The New American Dream: A Tiny Home

The stairwell we climbed to our 5th floor apartment
every day, app. 400 sq. feet 

The UN Commission on Global Governance reported in 1995, “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” (United Nations, Our Global Neighborhood, The Commission on Global Governance, 1995, Oxford University Press)

It seems that our national sovereignty is yielding quite fast on the southern border without Congressional input, under the guise of a socially engineered humanitarian crisis. They could not erase national sovereignty fast enough in the name of “environmental cooperation.”

The progressives’ social engineering projects implemented around the world are not limited to just destroying national sovereignty, language, and cultural identity. Those who grew up under communism are familiar with the Soviet style, mass movement of entire villages to high density urban areas.

Social engineers had decided that land was better used in co-operative farms owned by the communist government. Private homes located on farm land were bulldozed and people were moved into densely populated cities with grey concrete apartments of 400-500 square feet, mushrooming practically overnight. They could not build them fast enough. Often it necessitated moving two families into a 600 square feet apartment, sharing the kitchen and the bathroom.

The Chinese have embarked on large scale social engineering over the next ten years, in their quest to move 250 million people from rural areas into high rise, high density newly built ghost cities that are currently uninhabited; few citizens have purchased the tiny apartments and few stores leased the bottom floor spaces.

“The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/world/asia/chinas-great-uprooting-moving-250-million-into-cities.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

In this country, city planners who oppose urban sprawl and begrudge the average 2,300 square foot homes as environmental destroyers of the planet, have designed and built living units of 140-200 square feet, called aPodments in Sammamish, Washington. Resident Judy Green “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to her loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs. Because of non-existent global warming, cars and elevators are not allowed. The “micro-units” are smaller than a hotel room and rent for $600-900 per month. I checked with my favorite hotel chain - their average hotel room is 375 square feet. The average jail cell is 6 feet by 8 feet. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Tiny-aPodments-causing-big-controversy-in-Seattle--224002631.html

The “eco-progressives” use local government zoning to impose their ideas of “sustainable urbanism,” “sustainable communities,” and “equitable communities,” by changing the counties’ desired low density character and scale to high-density crime-ridden slums.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission are crafting a plan to place Lilliputian slum dwellings in every area of the county. The Residential Studio Units (RSUs) will have a total surface of 220-320 square feet. Each high-rise will contain 75 such units and one parking space per unit. Locals object to the plan because it will reduce property values, change neighborhoods, increase population density, exacerbate the existing traffic congestion, and increase crime under the guise of “affordable housing” for the poor, low wage workers, and “diversity.”

“Social engineering is on the verge of being imposed on entire neighborhoods,” said Rush Limbaugh in a brilliant tirade. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will dismantle local zoning and force people to move into certain areas in order to achieve what they consider “racial, economic, and ethnic diversity.” This is “nationalizing neighborhoods” on a grand scale for our “own good and to achieve utopia.” By obliterating zoning regulations, we will have neighborhoods by government quota. (Rush Limbaugh EIB monologue, September 12, 2013)

Reality television is now indoctrinating Americans into accepting the idea of micro-dwellings with the July 2014 debut of “Tiny House Nation” on the FYI channel. According to their website,  “renovation experts and hosts, John Weisbarth and Zack Giffin, travel across America to show off ingenious small spaces and the inventive people who live in them, as well as help new families design and construct their own mini-dream home in a space no larger than 500 square feet. From a micro-apartment in New York City to a caboose car turned home in Montana to a micro-sized mobile home for road tripping – this is a series that celebrates the exploding movement of tiny homes.” http://www.fyi.tv/shows/tiny-house-nation/about/season-1

Perhaps “extreme downsizing” is the dream of retired people or the reality of young Americans who live with several roommates or in the basement of their parents because they cannot afford to buy a normal home on low wages driven by a mismanaged economy. What I do know for sure, this not an “exploding movement of tiny homes” and it has nothing to do with “financial independence.” Most Americans have never heard of such tiny dwellings, love their spacious homes, and are not remotely aware that they are an intricate part of a larger plan of social engineering people off the land, out of suburbia, and into inner cities. It is certainly not the new American dream; it is the new forced reality as envisioned and carefully planned by the elite’s UN Agenda 21.

Has anyone seen any influential people, CEOs, wealthy people, politicians, actors, Hollywood producers, radio and TV mouth pieces, lobbyists, corporatists, crony capitalists, who advocate that we live in spaces slightly larger than a jail cell and drive tin cans, give up their large mansions and multiple homes around the world, their jets and yachts?

 

The Government 200 Square Feet "Stack and Pack" Concrete A-Podments

An American diplomat who flew over communist Romania during Ceausescu’s reign of terror asked the innocent question, where are the farmers and their homes, I see nothing but fields of green everywhere?

The accompanying hosts looked at each other embarrassed and nobody answered the question. It was too undiplomatic and dangerous to explain to this westerner coming from the land of freedom and private property that the farmers’ land had been confiscated, collectivized, and the former owners moved by force to government assigned concrete block apartments ranging in size from 200-400 square feet.

These apartments were located in blocks with 2-4 entrances depending on whether they were five or nine stories high. The five-story buildings did not have elevators; the nine-story buildings had lifts that could safely carry two individuals at a time and were seldom operational. Renters of various ages and physical abilities had the joy of climbing stairs every day.

Social engineers had decided that land was better used in co-operative farms owned by the communist government. Private homes located on farm land were bulldozed and people were moved either in a compact village attached to the collective farm, with little room between single homes, or in the densely populated cities with grey concrete apartments mushrooming overnight.

The communist party elites had decided that having too much private space was bourgeois, the socialist men needed just enough space to eat and sleep, the rest of the time had to be spent at work.

This brings me to the current trend in the U.S. to reduce Americans’ living space to as little as possible by changing zoning laws without their consent, using visioning committees composed of local agreeable supervisors and outside non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with lots of available grant money from HUD and other government agencies.

U.N. Agenda 21 is behind zoning, regionalism, land and water use, Sustainable Development, global warming, wealth redistribution, social engineering, Smart Growth, Green Growth, cap and trade, Smart Grid, Smart Meters, global citizens, IB World schools, Common Core standards, biofuels, the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), gun control, just to name a few. http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

Nationally syndicated talk show hosts have finally started speaking against U.N. Agenda 21 elements. I have connected all the parts in my best-selling book, “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy.” http://www.amazon.com/U-N-Agenda-21-Environmental-Piracy-ebook/dp/B009WC6JXO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

A political refuge appealed to the St. Lucie County Commissioners in Florida at a meeting about the U.N. environmental regionalist Seven50 plans for Florida. “I do not come here to lose my freedom; I beg you – get out of Seven50. Do not destroy our Freedom.” www.westernjournalism.com/author/suzanne-eovaldi/

A long line of citizens vociferously opposed such regionalism and pleaded with “local elected officials to reject the takeover of Florida’s private property.” “

“I am opposed to Seven50… to the loss of our property rights by U.N. Agenda 21, the new world order communist Marxist project.”

Large grants from HUD and this administration have divided our country into 11 nationwide regions, including the east coast of Florida. The Seven50 Regionalism Plan has already been adopted in the Gore triangle counties south of St. Lucie and Indian River counties. Vero Beach, IRC rejected the plan based on a “vertical authority flow chart” controlled by unelected federal bureaucrats influenced by globalist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who plan to “stack-and-pack 200-foot dwelling spaces” and move citizens off their private property.

Suzanne Eovaldi describes the typical stack-and-pack living quarters in the 200 square foot aPodments building in Sammamish, Washington. Resident Judy Green “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to her loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs in the absence of elevators. Cars are not allowed on account of global warming. The micro-units are the size of a hotel room and rent for $600-900 per month. The micro-housing units increase the population density of the area tremendously. http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020845443 apodmentscitycouncilxml.html

The government will impose its best practices of “Sustainable Urbanism” which will force areas to adopt “sustainable development” and “equitable communities,” changing the counties’ desired low density character and scale to high-density crime-ridden slums.

The American Coalition 4 Property Rights explains on its website why the Seven50 Regional Plan must be stopped with its Sustainable Urbanism and the Smart Code solution to urban sprawl. Regionalism will fundamentally alter the make-up of our society and of our property rights or lack thereof. http://nomoreunelectedbureaucrats.com/

“Social engineering is on the verge of being imposed on entire neighborhoods, adults, and children alike.” The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will dismantle local zoning and force people to move into certain areas in order to achieve what they consider “racial, economic, and ethnic diversity.” This is “nationalizing neighborhoods” on a grand scale. This is done for our “own good and to achieve utopia.” By obliterating zoning regulations, we will have neighborhoods by government quota. (Rush Limbaugh monologue, September 12, 2013)

Rush Limbaugh pointed out that “HUD’s power grab is based on the mistaken belief that zoning and discrimination are the same, zoning is disguised discrimination.” Introducing 200 square feet pods between single family homes is “social justice.”

The American Planning Association issued a HUD Smart Growth document, a blueprint of goals to replace single family housing. The 76-page study by APA’s Planning Advisory Service, report number 548, published on July 2007, had the “objective to examine, on a pilot basis, whether zoning impedes the development of higher-density, multifamily housing in growing metropolitan areas.”

The study presumed multifamily housing to be the most affordable type of housing yet it did not evaluate this presumption in the study. “High-density residential development is not always affordable, and low density development is not always costly. Ample high-density and multi-family zoning is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce affordable housing.”(p. iv) Why then destroy suburbia and why dictate to other people how they should live?

The authors identified other factors besides zoning that can limit multifamily housing stock such as market conditions, land availability, parcelization, provision of public services, planning goals such as protecting open spaces or rural areas, and existing land-use patterns.

The APA study recommends:

1.      Support the Regional collection and integration of land use regulatory data (maintain comprehensive data on zoning and other regulatory restraints)

2.      Encourage state and Regional governments to provide oversight of local land-use policies.

3.      Focus state and Regional oversight policies on quantitative performance measures.

4.      Continue to develop better measures of zoning barriers and support additional research on the effects of barriers on housing markets.

For these authors, “the critical question now is not whether regulatory barriers to affordable housing exist in some communities, but whether it is possible to identify such communities and craft an appropriate policy response.”

In my December 23, 2013 interview with Brian Lilley of Sun News Network in Canada, I explained the “affordable housing” fight in Fairfax County, Virginia, where almost all members of the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission are crafting a plan to place Lilliputian slum dwellings in every area of the county. They are the size of shipping containers or jail cells. These are called Residential Studio Units (RSUs) with a total surface of 220-320 square feet. Each high-rise would contain 75 such units and one parking space per unit. Such units would reduce property values, change neighborhoods, increase population density, cause more traffic congestion, and increase crime in the name of “affordable housing” for the poor, low wage workers, and “diversity.” http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/2966593149001#.Ur0anuoYeJA.facebook

 

Further reading:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58022 (Are We Too Late to Stop UN Agenda 21?)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/59206 (Environmental Conservation Easements Trump-ing Property Rights)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56894 (Harriet’s Fictional America Post Agenda 21)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/56246 (Virginia is for Food and Farm Freedom Lovers)

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/54356 (What is Sustainability?)