Welcome To Hearth Homes’ Inaugural Newsletter!
We look forward to keeping you informed on Hearth Homes Community Building activities with regular, quarterly newsletters. Please send our editor your email address by emailing newsletter@hearthhomes.org or visiting www.hearthhomes.org so that we may keep you informed and save trees in our future mailings. Thank you!
University Neighborhood Apartments
Berekeley, CA
Save the Date!
Hearth Homes is planning its Annual Croquet Festival again this year. We hope you can join us on Sunday, October 25 at the San Francisco Croquet Club at 19th Ave & Wawona!
New Officers
Hearth Homes’ Board of Directors just elected new officers for the next two-year term. We are happy to announce:
Elirón Hamburger, President
Katherine Martinez, Vice President
Skye DeLano, Secretary
Ellen Chan, TreasurerCurrent Board Members are:
Christina M. Samala
Co-Founder & Creative Director, START Mobile, Inc.
David Siegel
Board Member, Hearth Homes Community Building
Ellen Chan
Worldco Company, LLC
Elirón Hamburger
Deputy Director Housing, City of Richmond
Katherine Martinez
M.S.W. Certified Mediator
Marion Lewenstein
Professor of Communication, Stanford University
Nancy Lewellen
Palladian Law Group
Skye DeLano
Director of Community Resources, FLY Program
Sue Siegel
Founder, Hearth Homes Community Building
Special thanks go to:
Jane Winslow
Executive Director, Hearth Homes Community Building
Josephine Schallehn
Administrative Assistant , Hearth Homes Community Building
UD in the News
PN, a magazine for those who are spinal cord injured (paralyzed) and those with multiple sclerosis, ran a recent article on “Visitability” the concept of building single-family homes with barrier-free design. With the growing population of elderly who use walkers or wheelchairs, and returning young veterans with SCI, easy social visiting is become ever more important. Poor design often prohibits easy visiting from one home to another. What if a child is in a wheelchair, for example, and can’t get into a friend’s home for a birthday party? The article describes a recently built “Visitibility Community” near Atlanta, Georgia, sponsored by a disability-advocate organization, Concrete Change.
www.pn-magazine.com
Design for All
Design for All Download and read the article published in the Newsletter of the Design for All Institute of India titled Special Edition on Universal Design at San Francisco State University:
www.designforall.in/ricardogomes.pdf
MX Design Conference
The MX Design Conference 2009 will focus on reflection and learning from that theory and practice of any area of design, which seeks to balance the social, ecological and economic development of the world to contribute to a sustainable society.
Read more about the conference HERE.
UD in the New York Times: Bringing Égalité Home
In a house outside Paris, Jean-Yves Prodel, who uses a wheelchair, is living comfortably thanks to innovative renovations for which he will got a Universal Design Award in March...
Read more HERETwo hard working Board Members have recently resigned and will be missed
Michael Hoeffel, who had been president of Hearth Homes for the last three years, retired from that position in June and from the Board. He had been a board member since 1999, and had guided Hearth Homes during the long and challenging development process of UNA. He is a senior vice president at MacFarlane Partners, a major national real estate developer.
Michael Johnson, a Board member for the last two years, retired as of August to devote more time to a new business venture. During his Hearth Home Board tenure, he led the Board in charting plans for our new educational efforts. He will also remain with the National Development Council.
What's New at Hearth Homes
An Update
Hearth Homes is in the process of adding an active educational campaign to its mission of encouraging development of accessible housing communities. We will continue to engage in
developing and building specific complexes ourselves, but expect opportunities to be limited for the time being under the current economic conditions. In the
meantime we believe we can best use our resources to promote the concepts of affordable Universal
Design among non-profit, commercial
developers, and public agencies.
We will describe some specifics in a moment, but first we want to bring you up-to-date on a project we had announced in our last communication to you. At that time we told you that we had been offered land by another non-profit and had been asked to share with them in developing a multi-unit building based on Universal Design principles. Unfortunately, after we had invested funds in the initial stage of the project, the other non-profit reversed its decision. It decided against serving the intergenerational and diversely-able population that we encompass in our mission. So we are no longer proceeding with that building.
Our first move in our educational campaign has been to join forces with Build It Green (BIG). Its home office is in Berkeley, CA (www.builditgreen.org) is a non-profit membership organization whose mission is to promote healthy, energy-and-resource-efficient residential building practices in California. The organization has already achieved considerable success in establishing guidelines and rating systems adopted by builders, developers, public agencies and others throughout the state in both planning new structures and retrofitting older ones.
BIG achieves its aims through widespread local interlocking Councils that involve architects, builders, real estate professionals, city planners, appraisers and others. The organization already includes discussion of Universal Design in its Professional Training Courses offered to various segments of the development community. It would like Hearth Homes to help develop a more extensive curriculum in accessible design. Particularly useful would be a universal designrating system that builders could use in earning points with government agencies so as to receive favorable endorsements and tax credit funding. BIG has already developed a GreenPoint Rated Certificate covering energy and building materials planning that some California communities now require.
Hearth Homes is also engaged in developing its own training programs in Universal Design and related aspects of accessible community building, especially for affordable housing development. These efforts will require designing appropriate educational materials for group presentations,
and working with Architecture and/or Universal Design departments at universities to both
promote the concept and train professionals. We will be launching our educational program later
this year.
In the meantime, we are still actively involved with our prize-winning University Neighborhood Apartments (UNA), 27 units in Berkeley, CA. That effort has been going well, with integration of able-bodied and disabled persons, a mix of intergenerational families and singles, and persons of multi-ethnic backgrounds. All apartments, and the building itself, are fully accessible and handsomely designed. And the support system for residents and their children has proved helpful.
On the Horizon
As Hearth Homes moves toward a more educational role in the larger community pushing for accessible design concepts, board members are fanning out to join and/or attend the many agencies, non-profits, and affordable housing organizations that work in fields related to ours.
Just to name a few:
- Housing California, www.housingca.org
- San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association, www.SPUR.Org
- Rebuild Potrero Hill, Bridge Housing, developer for the San Francisco Redevelopment Project, RebuildPotrero.com
- Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, www.nonprofithousing.org
- Institute for Human Centered Design (Adaptive Environments), www.HumanCenteredDesign.org
What's New at UNA
The Residents
Typical of comments we hear from UNA residents in praise of Universal Design was that of a woman who had been in a wheelchair for years: “I cannot describe how wonderful it felt to have water running down my back….that changed my life.”
One doesn’t have to be wheelchair-bound to appreciate the accessible design of all aspects of UNA’s building and individual apartments. With a recent U.S. Census Bureau report that one in five persons have some level of disability, the issue of accessibility is becoming increasingly important. The figures released by the Bureau in December of 2008 show that 54.4 million Americans reported a disability. That’s 19 percent of the U.S. population. That total is up from 51.2 million persons in 2002. For people 80 years and older, the disability rate was 71 percent in the latest report. Of all ages, 10.2 million use canes, crutches or walkers, and 3.3 million use wheeled mobility aids.
Activities
Tutors and youth leaders who are on hand weekdays after school and for partial days during the summer months are an important support system for UNA kids and parents. Typical activities are regular tutoring days for computers, math and science. In addition a youth leader reads to the kids around 6 p.m. one night a week, and there are arts and crafts during afternoons. A Taebo aerobic group exercises Thursday nights and families have movie nights in the community room and occasional barbecues. In planning stages is a Q&A on the topic of colleges, with a visit to the University of California Berkeley campus. Other local excursions are also being planned.
UNA staff members are funded in part by Hearth Homes. They are Ghadir Alharazi and Sam Rubin, and also, Shana Hurwitz and Micah Bennett from Toolworks.
The UNA staff were helped in planning the Sunday, August 16 annual Picnic/Barbecue by residents: Glenn, Michelle, Lisa, Anthony, and Lachatte, as well as Board member Katherine Martinez.
UNA Gains More Recognition
UNA is being honored by the Institute for Human Centered Design. IHCD is a 30-year old international non-profit based in Boston. It is committed to enhancing life experiences for people of all ages and abilities and has been the organizer of the international movement in Universal Design.
IHCD has recently notified Hearth Homes that UNA will be included in its upcoming web-based collection of case studies that will illustrate “successful examples of Universal Inclusive Design in the built environment.”
This is the second time Hearth Homes has been honored. In 2005 UNA won the inaugural Innovative Venture Award from the Enterprise Social Investment Corporation for its ground-breaking use of Universal Design in its apartment complex.
