This has been a super fun month, meeting with natural building folks, ecovillagers, board members and advisors.
We filed the Articles of Incorporation with the State of New Mexico! Tonight we are having a launch party to just celebrate the evolution of affordable housing in the state of New Mexico and raise money to file for the 501c3 (which is Federal tax-exempt status of a charitable and educational organization.)
Right now we are hoping to find the land and funding to do a Pilot Project 10-dome “Clean Pod” within the city limits of Silver City, making our fair city an affordable housing role model like Moab, Utah.
A beautiful, elegantly designed Clean Pod would attract visitors to Silver City to tour the Pilot Project! As a training center, this Pilot Pod would provide housing not for sensitive people, but for Allies who want to come for a residential training program on how to design, build, maintain, farm and optimize Clean Pods, so that they can build them EVERYWHERE.
I envision Municipal and County and State governments all around the United States becoming interested in replicating this design. They are aware of the desperate state of affairs with homelessness and the affordable housing crisis in this country and the inability of the current supply chain to meet the demand for safe, affordable housing. Low-income people are living in 50 year old trailers that are making them sick.
Local governments everywhere are also becoming aware of the segment of their population that become homeless because they are sick. They find women, men, whole families, living out of their vehicles in empty parking lots because they got sick, lost their job and job-based health insurance, and/or they had to leave their homes because the homes were what made them sick.
I’ve recently gotten to meet some of the AMAZING natural builders in our town. These are people who know how to create safe, long-lasting and affordable homes out of earth. Many of these homes have rain-water catchment water systems and permaculture landscaping that promote biodiversity and food sovereignty by cultivating food forests– even here in the high desert.
We have to do something different as a country. The free market has now become predatory. Community Land Trusts are a way to preserve land from developers and make the clean, safe housing on it affordable for generations to come.
Let’s Do This!!
Holly
crookedforestinstitute.org 