Little Houses Are a Big Step for Dallas Homeless

A 50-unit project nearing completion will provide housing for some of the city's most needy citizens and save the public a lot of money

Scott Gibson  ::  Green Building Advisor  ::  9 September 2015 

This rendering shows a cluster of houses in a Dallas project that will benefit the chronically
homeless. Each building includes a kitchen and sleeping area, a bathroom and a porch.

Houses far smaller than the norm are being marketed for their energy efficiency and their small environmental footprints, and now in Dallas a collaboration of public and private interests hopes really small houses will give at least some of the city's troubled citizens a way out of chronic homelessness.

The Cottages at Hickory Crossing is a $6.8 million project that includes 50 self-contained houses, each with a footprint of 420 square feet, a central building with laundry and other shared facilities, and common outdoor areas on a 3.5-acre parcel near downtown Dallas.

A number of public agencies representing housing, social services and the criminal justice system all are partners. Cottages are intended specifically for people who are chronically homeless, those who suffer from severe and persistent mental illness, and those who have a history of substance abuse and entanglements with the criminal justice system. In other words, people who have a very tough time finding a place to live.

"It's a trilogy in a way, like a Homer's Odyssey, like great projects often are," said Brent Brown, director of the bcWorkshop, the project architect. "It would be unfair if I didn't say the project almost didn't happen probably 10 times or more because it was hard. Partnerships are hard. Funding is hard. Building anything can be difficult."

But by early next year, Brown said by telephone, construction should be complete and residents should be moving in.

Houses are small, but complete

Each of the 50 cottages has a full bathroom, a main room with a kitchen, a sleeping area, a storage area, and a porch. Each has 325 square feet of interior conditioned space, Brown said, enough to give residents a private space. "Each resident has a door of their own," Brown said, "and their own house identity."

Cottages are grouped in clusters of six around a common green area. The site is big enough to have the potential for community gardens. The commons building will be open to the public. Residents will sign a no-cost lease and will have access to a variety of services on site.

Brown estimated each cottage costs between $25,000 and $30,000, with site development, studies and other costs making up the balance of the project cost.

Each wood-framed cottage is built on four concrete piers, rather than a concrete slab, partly because the clay-heavy soils on the site made conventional construction difficult, and partly because this approach will allow the cottages to be moved to a new home in the future and the site used for another purpose.

Brown said planners at bcWorkshop looked at a number of models in designing the site, including early New England settlements. For example, they found a Methodist community on Martha's Vineyard built in a pattern of circles surrounding a common green. But where these communities attached social standing based on the circle where the house was built — higher status for those living closer to the common green — Dallas planners looked for an arrangement were "everyone had an equal level of stature," Brown said.

Buildings at the project were designed with help from the community it will serve, Brown said, and "street experts" helped planners understand the difficulty of moving from life on the street to housing units. "There needs to be a way to retreat," he said, "but also a way to engage on your own terms, as well as being able to be all together."

Stable housing as a first step

The Cottages project is built on the "Housing First" model, which considers housing a first priority to be followed by whatever social services might be needed after that.

Given the common difficulties in the backgrounds of potential residents, planners assume a number of social service agencies will be needed. Even so, savings should be significant. According to an article in The Dallas Morning News, each person eligible for the project now costs the city $40,000 a year in services. But with a permanent home and a support system, that number drops to $15,000.

Brown said an annual survey in Dallas in 2014 counted 3,314 homeless persons, 413 of whom were considered chronically homeless. So a project the size of The Cottages is a beginning.

"We need seven more projects like this," he said.

Similar approaches have been proposed elsewhere. Last year, a New Jersey state senator suggested a $5 million "Tiny Home Pilot Program" in which clusters of 300-square-foot houses would be built for the state's poor. Earlier, a project called Quixote Village" near Olympia, Washington, replaced a tent village for the homeless with 30 dwellings of 144 square feet each.

Why Fossil Fuels Are Dirty Politics as Well as Dirty Energy

Carl Pope  ::  EcoWatch  ::  3 November 2014

When the Western Energy Alliance in June invited K-Street mugger Richard Berman to advise them on how to deal with public opposition to oil and gas extraction, Berman’s back-alley style can hardly have surprised those who invited him. His tactics and viciousness have been broadly reported in the media, and blasted even by his own son. CBS’s 60 Minutes called him Dr. Evil.

Richard Berman, Charles Koch and David Koch. So we need to understand that however many oil and coal companies do decide to play clean, there will be others willing to “win dirty,” and that unless we can find ways to limit their political clout both communities and the environment will continue to be devastated in the name of carbon profits.

So it should not have been a surprise when Berman summed up his philosophy by telling the industry you can either “win ugly or lose pretty.” Winning ugly includes tactics like digging up personal dirt about your opponents, discussing “how he had done detailed research on the personal histories of members of the boards of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to try to find information that could be used to embarrass them.” (As far as I can tell, Berman is either inept at this tactic or environmental board members are stunningly virtuous people, because there is no public record of any serious embarrassment resulting).

What may have surprised Berman, however, was that someone in the audience not only recorded his remarks but was sufficiently appalled to leak them, so you can read it all in its ugliness. Anadarko Petroleum, to its credit, has distanced themselves from Berman, saying “Anadarko did not support Mr. Berman’s approach and did not to participate in his work because it does not align with our values.” Unfortunately, it appears that Berman may still have raised $3 million from other oil and gas companies for his latest endeavor, “Big Green Radicals.”

GLOBAL FRACKDOWN STARTS: Majority of Canadians want fracking moratorium, says EKOS poll

Council of Canadians :: Media Release :: October 8, 2014

Today, the Council of Canadians released the results of an EKOS Research poll that found most people, regardless of political affiliation, support a fracking moratorium. Seventy percent support “a national moratorium on fracking until it is scientifically proven to be safe.”

“Regardless of age, region or education, people from coast to coast are calling for an end to fracking,” says Maude Barlow, National Chairperson for the Council of Canadians. “Communities understand very well the impacts that fracking has on water sources, climate and public health. With the moratoriums in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, it’s clearly the way communities want governments to go.”

Significantly, this support for a moratorium cuts across party lines: nearly half of Conservative voters support a moratorium. The highest support for a moratoria came from NDP voters: 87% of them support a national moratorium as do 78% of Liberal voters. Currently, the Green Party is the only party calling for a national moratorium.

“Based on these numbers, political parties may want to rethink their positions to put them in line with what the population wants. We’re urging NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau to support a moratorium as the Green Party has,” says Emma Lui, Water Campaigner for the Council of Canadians.

The results are being released leading up to the Global Frackdown on October 11. The Global Frackdown is an international day of action where hundreds of communities around the world call for a ban on fracking. Local Council of Canadians chapters are organizing events across the country on that day.

Fracking is a risky technique where sand, water and chemicals are injected into the ground to break apart rock formations to extract natural gas or oil. Communities have raised a number of concerns including excessive water use, water contamination, greenhouse gas emissions and health impacts of fracking chemicals.

While the provinces issue water and drilling permits, the federal government has a responsibility to regulate fisheries, environmental assessments, pollution prevention and oil and gas in First Nation reserves.

Other results:

• 67% of people are aware of fracking (25% are very aware; 42% are somewhat aware) 

• 70% of people support a moratorium on fracking, which is fairly consistent across age groups, regions, income groups and education 

• 78% of Liberal voters, 49% of Conservative voters and 87% of NDP voters support a moratorium 

• 53% of Liberal voters and 67% of NDP voters strongly support a moratorium

The margin of error for a sample of this size is +/- 3.1%, 19 times out of 20. Survey results are statistically reliable in all major regions of Canada.

Read the media backgrounder and see the poll data tables.

Last Stop for High Profile Fracking Suit: Supreme Court

In striking Ernst appeal, Alberta court wraps blanket of immunity around regulator.

By Andrew Nikiforuk  ::  TheTyee  ::  16 September 2014

Albertan Jessica Ernst: Attempting to hold Alberta's energy regulator responsible for fracking damage to her land.

The Alberta Court of Appeal has effectively ruled that one of the nation's most powerful regulators can violate the nation's Charter of Rights and Freedoms by banishing citizens and falsely branding them as a security threats.

That's exactly what happened to oil patch consultant Jessica Ernst. She is now suing the regulator, the Alberta government and Encana Corporation over the alleged contamination of her groundwater by the shallow fracking of coal seams in central Alberta nearly a decade ago.

But the Court of Appeal, which has the power to make law or correct errors in law, argues in a densely worded 11-page decision that Energy Resources Conservation Board (now the Alberta Energy Regulator) owes no duty of care to individual landowners harmed by industrial activity.

Furthermore the decision states that an immunity clause in the Energy Resources Conservation Act (Section 43) protects the powerful regulator from any lawsuit or Charter claim regardless of how the regulator has treated individual citizens.

"Provisions immunizing decision makers from liability are not so uncommon or unusual in free and democratic societies as to rend them constitutionally unreasonable," explains the ruling.
But Cory Wanless, one of Ernst's lawyers in the high profile case, thinks that Albertans should be duly alarmed by the decision.

"The tenor of the judgement is that the regulator knows best and because it knows best, citizens should not challenge what it does in court," says Wanless, an Albertan and member of the famed Klippensteins law firm in Toronto.

Together with lawyer Murray Klippenstein, Wanless has worked seven years on the lawsuit.

To date none of the voluminous evidence on groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracking collected by Ernst and her lawyers has been presented in court.
"How can a provincial government grant immunity to a regulator for infringing Charter rights?" asks Wanless.

But the Court of Appeal decision, which makes no mention of the duty to protect groundwater, argued that citizens wronged by government should seek redress through other remedies such as judicial reviews or a complaint process.

But in Ernst's case, the regulator closed that very door. It even told its employees to avoid all communication with the environmental consultant.

Democracy on trial
To Wanless the new legal ruling also raises a fundamental issue in a democracy. "If a regulator doesn't do its job, then how do citizens fix that reality when the courts close the door to claims against the regulator?"

Seven years ago, oil patch consultant Ernst sued Alberta Environment, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) and Encana, one of Canada's largest unconventional gas drillers, over the contamination of her well water with hydrocarbons and the failure of government authorities to properly investigate the contamination.

The $33-million lawsuit alleges that Encana was negligent in the fracking of shallow coal seams; that the ERCB breached Ernst's freedoms under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that Alberta Environment performed a problem-plagued investigation in bad faith.

In Sept. 2013 Alberta Chief Justice Neil Wittmann, who volunteered to manage the well-known lawsuit, struck down Ernst's Charter claim against the energy regulator as well as her negligence claim against the regulator on the basis of statutory immunity.

But at the same time Wittmann allowed claims of negligence against the government of Alberta and Encana, an aggressive pioneer in fracking and mining of unconventional hydrocarbons, to proceed.

Worldwide attention
The case, which effectively puts the practice of hydraulic fracturing as well as the legal performance of the province's oil and gas regulators on trial, has drawn international attention.
Each day as many as 400 people from around the world read updates on hydraulic fracturing or details on the legal case on Ernst's popular blog.

Ernst told The Tyee that she was not surprised by the decision. "The courts only reflect what Albertans vote for, and they vote for these kinds of civil abuses as long as revenue flows from hydrocarbons."
Alberta, often described as a classic petro state, has been ruled by one party for more than 43 years.
The industry-friendly government receives a third of its revenue from the fracking of oil and gas deposits as well as the mining of bitumen. Even the province's energy regulator is now directed by a former energy lobbyist.

As a consequence Ernst says that the energy regulator is the most guilty party in her lawsuit. She will seek leave to appeal today's ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

"It's really bad when a regulator helps a company cover up a documented case of groundwater contamination, and then they violate the Charter. This precedent just can't be allowed."

Ernst's lawyers have argued in court the regulator's statutory immunity clause "cannot provide immunity to a government from valid Charter claims. The Charter guarantees not only fundamental rights and freedoms, but crucially, also guarantees the right for Canadians to seek a remedy when these fundamental Charter rights and freedoms are violated. These constitutional rights cannot be taken away by statutory immunity in a provincial statute."

Accused of being out to 'humiliate' regulators
Curiously, both Justice Wittmann and the Court of Appeal issued their rulings on the validity of Ernst's Charter claim without hearing a shred of material evidence on the case.
The facts, many of which are a matter of public record and appear on Ernst's website, are alarming.
In Nov. 2005 the regulator sent Ernst a letter saying it had told its staff to "avoid any further contact" with the oil patch consultant on the grounds that she had criticized the board and made "criminal threats."

Yet in June 2006 Rick McKee, then chief counsel for the regulator, admitted in a taped interview (Liberal MLA David Swann was a witness too) that Ernst never presented a security threat to the organization.

Moreover, the real issue concerned her critical comments on the board's performance in the wake of the controversial drilling and fracking of thousands of gas wells above the base of groundwater protection in central Alberta without so much as a cumulative impact plan or groundwater monitoring program.
During the taped interview McKee repeatedly accused Ernst of airing the board's dirty laundry in public.

"What you are doing is, hey, I don't want to make it sound like people are a bunch of sensitive, you know, but at the end of the day, you are, you seem to be, attempting to humiliate the organization. And if that is your intention good on you, but don't expect us to help you," McKee told Ernst.

"You are too intelligent and too capable to bash us," added McKee. (The Tyee has a copy of the tape.)
But neither Wittmann nor the Court of Appeal ever heard or consulted this evidence. No doubt Ernst's team would welcome a chance to argue to Supreme Court judges that the tape recording provides evidence the regulator banished a citizen with a contaminated well water on the basis of known falsehoods, but later admitted they were falsehoods.

Two per cent of complaints investigated
The Ernst case is explosive in other ways too.

Public records obtained by the scientist and businesswoman through the Freedom of Information Act raise serious questions about how thorough were the government's subsequent investigation of numerous groundwater contamination cases in 2006 and 2007.
Only five of nearly 100 complaints were actually studied.

Even top scientists in the field of methane contamination such as University of Alberta scientist Karlis Muehlenbachs later characterized the investigation as "bullshit." His separate studies showed industry contamination of water wells in many cases.

John McDougall is now the Harper appointee heading the National Research Council. In May 2007, McDougall, then the director of the Alberta Research Council, reported to Alberta cabinet ministers that ARC's allegedly independent study was underway. He included an odd warning that might seem more suited to a public relations advisor, one that seemed to anticipate the findings that would eventually be published six months later. Citizens, McDougall wrote, "may not willingly accept the findings" that methane contamination of water wells was natural or due to bad water well practices -- a standard industry claim used across North America.

But in a recent advertisement in the Calgary Herald, even the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers now admits that many public concerns about hydraulic fracturing and water quality "are based on past operations involving coal-bed methane -- shallow deposits in closer proximity to groundwater."

The Calgary Herald reported Alex Ferguson saying that shallow fracks "did occasionally contaminate water resources." Ferguson is CAPP vice president of policy and environment.
Ferguson added that "In some of the more infamous instances, affected landowners could light their well water on fire."

In 2011 the Australian Petroleum Association revealed that the industry has "never shied away from the fact that there will be impacts on aquifers" from coal seam drilling.
Friends working in the oil patch told Ernst at the time that the levels of methane that foamed and erupted in her water well after Encana fracked nearby coal seams was not only dangerous but among the highest they had ever seen in the province.

Justice Wittmann is expected to make a ruling soon on whether or not the Alberta Government is also immune from legal claims for gross negligence.