Click Here for all the details. Hope to see you there! Please post and share!

Join us Tomorrow night for a presentation at the LULAC Hall in Silver City, located at 100 W Alice St, in Silver City, NM.

LULAC stands for “The League of United Latin American Citizens.” It was founded in 1929, and is the oldest and most widely respected Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States of America. LULAC was created at a time in our country’s history when Hispanics were denied basic civil and human rights, despite contributions to American society. The founders of LULAC created an organization that empowers its members to create and develop opportunities where they are needed most. Learn more here.

Joseph Kennedy and Holly Noonan will be presenting an overview of the approach that Crooked Forest Institute is taking to our affordable housing crisis. Their approach includes five key educational priorities:

1. Non-toxic living. Our modern homes that are built with materials that outgas, are toxic when they burn and dangerous when they mold, are invisibly affecting the health of our children and our elders. Crooked Forest Institute believes that information on how to keep pollutants out of our air, food and water should be basic lifeskills education.
2. Local Economy. Each of our dollars is like a small vote. The economic impact of purchasing an item from a local store owner reverberates through our community, while purchasing an item from an international franchise sends our dollars away from the community. In addition to supporting our local economy, Crooked Forest Institute believes strongly in highlighting all the kinds of wealth that are more important that just profit. Fairness, Participation, Nature, Purpose and Dignity are all priorities that are protected in a Wellbeing Economy. Learn more here.
3. Adobe Construction. The Hispanic community created community housing solutions a century ago that did not involve debt or toxins or air conditioning. Many of the original working class homes that were built here in Pinos Altos, Chihuahua Hill and Brewer Hill were small adobes, and they are still standing. These types of housing solutions were thinking centuries ahead, to benefit the community in perpetuity. Now, you are lucky if your home lasts 20 years. The housing crisis is sparking a boom of more short-term (OSB) housing solutions, and they are hoping the house lasts only about as long as the mortgage. (But no longer.) Crooked Forest wants to capture the time-tested knowledge of locally built, non-toxic homes before we lose this body of knowledge. We want to build homes made from local, healthy materials, and train a new generation of adobe builders to build in a community-building model.
4. Shared-equity land ownership. One of the keys to providing perpetually affordable housing is the Community Land Trust model of housing. In this structure, a municipality or county (or even state) creates the 501c3 non-profit entity to protect land in perpetuity for the benefit of the community. This Community Land Trust then invites ALL kinds of solutions for the lower-income residents of the community. Tiny houses on wheels? Manufactured homes? Conventionally-built 4 bedroom homes? High-density, co-operative apartment buildings? Transitional housing? And our 400 square foot adobes on shared-infrastructure? All yes. Plus low-water food production and ecological restoration. Shared-equity is the way to go. The community owns and stewards the land together.
5. Ecological Restoration. Crooked Forest Institute is a “Future School” that is creating solutions now to challenges we will face soon. More fire, less water, more pollutants and unstable supply chains are all future challenges that we are solving for now. To create sustainable communities full of healthy, self-reliant people, we need to focus on protecting and invigorating the biodiversity of the soil and all other levels of each of our ecosystems. Systems thinking prevents problems, and Crooked Forest Institute knows how much cheaper it is to prevent problems than to clean them up.

So join the founders of Crooked Forest Institute for a lively, interactive discussion on these topics and more, tomorrow night at the LULAC Hall on Alice Street in Silver City. Bring your stories, both inspiring and challenging, to offer your valuable contribution on how to build a better future for the next generation, and beyond.

Hi All,

I just wanted to send an update on the project to create the Thrival Cabin prototype for Jade. Here we are yesterday, driving around doing errands. You can’t tell from this photo because she’s such a trooper, but she’s in hell right now with no safe place to sleep.

For those of you who have lived this particular type of hell, please send blessings. (Jade has severe EI, or Environmental Illness.) We are working as fast as we can to start the building process. This is where we are with it.

The building site pad and the driveway has been dug!

The metal roof has been ordered and will be shipped shortly. We will erect the metal roof first and then build an adobe underneath it, with shade and shelter from rain.

Underneath this 17′ x 24′ metal roof structure, we will build a 10′ x 12′ adobe structure with a 12 ft ceiling. (Note that we have raised $1320 so far, plus the $7500 that came from the pay-it-forward GoFundMe Trailer I sold to fund this project. So yes the roof structure alone cost more than we have raised so far.)

There will be a loft inside so the sleeping area can be kept cleaner than the living area down below. Then there will be living space outside, under cover. Eventually it will be screened in, but perhaps not until next summer.

I have found the crew who is going to do the site work and concrete column pads and metal building assembly, so that’s all on track. After the roof is assembled, we will schedule volunteer building days in October!

Right now, there is nothing special you need to do to be notified. You will get another email like this one letting you know the volunteer build days we have scheduled. And don’t worry, you don’t need to have experience. You don’t even need to actually build! you can show up and help serve the volunteers food and drinks, you can show up just to see what we’re up to and see how it’s going.

We just wanted to let you know the timing of this. We ARE planning a fundraising event, but I don’t have enough details to share yet. But if you would like to contribute to this project….

Here is the GoFundMe for Jade’s Thrival Cabin

If you would like to help us plan the fundraising event OR you are interested in volunteering as a volunteer coordinator, please do email me here.

(And yes, there is some other pretty special news coming, so stay tuned.)

All for now!

Holly

This Sunday, August 4th at 10:00 am, 3845 North Swan Street – “Creative Solutions for Sustainable Affordable Housing”

Joanne DeMichele and Holly Noonan met at a public hearing on affordable housing. They quickly realized that they have similar concerns and solutions.

Separately and together, they pursue alternative, sustainable, healthy, equitable, and people-focused solutions to preserve and expand housing, health, and community living.

Community Land Trusts and Resident-Owned Cooperatives are both shared-equity models of land ownership that empower the community to come together to gain the benefits of land ownership and take on the responsibilities of ecological stewardship.

“In an economy that leaves the most economically vulnerable 25% of our citizens to fend for themselves, shared-equity land ownership helps the community take care of each other. By prioritizing and protecting healthy, affordable neighborhoods, each resident benefits from stability, community and peace,” DeMichele said.

“When whole neighborhoods collaborate to support each other to become fully resourced, the larger community benefits enormously. Especially among older adults, more connections with neighbors and loved ones results in better health outcomes and longer life. This reduces pressure on emergency services and social service networks,” Noonan added

They added that when private equity greed threatens these naturally occurring, socially-cohesive affordable housing communities, our policy makers must stand up and protect these communities.

Holly Noonan founded Crooked Forest Institute to create healthy, affordable, shared-equity housing in our community. She focuses on small, disability-forward, adobe construction with shared utilities on a community land trust.

Joanne DeMichele moved to a manufactured home community in 2021 and immediately recognized the many benefits of this affordable and nourishing way of life, especially as a woman living alone and aging. Shortly after settling in, she learned that this important source of community housing is at risk due to predatory investment practices and inadequate government protections. DeMichele is part of an affordable housing statewide alliance and a statewide manufactured home preservation work group working toward solutions.

There are speakers on the patio if you wish to listen to the service outside.

Childcare is available every Sunday. Zoey Cronin will lead a formal children’s program on second and fourth Sundays.

Children are welcome to participate on any Sunday, but they will get the most out of the program if they attend second and fourth Sundays somewhat regularly. Family adults may stay for the children’s program or attend the adult program. Children are encouraged to bring a small item that represents someone or something they are grateful for that week.

UUFSC Safety Protocol as pursuant to our most recent UUA Guidelines:

Masks are now optional, but their use is encouraged. We will continue to serve refreshments on the patio and in the building. Visitors are always welcome.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Silver City is a diverse group of religious independents seeking knowledge, spiritual sustenance, fellowship and opportunities for service to others. Our programs encompass Humanism, liberal Christianity, earth-based spirituality, Buddhism and many other traditions.

If you’d like to find out more, email uufellowshipofsilvercity@gmail.com , visit our website at www.uufsc.com or visit us on Facebook at Unitarian-Universalist-Fellowship-of-Silver-City.

Join us at The Silco Theatre on Wednesday, August 14th at 6pm for this screening of “A Decent Home,” about the social cohesion as well as radical economic vulnerability of homeowners who live in manufactured housing communities. They own their homes, but not the land underneath them and many of them didn’t see it coming when these communities found themselves getting snapped up by private equity investors.

Join us for a discussion afterwards with advocates, stakeholders and policy makers who have learned about the polycrisis in these communities and about the shared-equity solution that is catching on around the country.

Silver City, NM, July 18, 2024

Crooked Forest Institute recently received a $200,000 grant from the Tides Foundation. Crooked Forest Institute is a Silver City-based 501c3 non-profit organization that is focussing on building affordable housing on a local Community Land Trust. The Tides Foundation envisions a world of shared prosperity and social justice founded on equality and human rights, sustainable environment, quality education, and healthy individuals and communities. Since 1976, Tides has partnered with innovative organizations to accelerate the pace of social change and solve society’s toughest problems. Crooked Forest Institute is proud to have been selected as an organization that contributes to that legacy.

With the generous support in the form of this substantial unrestricted grant, Crooked Forest Institute plans to finalize the purchase of 32 acres for their education campus in Grant Count, NM, to establish a solid fiscal foundation for their future programs and to develop the capacity to have a meaningful positive impact on the creation of healthy and affordable neighborhoods in Grant County.

Crooked Forest Institute was established in 2022 with five educational priorities; Non-Toxic Living, Local Economy, Adobe Construction, Shared-Equity Land Ownership and Ecological Restoration. Their intention is to help to establish a local Community Land Trust (CLT) that is designed to provide safe, affordable housing in perpetuity for the benefit of the community. Once this CLT is established, Crooked Forest Institute intends to become a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) that builds multiple neighborhoods on the CLT for low-income residents who earn between 30% and 80% of the local average median income (AMI) which is about $15,000 to $40,000 annual income in Grant County.

Their pilot project is their “resiliency neighborhood,” which is designed to share the most affordable utilities infrastructure; that of an RV park. They want to build 10-site RV park infrastructure with water, septic/sewer, electrical and internet, and then build 400 square foot adobe homes–instead of RVs– at each site. This type of neighborhood is not currently permissible in Grant County under the current land use codes, but their hope is that it will be, once they request a “workforce housing” variance. This type of variance, allowing permanent structures to be built at RV park sites, has been passed in two other counties in New Mexico.

They contend that these small homes will be healthier, more affordable and much longer lived than the manufactured housing solutions that often wear out before the mortgage is paid off. If these ten-home neighborhoods are built on a Community Land Trust, the small homes will be buyable, sellable and inheritable and will offer a way for low income residents to accrue equity instead of paying high rents for substandard housing. Homes that are located on Community Land Trusts are deed-restricted, which means they can be bought at below market rate, but the buyer must agree to sell it to another low-income family in order for the neighborhood to stay affordable housing in perpetuity.

Community Land Trusts, a shared-equity model of land ownership, first gained popularity during the civil rights era, as vehicles for consumer protection and social justice among disenfranchised populations. They have proven to be a reliable foundation for perpetually affordable housing efforts in 225 cities and towns around the US. During the housing crisis following the 2008 financial meltdown, homes in Community Land Trusts were ten times less likely to end up in foreclosure.

Crooked Forest Institute focuses on the historical tradition of building with adobe bricks and compressed earth blocks because, says Holly Noonan, their Executive Director, “This is anti-inflammatory, probiotic housing.” Noonan, a social worker, became severely ill in New England due to multiple chemical sensitivity and discovered the long history of chemically sensitive people healing in adobe homes. “These small homes are what I needed myself 8 years ago.” Due to the indoor air quality issues in modern buildings that are made out of OSB, paint, adhesives and caulking, small adobe homes are ideal for about 25% of the population who are health-challenged by the ubiquity of modern chemicals.

Like Community Rebuilds, in Moab, Utah, Crooked Forest Institute intends to build houses on a CLT using a community-building model. This means their students and volunteers who contribute labor hours on each build get a free education while they are lowering labor costs for each homeowner.

The $200,000 grant will be dedicated to furthering Crooked Forest’s mission by securing the location of their 32-acre education campus, searching for matching grants, developing the messaging of their vision, articulating both landscape and architectural design plans, establishing a Community Land Trust and applying for the land use variance that will be needed to realize their vision.

They can be contacted at crookedforestinstitute@gmail.com.

https://www.grantcountybeat.com/news/news-releases/85222-crooked-forest-institute-is-a-silver-city-based-501c3-non-profit

Thanks everyone for showing up in person today! It was quite a crowd. Here is the recording of the presentation, which mostly features our slide deck and our voices.

If you came to the presentation, feel free to leave feedback or questions here.

Click Here to watch the Zoom Recording. (Fast Forward to minute 3 for the start of the presentation.)

Thanks so much for the community support. We appreciate you!

Holly and Joe

Hi all,

If you are not able to join us in person, Zoom is an option, but the original link they published won’t work. Here is the new link that will work:

Western Institute for Lifelong Learning is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: A WILL Lunch & Learn Event / A Crooked Forest Institute Zoom Presentation 
Time: Wednesday, Jul 10, 2024  11:45 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88251397385?pwd=OCQGMBatSWCJMZsbb2kPrrVcrF8QtE.1

Meeting ID: 882 5139 7385
Passcode: 646087
==========================================

**ALSO** I had posted the incorrect time for our upcoming presentation at the UU church on August 4th. It will be from 10am to 11am, followed by coffee and conversation. We will send out a reminder before that event.

Thank you!

Holly