What is Crooked Forest planning to build?
We are planning to create “resiliency neighborhoods” designed around optimizing health. Our resiliency neighborhood design emerged from the experiences of sensitive people who have endured dramatic health challenges resulting from living in the modern world. When designing homes and neighborhoods for the optimal health of sensitive people (about 20% of the population) we arrive at a model that benefits the health of the whole community. Homes are smaller, simpler and made of natural materials. Water catchment, food-security gardens and outdoor spaces are designed into each home. Light, quiet, cleanliness and indoor air quality are all high priorities in our thoughtful design process. In this design, we are focused on the health of humans as a reflection of the health of the larger ecosystem, including plants, wildlife and even the microbes in the soil.
What is so urgent about building healthy affordable housing?
The need is urgent as there is a dramatic trend downwards in the portion of housing affordable to the most cost-burdened segment of our population – from 27% in 2016 to 17.5% 2021 (lower still in 2023), as seen in this demographics and housing analysis. For people who are cost-burdened and environmentally sensitive, this urgent challenge can be life-threatening.
Currently in the US, affordable housing is not healthy housing and healthy housing is seldom affordable. As conventional housing ages and falls into disrepair, negative health effects increase, compounding stressors for families that can least afford them. Our innovative program creates new systems that mitigate the impact of endemic structural racism and exclusivity in housing and lending policy by making it normal for economically disadvantaged people to live in healthy environments. We level the playing field by encouraging local governments to establish Community Land Trusts that serve as vehicles for conservation as well as sites for new affordable housing.
Our first step is developing a prototype resiliency neighborhood on our 52-acre education campus. Our design is based on those of other organizations around the US that are successfully creating affordable housing, but we need to demonstrate the viability of our model by building our first homes here in Grant County, NM.
Who are the people served by your program?
Our focus is to serve 1) our students and 2) our residents. We plan to develop a vocational education program around building small, earthen homes that would become available to populations who have experienced economic marginalization. This includes people of color, women, single elders, veterans, single parents, disabled adults, members of the LGBTQ+ community and people who have experienced homelessness due to environmental sensitivities.
For this last demographic, the challenge of finding affordable housing is exponentially more difficult since, for many, it is almost impossible to heal in conventionally built homes. This population often becomes radically homeless, frequently camping in their vehicles for years.
Currently, our work centers on the housing needs of the sensitive population because design solutions that serve them can and will benefit many other vulnerable and cost-burdened segments of our population. Our educational role models, like Community Rebuilds, create a worksite culture of radical inclusivity and this is also our intention.
How do you determine eligibility?
30% x 30%. Housing is considered “affordable” if it requires 30% or less of your pretax income. This chart illustrates income categories as determines by HUD. They calculate the Area Median Income (AMI) of your zipcode– different everywhere– and then decide whether you are 100%, 80%, 60% or 30% of your location’s AMI.
Our housing solutions are for one or two person families in the Very Low Income quartile, or below 30% of AMI. In Grant county, NM in 2023, that is a single person with an annual income of $22,850 or less. Learn more.
What do you currently need funding for?
We need funding for operations, buildings, machinery, infrastructure and curriculum development. But right now, we are focusing on funding for technical assistance and organizational development, which will allow paid staff to work on securing sustainable long-term funding, hold educational outreach community events, and develop crucial partnerships with local government, businesses and other non-profits.
Funding will pay staff to focus on business development, communications (website, newsletter, podcast, socials) and networking. Funding will also pay for daily operations, website hosting, podcasting software, promotional materials, events, research, trade memberships, and site visits to role model organizations. These investments will build a foundation for our organization to be investment-worthy. When fully funded, we plan to employ 10 full-time, and 6 part-time staff.
Funding would also allow us to pay for architectural design development by Joseph Kennedy to begin the permitting process for individual dwellings and the entire resiliency neighborhood design. Joe is currently “asset mapping” our region for skilled labor, materials, machinery and systems-design assets.
Are there other ways I can contribute?
Yes! Here are three ways you can contribute:
1) Go to our Donate page and contribute either with a one-time donation, or sign up as a supporter to contribute monthly. Even $5 a month helps a lot!
2) You can donate land! We are a 501(c)3 non-profit entity with our own Community Land Trust program, which means you can donate land. Contact us about estate planning or setting up a TODD– Transfer on Death Deed for your estate.
3) You can subscribe to our mailing list to stay in touch as our programs develop, and offer your expertise, advice, muscle and time, when we have events.
Who are the people on your team?
Joseph Kennedy has decades of experience as project lead on earthen building projects, both private and for educational training. He has taught architectural design in universities, co-founded Builders without Borders and authored two books about Natural Building.
Holly Noonan, a social worker and health coach, previously created two for-profit businesses and one other 501c3, and brings those skills in administration and communications to this project. She has completed three building projects, including her current masonry house, designed for a sensitive person, doing a lot of the work herself. She has experience working with the sensitive population as a social worker.
Elisabeth Webber started her bookkeeping business in 2007 and continues to thrive and grow her business. Elisabeth is, herself, environmentally sensitive and so lends her wisdom, life experience and compassion to her role as our treasurer. She has experience with USDA loan servicing and serves other local non-profits as a bookkeeper as well.
Kim Ryan is a single mom and local business manager who is passionate about earth building and off-grid living. She runs the local movie theater and lends her skills in event planning, communications and fundraising.
Check out our About Team page to learn about our Board of Directors and our Advisors page to learn more about our incredible advisory panel!
What are you seeking to change in the housing situation?
Endeavoring to meet the acute need for clean, safe, affordable housing for the growing environmentally sensitive population reveals inherent systemic challenges that we will address.
1) The needs of sensitive people must be centered rather than marginalized, since designing private and community settings based on these needs creates environments benefiting the mental and physical health of everyone. We incorporate this thinking from the beginning, prioritizing dignity over debt and building with non-toxic materials like compressed earth blocks (CEBs). We are creating full architectural plans for small dwellings that are optimized for sensitive residents – a design that will improve on the already completed prototype, which is currently occupied by a happy, healthy, sensitive owner.
2) We need dramatic innovation in planning and zoning ordinances to encourage smaller homes in shared-equity and shared-infrastructure models of housing. This is fundamental to our plan much like Square One Villages in Oregon, Newtown CDC in Arizona and Community Rebuilds in Utah. We hope to be making strides towards an ordinance allowing Accessory Dwelling Units in neighborhoods where they are not currently allowed, as well as having business and government partners join us in working to establish a local Community Land Trust.
3) We need to drastically increase capacity to build infrastructure without relying only on out-of-state supply chains. Our vocational program teaching skills using local materials addresses this from the start. We will also partner with other local stakeholders to include earth building in existing or planned training programs, as well as beginning development of our local facility for manufacturing compressed earth blocks and adobe bricks.
Will your program have impacts beyond the work you do directly?
By pairing a vocational training school with a nearby Community Land Trust-based affordable housing development, our graduates will have apprenticeships and jobs waiting for them, plus a solid system for taking affordable healthy housing out into the world beyond that. The regenerative business incubator in our curriculum encourages graduates to start their own businesses in building trades, water management, garden design, food processing and product creation. Our program is about localized economic development, fostering local food, local materials, local skills and carbon-negative systems design for the health and resilience of everyone in our region, including residents of our communities and our graduates.
Our program emphasizes optimal systems-design that empowers even small communities to create their own small homes from local mud and local muscle. We streamline every system– from communication to machinery to plaster– so the model can go viral. Our focus on respect, resilience and service leads to communities being empowered to meet the needs of members together.
Why not just build wooden tiny houses, like other people are doing?
While building healthy, small, masonry houses is likely to be more expensive per square foot than building the same size wooden structures out of reclaimed or new international-supply-chain materials like OSB plywood, there are two reasons it is worth it;
- Wooden houses are simply not a viable option to live in for many sensitive people. When the houses fail, sensitive people often end up living in their vehicles. We want to build homes that can’t “go bad.”
- Adobe houses last for centuries and are a groundwater investment in community health as a time when most Americans are dealing with chronic illness. Wooden tiny homes on wheels depreciate like vehicles, while adobe tiny homes can be handed down for generations, long after the mortgage is paid off.
Crooked Forest Institute 