to the workforce. The dwelling units are protected by covenants, enforced in perpetuity.” The houses look like they are all built by one developer.
A purpose might say “envisions a future where a community has a significant percentage of affordable year-round housing available to the small entrepreneurs working out of their own homes. The dwelling units are built individually as organically grown decentralized regionalism”
Mumford argued in favour of a decentralised regionalism that rests upon the purposeful use of neotechnics to achieve organic communities that are set within the natural region. Regionalism is crucial in achieving organic community promoting life-enhancing values. Dr Peter Chritchley LEWIS MUMFORD AND THE ARCHITECTONICS OF ECOLOGICAL CIVILISATION pg 12
The State has mandated “priority zones where housing can be at 2.5 the density of the surrounding area. The Boothbay Region Development Corporation has increased that density by 50% over the State’s suggestion.
Just because the State says one can do something and that the Town cannot stop that from happening, it does not mean that a priority zone cannot be satisfied with any density. It could even be satisfied with a low-density zone that does not prohibit businesses in a home.
Those who drafted the plan for this act are all set to be the first out the gate, so if we are going to have alternative options, we need to be aggressively proactive. The networking and communication tools that I am targeting in my project can be of great assistance in creating an alternate movement, but I cannot submit my application without references.
I have been an independent researcher of Maine’s economic development policies for about 15 years- uncompensated! This will allow me to continue doing what I am doing with the addition of Ersi Data compilation software and make it available for others as well, and a small advertising budget, and compensate myself a modicum.
Through its durable buildings and institutional structures and even more durable symbolic forms of literature and art, the city unites times past, times present and times to come. Within the historic precincts of the city time clashes with time: time challenges time. Mumford, CH 1961: 118
See my maker’s economic development concept which is based on individually owned studios in a home, a project in progress! Mackenzie Andersen on The Field