Inquiry to Apply for a Grant:: The Home Workers Priority Zone Proposal
A work in progress seeking references in the field of Urban Planning
Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash
This inquiry to apply for a grant is due to be submitted to my fiscal sponsor, The Field today September 2 2024 and to submit to the Graham Foundation on September 15 2024 but I do not have any references in the appropriate field, which is Urban Planning per the job description found on Headlamp, an innovative educational resource that I discovered as an outcome of engaging in the grant inquiry process:
Whether you’re advancing your current role, transitioning careers, or pursuing lifelong learning, Headlamp closes the gap between traditional education and modern career readiness for today’s learners. Headlamp
I need to have references by September 15th. Some of my subscribers to this newsletter are in fields that would make appropriate references and know me through this newsletter. I humbly request your support in moving the messaging of this endeavor to the next step of initiating change in the practical world,
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This is the proposal as it stands now, minus the question filed so that it reads as a whole:
This project is dedicated to forming active coalitions in support of work-at-home housing solutions.
In 2022 Maine enacted housing law HP 1498. Short-term rentals were excluded, making STRs default zoning in Maine necessitating other purposes to set up as priority zones (intentional communities).
Traditional home businesses have never been considered in Maine policy. The remote worker’s movement expands the home working community but it remains unorganized and unrecognized in public policy. The project aims to form an organization representing the interests of people who work from home.
HP 1489 prohibits municipal references to “overcrowding, “overpopulation” and “character of location” and mandates priority zones for affordable housing in every municipality. State financing policy favors large developers. Emerging developments are suited to those who work at corporate headquarters and do not provide the working space needed by home workers.
This project targets the need for priority zones that accommodate home working lifestyles and will build an advocacy coalition to communicate the need and unify the community.
Mackenzie Andersen’s elementary education involved growing up in a creative business in a home. Andersen Design began in an Ohio housing development that would not permit a business in a home so the Andersens moved to Maine.
Mackenzie graduated from Pratt Institute where she resonated with NYC’s diversity.
In the early 1990’s she returned to work in the family business,
Home businesses are not included in housing or economic development discussions motivating Mackenzie to spend years independently researching Maine economic policy.
She incorporates her research into a Substack newsletter, ”The Individual vs The Empire”. It has enabled her to develop an unconventional supportive network.
Mackenzie’s fiscal sponsor is the Field.
Mackenzie is a peer reviewer for Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
Mackenzie is the custodian of Andersen Design’s productivity assets and is dedicated to placing them for the benefit of future makers, consistent with Andersen Design’s founding philosophy.
Maine became a Home Rule State in 1969. Today the centrally managed economy has triumphed over home rule, imposing a ubiquitous grid over the heterarchical organization intended by Maine’s Home Rule Amendment.
The objective is to introduce diversity into the ”priority zones” mandated by HP 1489 to be in every Maine municipality.
The housing shortage is not attributable to population growth. In 2021 Maine’s population increased by 1.05% In 2022 by 0.77%, and in 2023 by 0.46%, and yet the housing law calls for priority zones in every town. So let’s re-imagine the priority zone!
In The Culture of the Cities (pg 141) Lewis Mumford writes “In the seventeenth century the great capitals had begun to absorb population with no effort at limitation. but the New England town during this period ceased to grow beyond the possibility of socializing and assimilating its members: when near crowding, a new congregation would move off under a special pastor”
Adapting Mumford’s next words, “historical New England contrasts to the despotic order of HP 1489. To describe historical New England is to define everything that HP 1489 is not.”
Residents of emerging housing developments are deprived of once commonplace private access to nature. Smaller units in overcrowded developments on land owned by corporations are surrounded by traditional New England homes with private lawns, used as short-term rentals, exacerbating the cultural divide between residents and transients. The public school system is being repurposed as industrial job training for the state and its private corporate partners.
The study for Maine’s new housing law attributed the cause of the housing shortage to the “underproduction of housing”. Increased housing production is needed because year-round residential homes are being converted into short-term rentals creating a need to carve out priority zones in which other purposes can exist.
Before change can happen the conversation needs to expand. Expanding the conversation and growing the coalition is the immediate goal. Including homeworking environments adds a new dynamic. The greater goal is conceptualizing the design for a home working community to strengthen the dialogue and encourage coalition building that can bring social change.
Architectural spaces define human possibilities, so architects must address the possibilities that spaces open or close for the inhabitants.
With HP 1489, the state has imposed uniformity across Maine. The Priority zones are suited for service-industry and corporate employees needed by the state and its private partners. The public educational system is repurposed as workforce training for the State & Co. The state incorporates nonprofit sources of concentrated wealth into its fold but excludes individuals and grassroots entrepreneurs from the community development dialog. The nonprofit foundations prohibit individuals and free enterprises from submitting proposals for grants.
Creativity is a human need that requires its own space. The remote workers movement is growing resulting in corporate headquarters closing and requiring working space in the home, but the state solution to the housing shortage is to squeeze the people into smaller spaces, treating the need for creativity as a luxury only available to the few or that can only be pursued in institutional spaces, calling the downsizing of space allocated to year-round residences a “density bonus”. For whom? There is currently no network of support for grassroots entrepreneurialism in Maine. Conceptualizing intentional communities accommodating working and living environments can fill the void.
The project is ongoing, but for grant purposes, it begins June 15, 2024, and ends June 15, 2025.
Because many foundations have policies prohibiting individuals from presenting grant proposals, this project is limited to the Graham Grant for Individuals. The year-end goal is to establish an informational infrastructure and form a team qualified to apply for further funding to launch the presentation project.
The information infrastructure will be built using GIS software such as ERSI to put home businesses on the map and unite the community.
Promotion will use social media management software.
Building a team is an unpredictable process that will identify when to prioritize promotion or informational software. The software will be distributed as individual subscriptions to team members and has options to be determined by users.
The project is to promote the cause and build a database of supporters, potential collaborators, existing intentional communities, and a rating system for ordinance environments. as preliminary work that can pave the way toward developing models for work-at-home housing and communities.
Special skills that are targeted for a core team include:
- grassroots organizing
- database technology experience
- video makers
- communicators and marketers
- fundraising
- knowledge about laws and ordinances
Provisional Budget
6000 for Software for mapping Geographic Information Systems and social media management and/or promotional costs
- The cost of Ersi ArGIS online Creator Team is 700 per user, A team of 5 would leave 2500 for promotional expenses
- 1000 for miscellaneous costs
- may include legal costs of forming a legally recognized group.
- 3000 compensation for applicants’ work.
- expenses that exceed the budget in other categories would have to come out of this category.
The cost of the software is per subscription or tablets with software installed to be distributed to team members as they are found, The actual amount cannot be known in advance other than the individual subscription cost is 700 per user
