They would have listened to me in 2007 when I suggested building hurricane and earthquake proof houses for Greensboro's homeless from plastic bags instead of waiting for someone else to do it first.
In 2008 I even bought machines to bail the plastic so it wouldn't have to be done by hand but none of Greensboro's "leaders" were interested in the project. How much could we have saved the taxpayers and put back into the local economy by giving people roofs over their heads? Roofs they helped to build with their own labor.
Harvey Lacey and I had many e-mail conversations back when both of us were figuring out how to make it work. Harvey's goal was a building system that could be used with only human powered machines for use in Haiti and other places where he had done missionary work. My goal was to house Greensboro's homeless and save millions of pounds of plastic bags from landfills.
What did Harvey have that I didn't have? A place to do the work and someone who needed it bad enough to let him build it. Greensboro's homeless still need homes badly but Greensboro's leaders still lack the vision to give them the place to work.
I based my ideas on straw bail houses which have been in existence world wide for over 100 years with many of the original straw bail houses still standing. I contacted over a dozen straw bail builders throughout the US and Canada and not one of them could think of any reason why plastic bails wouldn't work. So what do straw bail houses look like and what would the plastic bail houses I proposed look like?
You see, economic development, real economic development, starts at the bottom and trickles its way up to the top, not the other way around. And as long as governments, even local governments continue to provide corporate welfare to developers those at the bottom will never realize their share.
Think about it. What would the property tax value be for a bail house that costs nothing to heat and cool and uses almost no electricity say 20 years into the future compared to a conventional home. And how would that effect the City of Greensboro's ability to pay its bills? But alas, our "leaders" can't see that far ahead.
In 2008 I even bought machines to bail the plastic so it wouldn't have to be done by hand but none of Greensboro's "leaders" were interested in the project. How much could we have saved the taxpayers and put back into the local economy by giving people roofs over their heads? Roofs they helped to build with their own labor.
Harvey Lacey and I had many e-mail conversations back when both of us were figuring out how to make it work. Harvey's goal was a building system that could be used with only human powered machines for use in Haiti and other places where he had done missionary work. My goal was to house Greensboro's homeless and save millions of pounds of plastic bags from landfills.
What did Harvey have that I didn't have? A place to do the work and someone who needed it bad enough to let him build it. Greensboro's homeless still need homes badly but Greensboro's leaders still lack the vision to give them the place to work.
I based my ideas on straw bail houses which have been in existence world wide for over 100 years with many of the original straw bail houses still standing. I contacted over a dozen straw bail builders throughout the US and Canada and not one of them could think of any reason why plastic bails wouldn't work. So what do straw bail houses look like and what would the plastic bail houses I proposed look like?
You see, economic development, real economic development, starts at the bottom and trickles its way up to the top, not the other way around. And as long as governments, even local governments continue to provide corporate welfare to developers those at the bottom will never realize their share.
Think about it. What would the property tax value be for a bail house that costs nothing to heat and cool and uses almost no electricity say 20 years into the future compared to a conventional home. And how would that effect the City of Greensboro's ability to pay its bills? But alas, our "leaders" can't see that far ahead.
