Once before, I posted seriously that you are what you live in:

I has a haddock

In Jungian dream interpretation, the house is the self:

A house in a dream generally speaks of one’s psychological house, the house of the “soul.” We often see different homes that we’ve lived in. Ask yourself, if the home in your dream is a childhood home, or a current home. Each of these may have different meaning that relate to an overall sense of what you were like or struggling with at that time.

Why do you have these fantasies of living in a shoe?

Perhaps that’s because the house is a shell around our selves, just as our skull is a shell around our minds. Certainly our childhood residence imprints itself indelibly on our minds – we learn about the universe as the world outside our front door, and within our house – be it single-family, condo, apartment, or shared – is the space that defines our family.

If so, then the individuals featured in this humorous rogue’s gallery listing from Web Urbanist are in serious trouble:

Top 15 Most Amazing Houses in the World

Written by Steph on December 9th, 2008 – Topics: Architecture, Travel, Urban

Little boxes on the hillside aren’t for everyone.

They’re identical … until the people move in (photo credit Oscar Ruiz)

While some people might be content with a cookie-cutter home in a bland suburban neighborhood, others create truly one-of-a-kind homes with incredibly imaginative shapes and materials. In addition to the 70 amazing houses around the world that we’ve featured before, here are 15 jaw-dropping examples of architecture from a decaying wooden skyscraper in Russia to a mushroom-shaped home in Cincinnati that looks like it was custom-made for Dr. Seuss.

There’s really not too much to say about these, except to present them:

Bart Prince House – Albuquerque, New Mexico
(images via: BartPrince.com)

Architect Bart Prince is renowned for his incredibly creative approach to designing structures. The homes he has created look nothing like the boxy houses you and I live in; they’re quirky, they’re organic, and they’re most definitely one-of-a-kind. Prince says his designs start from the inside out, and that every home he builds has an idea behind it.

Pictured are Prince’s own home in Albuquerque (top) and the Seymour residence in Los Altos, California.

Didn’t that thing eat Tommy Lee Jones in Men In Black?

Oh, did I just step on your relative?

Space House – Signal Mountain, Tennessee
(image via: Coast to Coast AM)

The ‘Space House’ in Signal Mountain, Tennessee was built by Curtis King and his sons in the 1970s and is quite a draw for curiosity seekers in the area, who have been filing by and taking photos for decades. Six concrete support pillars look like landing gear beneath the main part of the building. The Space House sold on the auction block in March 2008 but the buyer defaulted, so it’s being offered for “whatever the public is willing to pay” on December 14th.

Previously owned by Gidney and Cloyd?

You mean you’re homeless now?

Inversion House – Houston, Texas (images via: Flickr user Kevin O’Mara)

When two old studio buildings owned by The Art League in Houston were set to be demolished, they decided to take the opportunity to turn them into a temporary art installation. Artists Dan Havel and Dean Ruck sculpturally altered the two buildings, peeling off the exterior siding of the front building to simulate the appearance of a funnel-like vortex. The opening was actually a tiny hallway (only kids could fit through it) that passed through the two structures and emptied out into an adjacent courtyard.

Made by the giant sucking sound of jobs moving to Mexico?

And speaking of giant sucking sounds …

Toilet-Shaped House – Suweon, South Korea (images via: Reuters)

The world’s one and only toilet-shaped house was built to mark the launch of the World Toilet Association, a campaign for more sanitary restrooms worldwide. Sim Jae-Duck, nicknamed “Mayor Toilet”, had the 4,508-square-foot concrete and glass structure built in his native city of Suweon, South Korea. At the center of the home is a glass-walled “showcase loo” that produces mist to make users feel more secure. Sim, who was born into a toilet and has made clean restrooms his life’s work, now lives in the home.

This is the first of several, houses where the building configuration is intended as an explicit political or social statement, proving that not only do people use houses to cocoon themselves, but also to display their individuality. Improvability is a fundamental attribute of true homeownership, and just as tattoos and piercings are an assertion of self – it’s my body and I’ll decorate or mutilate it as I choose – so is the housing configuration an assertion of ownership over a space. This is where I live, and I state who I am by what I present.

When we said we wanted the walls flush, perhaps you misunderstood …

Mushroom House – Cincinnati, Ohio (images via: Agility Nut)

Architect Terry Brown created this much-maligned ‘mushroom house’, an unusual piece of architecture situated in a rather upscale area of Cincinnati. Brown’s architectural style developed when he began experimenting with materials like wood, colored glass, shell, ceramics and various metals to create irregular shapes that mimic those found in nature.  A professor of architecture and interior design at the University of Cincinnati, Brown frequently had to defend the unique design of the house against complaints by neighbors before passing away in 2008.

This is what we meant when we talked about houses springing up overnight …

Floating House – Ukraine (images via: Aphasia Design)

An optical illusion? Trick of Photoshop? Nobody really seems to know much about this supposed ‘floating barn’ which was reportedly located in Ukraine and may or may not still be standing. Cantilevered barns do exist – mostly in the Appalachian region of the United States – but usually aren’t quite this dramatic looking. Real or fake, it’s certainly pretty striking.

Imported straight from Laputa!

Wooden Skyscraper – Arkhangelsk, Russia (images via: The Telegraph + English Russia)

Nikolai Sutyagin, a former gangster, began building this ‘wooden skyscraper’ in Arkhangelsk, Russia with the intention of it being only a two-story building. But, a trip to see wooden houses in Japan and Norway convinced him that he hadn’t used roof space efficiently enough, so he kept building. “First I added three floors but then the house looked ungainly, like a mushroom,” he said. “So I added another and it still didn’t look right so I kept going. What you see today is a happy accident.”

Self-building is remarkably common throughout the world. The famous San Jose Winchester Mystery House of roughly 160 rooms was begun in 1884 by a wealthy widow, who never stopped extending and improving it until she died.

More than likely, she was obsessive-compulsive, as the house has neither rhyme nor reason, with among other things stairs to the ceiling:

And stairs to nowhere:

Building can be impoverishing:

The multimillionaire became a pauper after his possessions were destroyed during a stint in prison, and the house is now decaying around him, but he still lives in the bottom floor with his wife.

I may be cash-poor, but I’m house rich!

The Upside-Down House – Szymbark, Poland
(images via: Fresh Home)

Polish businessman and philanthropist Daniel Czapiewski built The Upside Down House as a statement about the Communist era and the end of the world.

Another example, like the toilet house, of using the building as a visible expression of a political view.

It took 114 days to build because the workers were so disoriented by the angles of the walls. It certainly attracts its fair share of tourists to the tiny village of Szymbark, who often become dizzy and ‘seasick’ after just a few moments inside.

We are so used to right angles representing horizontal and vertical that when we are encased in a titled environment, our brains seek to rewire the neurological impulses coming from our eyes and inner ears to make things align. As a kid, I remember visiting a tilted house where water appeared to run uphill, an illusion that never fails to draw attention.

Which brings me, in a slightly serious way, back to the original point: we are what we live in, and what home we inhabit in some way outwardly expresses ourselves and inwardly defines how we see ourselves. As I wrote in the original post:

Charles Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn’t apply to the poor. When we’re poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated.

My family never owned a new car. Not for me the 00000 odometer. It was always used cars of one sort or another – always bought cheap, always driven until they died underneath us.

Ours always had big numbers on it

[Snip]

Count me among those who think Karelis is on to something – and if you’re going to change something to help change people’s poverty, it starts with housing.

You are what you live in.

Change your housing, change your self

And they’re all made of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same?

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In yesterday’s depressing blog post, we visited beautiful distant Victorville, California:

Over the mountains on the road to Vegas: isolated Victorville

A new-construction development in Victorville is being dismantled, as reported in this Los Angeles Times story, because holding the property has become more expensive thanks to the perverse consequences of a recent anti-foreclosure California law, SB 1137.

This may not be what Victorville wants, but it’s what Victorville is getting:

The image Victorville presents of itself: happy people developing land!

(Scrolling banner from the City of Victorville’s Web site)

The lender is tearing down the property because it now has negative holding value (and thus, potentially, negative equity), and the city (spokeswoman Yvonne Hester) seems blind to the potential opportunity for affordable housing.

The development was in a part of town remote even for Victorville, a wind-swept high desert city of about 100,000 residents.

Famous for its Route 66 Museum

In more urban areas, lower-maintenance properties like office buildings are being ’saran-wrapped’ – completed, then sealed and held 100% vacant in the expectation that sometime soon they will be worth renting.  That’s harder for single-family homes, each of which must be protected by an occupant.

Individually wrapped for your protection

However, it’s all but impossible to protect an uncompleted (and hence unoccupiable) property except with round-the-clock security guards.

Anything can happen if nobody’s watching.

A dozen of the homes were in various stages of construction. Some had frames erected, and a few others had drywall hung, said Jorge Duran, Victorville’s code enforcement manager.

The four finished homes, however, were richly appointed with granite countertops, whirlpool bathtubs and dual-pane windows.

Now they will be disassembled and sold for body parts.

Building permits were issued in September 2007, Hester said.

Development is like the tide: it rolls in to new greenfield (or, in Victorville’s case, desert-field), reaches a high-water mark, and then either stops of recedes. 

Dear Mr. Bogart, you are the last developer in Paris, Texas …

Home prices were already falling, but in San Bernardino County, the median price that month was still a robust $325,000, according to DataQuick, enough to keep fueling hope — or denial.

This developer was in the unlucky position of being the last, worst optimist.

“These Egyptian properties are NOT vacant!” shouted Tom, deep in denial

Construction halted in the summer of 2008, and the homes became a nuisance, attracting vandals and squatters, Hester said.

A home is an organism defended by its occupants.  If there are no occupants, the home is defenseless. 

The city first cited the developer for failing to maintain the property in July, Hester said.

Notice that California’s unwisely structured law, SB 1137, penalizes foreclosing banks worse than developers.  Developers can be hit only with the normal citations; banks can be fined $1,000 per property per day.

“People were taking sinks, the air conditioners. For someone who wanted to do no good, it provided an opportunity,” she said.

There’s something hideous about the slow looting of a helpless white elephant.

Dead but still got some tasty bits

The bank repossessed the development in August, Hester said. Demolition permits were granted April 9.

This is California, remember, where you can’t build it without permission, and having built it, you can’t tear it down without permission either.  It’s the housing production paradox run riot.

The wrecking crew showed up near the end of the month. Forrester was not officially part of the demolition team. His nephew, who got him the job, operated the backhoe that tore through the houses with the destructive ease of a mechanical Godzilla.

Easy on the symbolism, guys!

Anyvon referenzing de Terminador vill be destroyt

Forrester’s job was to chase vandals away and sell what he could to bargain hunters.

“uh, gentlemen, could I interrupt your pillage for a moment?”

Very strange profession, like the caretaker in an empty hotel.

Eviction time!

He slept in the model homes until, one by one, they were gone. By Friday, the crew was on the last house — a hulking two-story model with a floor plan blown open by demolished exterior walls.

The place looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane, but it was only the splatter of the burst housing bubble. Folks driving by on U.S. 395, the highway from Hesperia to Reno, saw the wreckage and stopped by to see what they could salvage.

Scavenging, however informal, is a natural human trait that finds its expression in the ragpickers who make a tiny living in the world’s large cities.

Indian ragpicker

Forrester was happy to oblige them. Whatever they would take “saves the dump fees,” he said. “I gave one guy a granite counter for $40, gave another dual-pane windows for $20 a piece.”

In effect, the unit value of each item is depressed by the search/ carrying costs of finding the buyer.  Bargains by the roadside achieve the same purpose.

A fellow with a dually pickup and trailer showed up asking for some studs. He declined to be interviewed, nor did he want to talk about what he would use them for.  Used building materials are prohibited for use in new construction, so lumber from the site would have to be for personal projects.

Again, note the unintended consequence of a well-intentioned law.  What is ‘used’?  When we were fitting out our new offices, we were able to buy ‘used’ work stations that had, in fact, never been uncreated from their boxes and assembled; they’d been delivered to a law firm who no longer needed them, and resold for a fifth of their retail price.

Forrester sold him a trailer full of 2-by-4s for $40.

This is an important phenomenon; manufactured goods are reused, and in the arbitrage between retail price and resale price, the market clears.  Markets always clear, markets must clear, and the faster they clear, the better.

(We are having a problem now in LIHTC because the market’s clearing is being inhibited by the above-market tax credit exchange program about which I’ve fulminated elsewhere.)

A bit later, Marla Bowers and Candy Sweet drove up, also looking for lumber. Bowers said she wanted to build a shed. Sweet needed to repair some termite damage.

“A dollar for clean ones, 50 cents if they’re dirty,” Forrester offered. When Bowers hesitated, Forrester lowered his price. They settled on a six-pack of Corona.

Ron Willemsen, president of Intravaia Rock and Sand, the Montclair company handling the demolition, said he was glad to see people finding uses for the materials. But wrecking a pristine house troubled him.

“It’s a waste of a lot of resources and perfectly good construction,” he said.

If you can’t move it in toto, then you have to disassemble it and move the pieces.

This isn’t cheap either

Willemsen, whose family has run the business for 50 years, said it was the first time the firm had demolished a new housing project to return a potential neighborhood to soil.

Typically, the company demolishes vacant properties when they’ve outlived their usefulness and other construction projects are set to take their places.

His firm also recycles the demolished structures, as it will these former dream homes. The concrete will become base material for parking lots and roads, the wood chipped into mulch.

“Have you seen the side of the 210 Freeway?” Willemsen said. “That’s our product.”

And its epitaph:

July 4, Gettsyburg, 1863

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work –

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

– Grass, by Carl Sandburg

Let me work …

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Better to mulch it before the scavengers take everything

Among the many ways land is unique as an asset class is that its physical holding costs are zero – it need not be maintained.  Every form of improved property requires some maintenance to prevent deterioration, so every form of improved property has an implicit caretaker (owner, tenant, management company) and an implicit revenue source (rents, mortgage payments).

Land does not.  Land holds its value even as the tumbleweeds roll over.

No maintenance costs

Vacant improved property thus has negative holding value (and thus, potentially, negative equity); vacant land may not.  (All forms of land and property have a carrying cost of real estate taxes, but that’s usually a small number for unimproved property.)

Thus, when you change the relative costs of holding vacant improved property, you can condemn it to death, as unwittingly illustrated in this little story from the Los Angeles Times:

Housing crunch becomes literal in Victorville

Crunching a pencil just won’t do it

A bank cuts its losses on a failed 16-unit project by having the homes demolished.

By Peter Y. Hong

May 5, 2009

Curtis Forrester moved into a brand-new house in Victorville last week, but there was little time to enjoy the Jacuzzi and designer kitchen. He was there only to see it destroyed.

Like the human body, which is an entity comprised of organs, a house is an entity comprised of components. 

An entity, but also components

The Jacuzzi and designer kitchen will be surgically removed and carted off. 

One kidney, worth about $15,000 as a transplant?

Even with this salvage, value is being destroyed as you watch:

Just a few days after his arrival, the two-story residence and three other luxurious model homes were crushed and hauled off for scrap, the latest fallout from Southern California’s real estate crash.

Saluting a fallen comrade: the house goes under in Victorville

The homes were part of a planned 16-unit project in this community 100 miles north of Los Angeles. The Texas bank that owns the failed development decided to demolish the houses, a cheaper alternative to completing and selling them.

The alternative described is incomplete.  The Texas bank doing the foreclosing would actually have to do three things:

1. Complete the property

2. Hold and protect the property during the sales period

3. Sell it. 

Holding the property has become more expensive thanks to the perverse consequences of a recent anti-foreclosure California law, SB 1137:

California today [July 15, 2008 – Ed.] enacted legislation [SB 1137 – Ed.] aimed at minimizing the adverse effects of foreclosures on local communities.  The legislation increases the responsibilities of lenders owning property acquired through foreclosure. 

[Snip]

[A]uthorizes government entities to assess fines of up to $1,000 per day per occurrence for failing to maintain property acquired through foreclosure.  Items subject to fine include:

1. Permitting excessive foliage growth

2. Failing to take action to prevent trespassers or squatters from remaining on the property

3. Failure to take action to prevent mosquito larvae from growing in standing water

4. Tolerating other conditions that create a public nuisance

With words like ‘excessive’ and ‘public nuisance,’ SB 1137 gives localities a self-renewing club with which to beat owners of foreclosed property – that is, out-of-state banks – over the head. 

What $1,000 per property per day can do to your balance sheet

At $1,000 per day per property, it won’t take long for the fines to exceed any conceivable net value from selling.

In effect, SB 1137 signs many properties’ death warrant.

I don’t like the look of this

Forrester was hired to keep thieves away and help sell off the fixtures.

An empty home is a hugely vulnerable thing.  Empty properties invite clandestine occupancy, and readily become houses of crime.  Whole neighborhoods can become crime magnets; indeed, whole slums, such as Haiti’s Cite Soleil:

This story has no happy ending. As a failed state, Haiti profits from clandestine occupancy on a grand scale:

More and more narcotics have begun flowing through Haiti to the United States, law enforcement officials say.  It is Haiti’s weakened state that is the big attraction to narcotics traffickers, officials say.

When protection can be bought, like any other commodity it creates a marketplace.

In a recent report on Haiti’s woeful law enforcement apparatus, the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflicts, said that without urgent reform “the current escalation of organized violence and criminality may come to threaten the state itself.”

Has threatened the state. Has destroyed the state. Haiti and its dreadful twin Zimbabwe are grim reminders of the cost of allowing homes, blocks, neighborhoods, and even states to secede from humane society.

If only asking could make it so

Mr. Forrester, as local agent in Victorville for the Texas bank, is there to prevent this from happening – and to oversee the dismantling of potentially valuable housing.

“All my life I’ve been building things,” said the 59-year-old construction worker. “It’s kind of fun tearing them down.”

Mr. Forrester is not alone:

The Victorville demolition is one of the most dramatic ends to a bad bet made during the housing boom, but abandoned developments have become an all-too-common sight in California. Nearly 250 residential developments totaling 9,389 homes have been halted across the state, according to one research firm.

As I posted in Rug? What Rug?, developers become upset when they are stopped from using other people’s money because they are allergic to putting in their own:

A developer’s handbook

The builder had announced its intention to go out of business before the bank acted, blaming its financial straits on earlier steps taken by JPMorgan Chase and other banks.

We’re throwing in the towel, have mercy

The New York Times wrote a story headlined Banks Foreclose on Builders With Perfect Records, except that:

The bank cited didn’t foreclose – it appointed a receiver.

The builder didn’t have a perfect record – it was in default.

The builder wasn’t put under by the bank – it had decided to dissolve before the bank acted.

Under those circumstances, if you were the bank, and your money were hostage to unfinished houses being completed by a builder who’s just announced they’re throwing in the towel, would you sit still?

From the New York Times:

An unfinished house is the result of abruptly withdrawn bank financing in a development near Chandler, Ariz.

Whose failure prevented its finishing?  The bank’s or the builder’s?

The same walkaway – rational, you understand, and completely predictable – occurred by the Victorville developer because the arithmetic collapsed:

The developer of the Victorville project had hoped to sell the houses for more than $300,000 as they were being built last year, Forrester said.

That’s the completed and sold cost.  Project (say) $50,000 apiece in costs to renovate. 

But reality quickly diverged from that vision. Home prices have tanked faster in San Bernardino County than any other Southern California county during the downturn. In March, the median home sale price for the county was $160,000, down 43% in a year, according to the San Diego-based research firm MDA DataQuick.

Project (say) a 40% price drop, over $125,000 gone.

Project (say) $50,000 in fines to the cash-strapped town of Victorville (all towns are cash-strapped).  There goes your equity: poof!

Money all gone!

Officials of Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas, which took over the development last year, were unavailable for comment.  

When you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

But Victorville city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester said the bank decided not to throw good money after bad.

“It just didn’t pencil out for them,” she said. “They’d have to spend a lot of money to turn around and sell the houses. They just made a financial decision to just demolish them.”

Not penciling out?

Curious how Ms. Hester forgets to mention the $1,000-per-day fines that she had the power to levy.

[Continued tomorrow in Part 2.]

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For two posts now we’ve been following, via the Town Manager’s April 28, 2009 Report to Town Council (pdf) in Woodside, California, the eight-year saga of patient homeowner Steve Jobs, who is merely seeking to do what 99.9% of American would think an inalienable right, namely to demolish his own house, a 1925 white elephant crumbling even as the zoning process grinds on:

Not located on Sunset Boulevard:

The Jacking House, by Joanthan Habner

When last we left our hero, he’d been sent off to document, exhaustively, both the cost of building a new house and the cost of doing five other things.  

1. Do nothing.  Leave the house untouched.  Without a trace of irony, the report observes

The EIR Addendum concludes that Alternative 1 would not meet the basic Project objectives of replacing the Residence with a smaller single-family home that comports with the Town Code –

While it’s by no means the hinge point of this decision, it appears the current house is very much non-conforming, existing in its larger-than-permitted and un-earthquake-proofed state only because its construction antedated those changes. 

– and contains a modern floor plan and amenities consistent with current standards and expectations.

If the Jackling House burned down, you couldn’t rebuild it tomorrow, and if you did, you couldn’t live in it because of the earthquake risk.  I tend to think Daniel Jackling would snort, “Case closed!”

Daniel Jackling, Utah statue

“If it’s in the way, bulldoze it!”

Unsurprisingly, if Mr. Jobs does nothing, the house will slowly fall down:

Let me Usher this house out of existence

The EIR Addendum also finds that this alternative may not result in the protection of the historic Residence due to the ongoing deterioration of the Residence and the lack of assurances that the Residence would be restored and used if the Project is not approved.

Some people, not unreasonably, suspect and allege that Mr. Jobs has been deliberately not maintaining the house so as to change the facts on the ground – but as against that, if you know you want to tear down a house, why would you spend any money that (1) at best is lost and non-recoverable, or (2) at worst simply makes it harder for you to achieve your objective?

2. Restore the existing house.  Renovate back to habitability and a high standard. 

Since this alternative would primarily alter the interior of the Residence and leave the exterior of the Residence intact, the EIR Addendum concludes that Alternative 2 would avoid the significant, unavoidable impact to the historic resource.

This is what the Friends of the Jackling House would prefer, but it has two problems. 

A. Even if restored, Mr. Jobs does not want to live in that structure

However, the EIR Addendum goes on to state that it does not appear that this alternative would meet most of the basic Project objectives of replacing the Residence with a smaller home that contains a modern floor plan and amenities.

Hallway with refrigerator

As the modern American home continues to evolve, some properties become functionally obsolescent to the point where their skeleton is inadequate to modern use.  Some rooms are too big; others too small.  Plumbing and wiring have to be completely ripped out and replaced.  Insulation may be difficult, climate control impossible, energy efficiency a pipe dream. 

B. It will cost more than building a new house

The EIR Addendum also suggests that the cost of this alternative (which could be comparable to the cost of Alternative 2A, which also involves interior renovation of the Residence) may make it economically infeasible since it could exceed the Project costs by approximately $5 million.

Some properties just need to go somewhere to die.  Against that inevitable age, we will preserve those whose existence links so strongly to our history that money is no object – and when money is no object, then it must be government who pays, not the private owner.  That’s one thing eminent domain is for.

If you Revere it, you must spare no expense

3. Restore it with an addition.  It is then proposed that Mr. Jobs build a new wing – a new house to which the current one is appended, almost like a clone or offshoot.

This restoration alternative [is] similar to Alternative 2, but with modifications to the existing Residence to create a more conventional floor plan, as well as a major 16,000 square foot addition to the Residence to include a new living area, office suite and fitness area.

To save a 17,000 square foot house by building on the same site a new 16,000 square foot house seems carrying the preservation mission far into the domain of new development.  Indeed, if it worked, imagine how many magnates would use that as a means of winkling an oversize house onto their white-elephant’s lot!

I have a Hearst for expansion

The EIR Addendum concludes that this alternative would not avoid the significant, unavoidable impact to the historic Residence or meet most of the basic Project objectives.

You mean, that Mr. Jobs might not want a 16,000 square foot addition?

The EIR Addendum also suggests that the estimated $20 million cost of this alternative (using the conservative Final EIR restoration cost of $4.9 million plus nearly $15 million for the 16,000 square foot addition based upon the per square foot estimate for the new home) may make it economically infeasible.

Translation: Next!

4. Restore it and move it elsewhere on-site.  Shift it on the six acres and build new elsewhere.  This alternative to demolition hypothesizes that, like a multi-segmented mobile home, the Jackling House could be trundled to a less conspicuous spot (and once transplanted, preserved against the elements), freeing up well-situated land for Mr. Jobs to build his new house.

Back then the challenge was building it …

The EIR Addendum concludes that this alternative would avoid the significant adverse impact to the historic Residence, and may, depending on its specific characteristics, meet most of the basic Project objectives.

If possible, this would be pleasing, but then there’s that problem: the white elephant has to squat somewhere, and the land is finite:

However, the EIR Addendum concludes that this alternative may be infeasible for legal and/or economic reasons because it:

[Legal] Would exceed the maximum amount of development allowed on the Property per the Town Code

[Economic] and is estimated to cost between $14.8 million (using the conservative estimated Final EIR restoration cost of $6.6 million plus the estimated $8.2 million Project cost) and $21.5 million (using the applicant’s estimated $13.3 million restoration cost).

In short, there’s just not enough room on-site.

Too tight a squeeze?

5. Move the house and reassemble it somewhere else.  For many of us, this would be by far the happiest outcome.  Homes do get relocated and live happy lives once they have moved.  [I find it hugely ironic that Suzette Kelo's pink house, which was the subject of the landmark Supreme Court decision Kelo v. New London on eminent domain taking, was itself moved into the site of so much contention.]

Readers have already seen, in Hermit Crab Housing, that when a more modest and economically obsolescent existing structure can be relocated, it saves costs, creates valuable new affordable housing, and is much greener than demolition and landfill. 

The EIR Addendum concurs with the Final EIR that the analysis of this alternative is “highly speculative” and depends on factors such as the feasibility of moving the Residence –

What usually moves, however, are small houses, not an elephant train like this one:

– which would have to be accomplished in pieces, down a narrow driveway and onto a sloping road with overarching trees and utility lines.

That kind of dismantling and reassembly is normally reserved for Greek or Egyptian temples (as at Philae or Abu Simbel), not for Spanish Colonial Revival style homes.

Nice face lift

Oh by the way, there’s another problem – nowhere to go:

Assuming that it is physically possible to relocate the Residence and that a suitable off-site location could be found (no such site has been identified despite the applicant’s marketing efforts),

Talk about a killer parenthetical!

Attack of the killer parentheticals!

[Hence, if pigs could fly…  – Ed.] the Project could avoid the significant, unavoidable impact to the historic Residence and achieve the basic Project objectives.

The Town Council staff thus prepared a handy chart comparing the alternatives, which in the interests of clarity I’ve reformatted (without changing any of the Yes/ No/ Maybe conclusions):

After this exhaustive exercise in proving the blindingly obvious, the EIR found that things physically feasible cost lots more money, and things that didn’t cost more money neither built a new house nor stopped the current house from crumbling. 

Ladies and gentlemen of the electronic Town Council, you have now heard the staff’s report.

How would you vote?

Remember, then Friends of the Jackling House will be watching:

On May 12, 2009, the Woodside Town Council may vote to wiggle around a string of Court rulings AGAINST granting demolition of this historic mansion. There is still no adequate evidence to grant demolition.

Before you vote, let me add the most ironic part:

It is important to point out that in acting on this application, the Town Council’s authority is limited. The Council may approve or deny the demolition permit. The Council does not have authority to direct that one of the restoration alternatives described below be implemented.

Because directing such an action would be equivalent to a taking, and that would cost the town a lot of money.

I wonder, did Mr. Jobs realize that if he submitted plans for a big new house, such a projection might cost a high enough figure that it would make salvaging the Jackling house economically feasible?  Might he have gamed the new-house price down?

Council members asked why cost estimates for renovation of the Jackling House appeared so high, while projected costs for a proposed new house for Mr. Jobs appeared preposterously low.  Will there really be very low-grade surfaces in the new master bathroom? many wondered in disbelief.

Now you see it …

Remember, the demolition approval has nothing to do with the application for a new house.  Mr. Jobs could then change his mind.

… Now you don’t

It’s my mansion and will die if I want it to

Die if I want it to.

Die if I want it to.

The end?

UPDATE: The council voted Yes:

Woodside council votes to let Steve Jobs move forward with demolition of historic mansion

By Jessica Bernstein-Wax

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 05/13/2009 12:21:41 AM PDT

Updated: 05/13/2009 12:21:45 AM PDT

The Woodside Town Council on Tuesday voted to let Apple CEO Steve Jobs move forward with plans to demolish his historic 14-bedroom house in the Woodside hills.

In a 6-1 vote, with Mayor Peter Mason opposing, council members instructed town staff to update an environmental impact report and draft a demolition permit, which would enable Jobs to knock down the 17,250-square-foot Spanish revival mansion known as the Jackling House and build a much smaller home on the property. Those items will return to the council at its regular meeting June 9.

“I love old Spanish revival homes — I have a couple of them myself, and I’ve restored them,” Council Member Dave Tanner said at the meeting. “I can tell you it’s a thing of love.  I didn’t see any reason to try to restore or maintain this house,” he said of the Jackling House.

Given time, I will post more on this saga, as there are some interesting/ entertaining side notes about local land use, the futility doctrine (remedies need not be pursued if they are futile), and how the comment process can be used. 

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In yesterday’s post, via the Town Manager’s April 28, 2009 Report to Town Council (pdf) in Woodside, California, we met patient homeowner Steve Jobs, who has for eight years been seeking to demolish a property he owns and plainly regards as a white elephant, a rambling 17,000-square foot Spanish Colonial Revival built in 1925 and now falling to pieces:

As quoted in a Fortune online article:

Apple’s CEO bought the 30-room hacienda in 1984, the year the Mac was released, and camped out there for the better part of a decade before moving to Palo Alto.

Before the Jackling house: Jobs camping out in an apartment, 1982

He found the sprawling mansion a cold and dreary place to live. He has called it “one of the biggest abominations of a house I’ve ever seen” and says it will cost more to restore than to replace. At one point he offered to give it to anyone willing to pay to have it moved.

Cue the Phantom of the Opera music!

Roughly five years ago, Mr. Jobs probably thought he was done with the judicial review:

The Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) concluded that demolition of the Residence would have significantly impacted an historic resource.

Once one finds the house historic, it’s hard to claim no impact when you tear it down J.

Thus it is demonstrated

So was Mr. Jobs compelled to care and nurture his struldbrug, to prop up its immortality through artificial house-support? 

What do you mean you can see I’ve had work done?

No.  He could tear it down if he took some affordable measures to preserve the past:

The Final EIR included mitigation measures requiring the applicant:

[1] to develop historical and photographic documentation of the structure and

[2] to employ a qualified salvage company to remove and store features of the home identified as significant by an architectural historian.

Both are reasonable – the kind of thing that represents a modest imposition on the owner.  Sure, it’ll cost a few bucks, but not a lot.

The master kitchen: oversize and under0maintained

Nevertheless, snapping pictures and boxing faucets would not be equivalent to preserving the house:

The Final EIR nonetheless concluded that these measures would not have reduced the impact of demolition of the Residence to a less than significant level.

The EIR had to look at alternatives, one by one, to see if they might work:

The Final EIR also examined five alternatives to the Project, focusing primarily on restoring and modifying the Residence to varying degrees in an attempt to avoid the significant impact of demolishing the Residence while still accomplishing most of the basic Project objectives associated with constructing a new single-family home.

Reading between the lines, the EIR’s feasibility determination was constrained in two ways:

Feasible is defined by CEQA as “capable of being accomplished in a successful manner within a reasonable period of time, taking into account economic, environmental, legal, social and technological factors.” CEQA Guidelines Section 15364.

1. An as-new home.  Mr. Jobs is evidently entitled to have a new or as-new home on his property.

2. No ‘material’ increase in costs.  Mr. Jobs’ cost for the as-new home may not cost ‘much more’ (our phrase) that what he was planning to build(*).

For all you know, I tied these knots myself

The EIR Addendum also suggests that the cost of this alternative (which could be comparable to the cost of Alternative 2A, which also involves interior renovation of the Residence) may make it economically infeasible since it could exceed the Project costs by approximately $5 million.

The definition of feasibility is further spelled out:

Here’s what you need to do

The CEQA findings would need to confirm that there are no feasible mitigation measures to avoid or lessen the significant impact of demolishing the Residence and, as to each alternative, verify:

1. That the alternative would not avoid the significant, unavoidable impact to the historic resource and/or,

2. That the alternative would not meet most of the basic Project objectives and/or

3. That the alternative would be infeasible for:

   a. Economic

   b. Legal, social

   c. Technological or other reasons.

The statement of overriding considerations would also need to set forth the specific benefits of the proposed Project that outweigh its unavoidable adverse environmental effect(s).

Thus, if you own a struldbrug building in the State of California, you are first imposed a renovator’s Hippocratic Oath – “do no harm unless it’s absolutely necessary” – and then required to show what in another age was called “redeeming social importance”:

To be shut it must be ut-

terly without redeeming social importance?

Which, in 2004, the Town Council duly found:

The Town Council [at the same time] adopted a statement of overriding considerations based on General Plan policies which encourage and promote protection of open space. The Town Council found that demolition of the Residence would have resulted in construction of a smaller home, thereby resulting in an overall increase in the amount of open space on the Property.

Having thus touched all the bases, as it thought, the town signed off:

Are your asses covered?

After public hearing, the Planning Commission certified the Final EIR and approved the demolition permit in June 2004. 

Who put Mr. Jobs through this ringer?

Don’t mess with the Friends of the Jackling House, kid, or you’ll get hurt

Enter the Committee of the Self-Appointed:

Hello, we’re here to tell you not to tear this house down

The Planning Commission’s actions were appealed to the Town Council by several citizens and the daughter of a former owner of the Residence.  In December 2004, the Town Council considered the appeal.

As we’ve seen, the Town Council rejected their appeal, so enter another Committee of the Self-Appointed. 

Unrelated to the merits of their case, I wonder how this group had standing to intervene judicially.  Perhaps it was their cool name:

A group of individuals calling themselves Uphold our Heritage filed suit claiming that the Town Council’s findings on alternatives and its statement of overriding considerations were not supported by substantial evidence in the record. No challenge was brought to the Final EIR itself.

As we saw in Part 1, Uphold our Heritage won on procedure (lack of evidence) and now, three years later, the Town is considering the substance, based on an evaluation of five choices.  As they put it on their Web site, Friends of the Jackling House:

On May 12, 2009, the Woodside Town Council may vote to wiggle around a string of Court rulings AGAINST granting demolition of this historic mansion. There is still no adequate evidence to grant demolition.

[Snip]

Mr. Jobs’ attorney’s case for demolition this time seems to be that all alternatives are too costly for his client, and therefore infeasible. At a preliminary meeting held April 28th, the attorney for the National Trust for Historic Preservation testified that other criteria must also be weighed. And even visibly nervous Town Council members questioned dubious cost estimates put forward by Jobs’ attorney and his team of paid consultants.

Although we all know about those paid consultants, the fact remains that no other cost estimates have been proffered.  To challenge Mr. Jobs’ estimates with your own is one kind of argumentation to challenge them by ad hominem attacks is both unpersuasive to the typical bystander and likely unavailing to the town council.

In the context of American enterprise, historian Tim LeCain wrote Council members of his outrage that Steve Jobs would contemplate tearing down this mansion.  “Jackling’s contribution to the 20th Century was cheap and abundant copper. Put simply, Daniel Jackling ‘wired’ America. .. That Steve Jobs – a man whose entire career has been built on devices that are essentially useless absent our copper-based electric power grid – proposes to tear down the home of the very man whose own innovations made that electric grid possible, strikes me as a particularly egregious case of historical ingratitude and amnesia ….  I would ask Mr. Jobs … whether William Boeing would have so determinedly sought to raze the homes of Wilbur and Orville Wright?

Boeing, Boeing … gone? 

Or if the CEO of Verizon would today … tear down a house once occupied by Alexander Graham Bell?”

Mr. Watson, come here, someone is trying to tear down my house

Now that we’ve sacrificed wiring and planes and telephones on the altars of past titans, what were the five alternatives presented, and what has the town council found?

[Continued tomorrow in Part 3.]

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