Yesterday’s exploration of the interesting experiment of co-housing, based on a sympathetic Boston Globe account, had reached the point of a completed development, using as an anti-snob crowbar the powerful lever of Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B law to produce a development that the founders swear up down and sideways ‘will’ be green. 

Future green? The Mosaic Commons site at Sawyer Hill

Will?  Nothing about co-housing makes it inherently greener than any other form of higher-density living. 

There are 74 communities in various stages of development, 25 in California alone, according to the Cohousing Association.

“The web of life that we have created through driving is just eliminated in cohousing,” said an association spokeswoman, Neshama Abraham Paiss. “You’ve got a real village.”

Except you have to drive to your job, and to your groceries.  All of this sounds merely like a plea for higher-density new urbanism, not a breakthrough innovation in its own right.

Emerson Chandler, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, said Sawyer Hill’s contention that it is environmentally sustainable is “baloney,” because the clustering has caused water to run onto a neighboring property.

In the long run, the greatest threat to residential property is water.  It can rot building envelops, drain into standing pools that rot siding, submerge property and breed expensive mold, and weaken building foundations.  Grade a site and you change the runoff, often to someone’s detriment.

But he cast the deciding vote in January 2007 to allow the project, avoiding a lengthy fight.

That Mr. Chandler voted yes reveals, despite his misgivings, another power of Chapter 40B that we saw in my two-part post: developers generally prevail on appeals, so local zoning boards sometimes hold their noses and acquiesce to something they dislike.

Vote yes and think of New England

Tony Valchius has lived for 35 years on his 23-acre Pleasant Street property, downhill from the western side of the development. He said since construction began at Sawyer Hill, he’s had at least a 200% increase in storm-water runoff cascading over his land, and has spent more than $60,000 in legal and engineering fees trying to prove that the development’s runoff controls are inadequate.

Mr. Valchius has visual evidence on his side.  Against him are those who believe the future will be different:

Journeay said engineers representing three different parties – Sawyer Hill, the town, and Valchius – all have said the arrangement in place should work.

‘Should’ – not even a future-tense verb, a future-tense conditional verb.

We always did all our chores, didn’t we?

What if it doesn’t work?  In a co-housing development, who’s responsible for making it work?  Who will pay to fix it?

Cohousers also may face cultural challenges as they move in over the coming months.

Berlin is so committed to its agricultural roots that it recently approved a bylaw protecting farmers from complaints about noise, odors, and dust. Many of the Sawyer Hill residents have jobs that stray far from the land – it’s a “geek-heavy” crowd, said Journeay.

Who, despite their desire for a walking community, drive to work.

“We have lots of people in the computer industry,” as well as a large number of Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduates, in Camelot, said Journeay, who is a business account manager at Tufts Health Plan. “We have an honest-to-God rocket scientist.”

Who drive.

I have nothing against those who drive to work.  But if your search for a sylvan walkable community takes you so far from your work that you are unable to use public transportation, how green are you really being?

But the village’s residents say they are committed to contributing to the community, through politics, schools, or by just being good neighbors.

How angelic, contributing to the community

Being good neighbors is not limited to co-housing residents.

“One of the things we’re so excited about is that we were able to put so much of the land into conservation,” said Ginny Maki [involved with the property since 2003 – Ed.], referring to the 28.5 acres that Sawyer Hill has set aside as open space.  

Sorry, Ms. Maki, no points for that.  That the residents have set it aside does not mean it’s legally deeded into conservation.  That land could be redeveloped later – and before the co-housing property arrived, it was undeveloped.   

[Update – in the comments, see below, commenter ‘dbang’ adds something omitted from the Globe’s article: “The conversation land is, in fact, legally deeded into conservation in perpetuity. It can’t legally be redeveloped later. Before, that land was undeveloped because no one had developed it — now it is undeveloped by force of law.”  That is a conservation benefit.]

Not that I oppose development. 

Rather, I think you get little credit for using a zoning override to create higher density than the town allows, only to pat yourself for having left undeveloped what your permit required you to leave undeveloped.

Residents will build and maintain trails for public use.

More future-tense verbs.  Building and maintaining trails is hard work.

Blogging’s even harder

When we’re young, we read and write science fiction, because the imagined worlds are more interesting than the experienced ones.  When we’re old, we read and write history, because what has happened is both remarkable in itself, and real.

This month, Maki will be moving into her three-bedroom unit with her family. In addition to her husband and two young children, her mother will be there.

And her younger brother, Ethan Bickford, was able to buy a reduced-rate unit in the community because his income falls within the 40B guidelines.

I’m all for income-mixing.  (You can see details of the affordable units, designed by Stockard & Engler & Brigham, here.)

Maki said her children are ecstatic about their future home and she loves that Sawyer Hill is multigenerational. After the death of her sister eight years ago, she said, she realized even more the importance of a tight-knit community and being close to loved ones.

“Once something like that has happened in your life,” she said, “it makes you take stock and remember what’s important.” 

I wish them luck.  Travel hopefully, but read the signs.

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In chess, the German word zugzwang (”compulsion to move”) describes a situation where a position is tenable but any move fatally weakens it.

Mutual zugzwang: the player to move loses.

To understand who’s in zugzwang, and why, we must take a stroll through budget arcana.

“I hold the passback and can hold it infinitely.”

The OMB passback.  Even before calendar 2006 begins, the Federal fiscal year 2007 (FY 07) budget cycle will start, with a Washington-insider event known as the OMB passback.

Before Congress can enact spending legislation, you see, it adopts a budget resolution — an agreement among the members of Congress as to how much they intend to spend in total for the upcoming fiscal year.  The budget is then allocated into spending caps for the respective committees, and under Congressional procedural rules, appropriations bills may move forward only if they are under the caps.  (In this Congressional spending is akin to Supermarket Sweepstakes.) 

“I’m terribly sorry, Madam Chair, your appropriations earmarks are over the spending caps …

so you don’t get any money, but let’s give her a big round of applause.” 

Before the budget can be adopted, it must be proposed by the President, roughly around the State of the Union Address.  So the Administration, like white in chess, always has the first move advantage.

And before the budget can be proposed, it must clear review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which demands that each cabinet department or agency submit its budget request for OMB clearance.  OMB, after consulting with its economist wizard’s cabal, issues the passback, in which it reviews each agency request, line item by line item, and advises the agency what it (and therefore the Administration) will support, and what OMB will not support. 

Judge Roy Bean (tearing a page from a law book): “That’s a bad law.  I just repealed it.”

Agencies or departments receiving the passback have two choices:

1. Go along, grin sickly, be good soldiers, and support the passback.   OR


2. Fight the passback, in which case OMB will implacably oppose virtually everything the agency or department wants to do. 

Since OMB must sign off on just about everything a department does (Anti-Deficiency Act notwithstanding), including the issuance of regulations, in practice wise department secretaries learn to fall in line.

“Thank you sir, may I have another?”

The passback and the budget cycle.  In the pre-Cambrian era (before email), the passback was a hush-hush document (passed from hand to hand via bad photocopies and worse faxes), but in recent years the speed of e-leakery has so accelerated that all parties now tacitly treat the passback as effectively a public document. 

Thus the passback becomes a series of editorials: “Department, you asked for this, you have obviously erred, we are supporting that.“ 

Unlike CBO’s baseline, which must assume continuation of present law, the passback can loftily assume whatever it wants, including legislative change not even introduced.  If the President wills it, then it will be so (for passback purposes).

Slightly more comprehensible than the budget

The passback enhances political vaporware.  It can raise the stakes both by assuming a legislative change and then budgeting costs consistent with the change. 

Additionally, the passback comes out in late November, and the budget is not offered until early February.  That’s two and a half months during which the political vaporware sucks up lobbying oxygen, and where the political terrain, like Birnam Wood coming to Duninsane, moves in the Administration’s favor.

The passback and the tax proposal.  Will the passback include the tax-reform proposals?  I think it will, because, as I’ve previously posted, repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax is too big to ignore, and too popular not to propose. 

So, if I’m right [We'll check you later! -- Ed.], the passback will propose tax reform (including AMT repeal) — maybe not the full-blown commission report, but several of its more substantial elements. 

The tax proposal and the FY 07 budget.  In January, legislators return to Washington for the 109th Congress’s second session.  What will they hear when the President delivers the State of the Union address?

They hear the President say, “I propose repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax.”  [Applause.]  “My tax reform proposal is fair, simple, and will grow our nation’s economy.”  [Applause.]

(See the benefits of political vaporware?  It can whiten breath even as it freshens teeth!)

AMT repeal and elected officials.  Now comes the extremely deft part.  To pay for the AMT repeal, the tax-reform proposal will do the following:

• Cap mortgage deductibility for millionaires.  (You wanna be against that?)


• Eliminate mortgage deductibility for second homes.  (Weeping for the fat cats yet?)


• Eliminate all tax incentives, or as it will be described, “close tax loopholes.”  (Find anything to oppose yet?)

So it’s the morning after the State of the Union, and the media are running stories about AMT repeal: “The AMT trap.”  “Who pays the AMT?”  (Hint: a lot of middle-class Americans.)

There will be wonderful graphics showing that in ten years, thirty million households will be in the AMT. 

(Horrors!  Economic pandemic!  An eco-demic!)

Someone will shove a microphone in front of Mrs. Elma Suggs, eighty-three years old, from Wet Blanket, Ohio, who has had to send additional tax to Washington because her charitable donations have thrown her — flung her — into the AMT. 

“It’s not fair!” cries Widow Suggs.  ”People who own big beach houses aren’t paying their fair share of tax.”  [Cut to picture of big beach house.]

You just let me know what part of that your elected official wants to oppose, okay?

Stakeholders and political zugzwang.  Now, you’re a current tax-code beneficiary (hereinafter a “special interest group” — ack!).  You’re well aware that many tax deductions are indeed loopholes (that is, your members don’t benefit from them) but your tax expenditure is a critical economic stimulus (that is, your members benefit from it).  So what do you do?

“What do you do?”

“Shoot the hostage.”

Remember, you cannot do nothing — you’re a lobbyist, for heaven’s sake!  You must lobby!

Welcome to political zugzwang.

So you do the following:

• Defend your program, and only your program, because that’s what you’re being paid to defend.


• Stop talking about anyone else’s tax expenditure — that’s for them to worry about.


• Rally your members to go see their members of Congress, and bring along the mother’s milk of politics, those campaign-contribution checkbooks.  (Because you don’t want to be left in the cold during the political endgame.)

In other words, high-grade political vaporware seizes the initiative, scatters opponents and puts them on the defensive, energizes the base, and fills the campaign coffers.  All this from purest vaporware.

Because it is vaporware, the Administration retains the further initiative to decide whether to invest further political capital in its pursuit.

Quality political vaporware creates political capital.  It is the Philosopher’s Stone of politics.

If, in the end, the reform proposal goes away … the Administration can bring it back again next year.

The most famous zugzwang ever: Samisch-Nimzovich 1923, White to move and lose

“If you can’t drink a lobbyist’s whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don’t belong in politics.”

– Jesse Unruh, 1974

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