Here’s something that makes me a little angry.
Everywhere I look, I’m finding the same thing: In some of America’s poorest towns, it’s currently illegal to become resilient.
Wow. This means that the people who can benefit the most from vigorous self-help are being denied the freedom to do so, by towns that are wedded to a dysfunctional past.
Take the example of Jason Canfield.
Jason owns a home in Holland Township. Holland Township is a small town in rural Michigan with a per person income of only $16,000. As a point of reference, that’s about 50% of the per person income of Americans (a level of income that hasn’t changed in 38 years! which means we’ve been doing something wrong nationally, for quite a while).
Jason wants to become more resilient. He wants to increase his family’s food security and improve his future. To accomplish, Jason started small. He decided to raise chickens and turkeys to feed his family.
What happened next is perverse. Due to pressure from some of his neighbors, the Township is now forcing Jason to get rid of his chicken coop, 26 chickens, and 3 turkeys.
It appears that there’s an artifact of industrial suburbia in place that prevents him from becoming productive. A town zoning ordinance that decrees that raising chickens on less than five acres is illegal. Raising chickens is designated a “farming activity” that can only be done on parcels of land over five acres and zoned for farming.
What? Essentially, this ordinance means that being productive or engaging in economic self-help is a crime unless you own five acres of land.
What makes this particularly painful is that in a large and growing number of more well-off US communities — communities with family incomes three times higher than Holland Township — there aren’t any restrictions on raising chickens.
Here’s an important message to Holland Township and other towns like it:
DON’T make resilience a crime based on notions of what a home and community used to be in a fading industrial era.
Instead, make it easier for your community’s residents to produce the food, energy, water, and products it needs. Build the platforms that allow members of the community to more easily export what they produce. Embrace the future and the prosperity it offers.
Victory Gardens?
Remember when nearly everyone was encouraged to produce more of what they needed locally? Here’s a picture from WW2′s victory garden program (Boston Common, 1944)
Something to think about: It’s amazing how quickly and how easily most of the people in the developing world gave up any claim to economic independence at the individual and community level. It’s also amazing to contemplate how quickly this independence will be regained in the not too distant future as financial turbulence and environmental disruptions increase in frequency and severity. The good news is that we can produce nearly everything we need at the local level better than we do at the global level right now. All it takes is the decision to do so…
Making Products Locally
Lots of people don’t get the degree of transformation underway in making things. You know, the products that we use every day.
They look at 3D printers and the things they make as toys. Granted, it does look that way. Here are some items produced by the “Rep Rap Vision.” An open hardware project by Matt Underwood in Mahomet, Illinois (the project was funded on Kickstarter — Nice!)
That’s a mistake. The ability to make products locally is going to get much better, very quickly. Remember, not too long ago, the products we bought from China and Japan looked very similar to the above:
They don’t anymore… Just something to think about.
Your “Helping You Prosper Sooner than Later” Analyst,
John Robb
 |
|
Requiring 5 acres for chickens seems a excessive, however there probably is some reasonable zoning thresholds.
In the days before zoning an industrialist could buy part of a city block and put up a coal powered electric plant, destroying their neighbors property values or inflicting significant health problems for those who couldn’t afford to move.
Chickens can be noisy and with enough of them you will have trouble dealing with the waste.
In an ideal world we’d probably have residental zoning laws closer to “outside the operation the sound levels must be below 35db.” and “the owner of the operation must be willing, on demand, to consume or sit in the waste stream from the operation.” instead of our current system of specific inclusions and exclusions.
For comparison my city requires that your chickens be at least 50′ from your neighbors, and forbids roosters, which feels much closer to a reasonable restriction.
The major point that the article doesn’t address is why the neighbors complained. Was it unreasonably loud or smelly for a city lot? Or were the neighbors just being busybodies with no real reason other than “it’s not legal”?
Diane has presented ideas in what is a reasonable manner. Address the “noise” or “smell” or “waste” and not just keeping the animals out.
My small town forbids any animals except essentially dogs and cats. Even rabbits aren’t allowed and those are nearly silent and don’t smell at all unless the compost they excrete is left in unreasonable conditions.
There should be no reason for even city level administration to block reasonable means of feeding one’s family.
Thanks John. Can’t understand the mindset on this given everything that is going on. JR
This is about Property values and protecting them…. In a place that will never see those values return to previous levels precisely because of the regulations that have killed off freedom and innovation. even on your own property, that you now “rent” from the government in the form of property taxes. You don’t own it, they let you live there as long as you pay them the rent rent.
I have to beg your pardon but I disagree that these rules/laws/regulations will be done away with when the need is greatest. Politicians and political entities really like having a lot of power, control and revenue generated by fines and so they are very likely to block any attempt to ease/repeal them. Add additional corruption into the mix, which is sure to occur and there you are, begging permission to eat and feed your family. I mean, consider. My local government has employed satellite imagery and analysis software to keep track of un-permitted work and even repairs which are authorized by law, if you’re being to wonder why people show up at your place, every time you begin a project. Trees help quite a bit but they are going to be using drones eventually so unless you leave for other less totalitarian parts, you’re going to have to change your thinking and methods, if you stay.
I now firmly believe in deceptive treachery.
These restrictions seem like self fulfilling prophesies to me.
By that I mean, any city that has such restrictions and is already spiraling downward will eventually make itself and the restrictions irrelevant.
Eventually a town gets so broke and broken that there’s no city government to enforce such idocracy.
As a general rule, people won’t sit in place and starve. Restrictions will gut a dieing city even more; quickening it’s demise.
I’ve raised chickens in a town before and they take very little space and make very little noise.
Richard — “self-fulfilling prophesy” indeed. JR
Diane – nuisance law was alive and strong back before zoning laws. The problem there was that the neighbors would have to sue for abatement. Usually there was some horse trading as the value of the coal plant was then reduced and the property owner could not pay for that and would have to sell and move. Sale was usually to the coal plant (using your example). Zoning laws were controversial back in the day. There were a series of court opinions upholding the rights of cities to zone (it really was a state granted right) for the purpose of health, safety and liveability. When talking to your city use those three words when asking for an adjustment to the current zoning law. ie this doesn’t need regulation at this level for health or safety reasons because it’s under 5 chickens but for liveability purposes we will have to have approval of all immediately adjacent landowners (the case in our city for bees, 80% for chickens, no roosters allowed).
I think there is some issue of safety with any animal and so regulation is going to happen. ie disease, aggression, etc. This is why we have leash laws for dogs. I know it sounds like a pain but it’s a long-running negotiated social contract. Behavioural norms are changing and so the social contract is needing to be re-examined. Which is fair but takes time, which is frustrating to someone like me who likes to do do do.
Now we can all discuss whether zoning laws have overreached or don’t serve our current needs in a city very well. I would say that’s the side I come down on, and so you either need to be very quiet about doing something outside of zoning laws and watching what kind of nuisance you might be creating for your neighbour. Because common law nuisance is still used (thankfully!) in our court system. So even if zoning allows something if it’s so much of a problem that it reduces the value of your property or creates a health problem for you in your home you will still have the right to sue your neighbour. Not that I think it’s good that anyone would get to that point, but to keep that in mind. Do onto others as you…. etc. etc.
I’ve seen this happen many times. Sometimes there’s a legitimate complaint about how the animals/garden/whatever are managed and some regard and common courtesy can solve it; sometimes it’s all about causing trouble for someone else because of perceptions or past slights (often imagined, in my experience).
I recently visited a small town/community where several of these disagreements escalated into shooting, since lawsuits are lengthy and expensive, and sometimes, out in the sticks, settling something right then and there appeals more to the personalities involved.
Conflict resolution and mediation are pretty important considerations for the resilient community. I had a discussion once with two people who survived the Balkan conflict as civilians; when I asked them what happened when the law/official security failed and they had conflicts, I got this answer: “The first thing we did was shoot the neighbors.”
Better to work out procedures to handle this kind of thing in advance; small town meetings and school board meetings are a good place to start your study.
cheers, m
Just one point, while the production is local, the design need not be. Design, aided by modern communication is becoming more collaberative and international.
In the centre of the first picture there is a large grey duck. Just below it (in blue) and to the left (in red) is a complex shape I also saw ad a demo of 3D printing. That was early last month, at a BarCamp held the Gold Coast TechSpace, Southport, Queensland, Australia.
Noel!!!!!!!! Exactly! Ideas cost nearly nothing to ship. They can be shipped wirelessly. JR
Hi John,
This speaks to a comment I made in your recent survey; The global industrial economy switched from wealth creation, to wealth extraction years ago. People are only just starting to notice. A significant outcome of this switch, is that the wealth extractors – giant corporations principally – will want to maintain this state of affairs. Any attempt to firewall wealth from them will be met with resistance. Jason Canfield is experiencing this resistance first hand. I’m thinking that as local economic resilience spreads and grows in reaction to this increasing predation – it’s practitioners will need to find ways and means to keep locally generated wealth, local.
I think the resilient community concept has one significant drawback: it’s a “stationary target” for wealth predators. I’d like to see your thoughts on how you see this situation and what (if anything) resilient communities could do about it.
Paul,
You need to think like an entrepreneur.
View rules like this as damage. They are meant to be skirted and worked around.
They are often put in place to allow special interests to gain unfair advantage. Often, you’ll find that the parties that initially benefited from these restrictions are no longer around. They’ve either gone out of business or moved on. The only thing that keeps these rules in place is inertia/laziness.
If that’s the case, as it may be in this situation, the goal is build your own special interest group — people interested in improving their future — and overturn them.
JR
A small victory for Karl in the city of Ferguson to be able to keep his garden in the front yard of his rental home. Still can’t believe the attitude of the city officials who view the garden as a blot.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/ferguson-resident-wins-fight-for-front-yard-vegetable-garden/article_a5452134-2a26-5dc5-9c16-0c1c212c8ff3.html
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 3 trackbacks }