Wake Up and Smell the Formaldehyde

FEMA trailers are in the news again. Turns out they're not fit for human habitation. Problem is we've known it all along.

A scathing article on Salon.com sheds light on the toxic conditions and details the efforts of the United States government to cover it up.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/29/fema_coverup/

Meanwhile, better than two years on, over 30,000 hurricane victims still call FEMA trailers home.

Certain carpets, plastic laminates, and adhesives out-gas formaldehyde. Put those materials in a closed container (FEMA trailers have little or no natural ventilation) and you've got the prescription for a deathtrap.

Why do we tolerate this? What kind of country are we?

For the cost of a day in Iraq, we could fund a research and development arm of FEMA hiring the best planners, architects, and industrial designers in the country to intelligently and humanely deal with the challenge of emergency housing and delivery logistics.

That's a priority I can vote for.


ps... for the local Mississippi Gulf Coast "scoop" on Katrina issues (FEMA trailers, insurance, lack of affordable housing, etc.) check out my friend Ana Maria's Bay St. Louis blog - its hot!!!

http://aminthemorning.blogspot.com/

Cutting Taxes

How about a tax cut for people who buy new homes? I propose we cut the "pretentiousness tax."

Every time you see a fake shutter, the home-buyer just paid too much. You know the ones I'm talking about, shutters too skinny to cover the window when folded in. Think about the human body with outstretched arms only half the size of a normal proportional arm. Its laughable.

Their only function is to pretend to be something they're not. A fraud perpetrated for the sake of "appearances."

The fake shutters get screwed to the wall to enforce the scam.

Here's the math. Fake shutters go for about $50 a pair; add another $50 for installation and contractor overhead and profit for a cost of $100 per window. Multiply that by 10 windows and you've spent an additional thousand bucks on the house - the pretentiousness tax.

Its a tax cut everyone can support.

Republicans breathe easy - no government forms, agencies, or mandates. Democrats rest assured that benefits go to every home-buyer regardless of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, or income level. Independents participate in the same system.

So how about it America? Are you ready for a tax cut?

Dude, Where's My House?

Give me a McMansion please - and super-size the square footage!

I was watching a report last night on the sub-prime housing debacle; the camera panned over several neighborhoods of recently-built homes around the country, and I couldn't help noticing how HUGE they were.

Could the fad of oversized homes have something to do with the housing crisis at hand?

Homes have increasingly become larger and larger over the past several decades even as family size has gone down. Home prices go higher, and more square footage means higher piles on top of higher. Add in a portion of low interest rates, shovel in a second mortgage to keep up with the Joneses (even though the Joneses are doing the same thing) and, voila!, you have a full-scale overinflated real estate market.

According to the National Association of Homebuilders, the average size of a home built in the United States is 2330 square feet - up from 1400 square feet in 1970.

Let's just say we cut that increase in half. If homes today were built at 1865 square feet on average, that would result in home values at 80% of current appraisals. Even with all other factors at play, 20% less of a mortgage could make a real difference for those whose homes are in the balance.

Good design carves out "usable" space, not just space for the sake of size and almost always results in a smaller footprint than the colossal fake mansions we've come to think of as normal. Oversized homes cost more to maintain, and utility bills can be sky-high.

So a great big house just may not be all its cracked up to be.