Facing the Zoning Monster
Sharon February 12th, 2009
Over the last 50 years, food and zoning laws have worked to minimize subsistence activities in populated areas. Not only have we lost the culture of subsistence, but we’ve instituted legal requirements that make it almost impossible for many people to engage in simple subsistence activities that cut their energy use, reduce their ecological impact, improve their food security and improve their communities. In some cases, these laws were instituted for fairly good reasons, in many cases, for bad ones that associate such activities with poverty.
In fact, scratch most of the reasons for these things, and you’ll find class issues under their surface in the name of “property values.” There are ostensible reasons for these things, but generally speaking, the derive from old senses of what constituted wealth – and what constituted wealth was essentially having things that don’t do anything of economic value, but show that you can afford. It is important to remember that many things we think are ugly because of their class associations are not inherently ugly – that is, a lush garden is not inherently more ugly than a lawn (quite the contrary), nor are colorful clothes on a line inherently unattractive. What we find beautiful has to do with our culture and our training, otherwise how could anyone have ever found a 800K McMansion beautiful?
Among the basic subsistence activities legislated against by towns, cities and housing developments are:
1. Clotheslines instead of dryers. Reason: Looks poor. Might suggest you can’t afford a dryer. Plus, you might see underwear that isn’t your own. This is a major cause of sin.
2. No livestock, but large pets are acceptable. Reason: Ostensible reasons are health based, a few even broadly grounded in fact, real reason is that pets, which have no purpose other than companionship and cost money, are broadly a sign of affluence, while livestock are a sign of poverty, because they provide economic benefits.
3. No front yard gardens. Reason: The lawn is a sign of affluence – you have money, leisure and water enough to have a chunk of land, however tiny, that doesn’t produce. It creates in many neighborhoods a seemingly contiguousm, but basically sterile and safe seeming ”public” greenspace that is actually privatized and not very green. Gardens, on the other hand, have dirty wildlife and bugs in them, and might grow food, which is bad because it implies you can’t afford it – even if you can’t.
4. No rainwater collection. Reason: This is mostly in dry places in the Southwest, for fear that the tiny amount of available rainwater might not reach people who can’t afford to pay for it, or strangely believe that water that lands on their roof might belong to them, and who would like to have gardens anyway. A few other municipalities do it for fear of west nile disease because they seem never to have heard of screens or mosquito dunks. Oh, and barrels look like you can’t afford to water your lawn with sprinklers, even when it is raining.
5. No commerce of any kind. Reason: This often does not include white collar telecommuters who can make money out of their homes all they want, or upscale white collar professionals with home offices. Instead this means people who want to sell food, do hair, fix things, etc… This is deemed ugly and bad – and it is a visible reminder that people might not have enough money to keep warm burning it, and might need to earn some.
Now I realize I’m being a little bit unkind. People have real aesthetic concerns – but a law that outlaws even tasteful gardens or small tasteful signs that say “eggs” on them, or a town that tries to keep its “traditional” “colonial” or “small town” feel without actually allowing any of the characteristics of traditional, colonial or small town life is creating a sterile Disneyland as well as destroying long term environmental, economic and food security.
The reality is that clothes on the line aren’t empirically ugly. Neighborhood cats carry more diseases than backyard poultry. If you can put a political sign on your lawn, you should be able to put a sign that says “fresh baked goods” on it – hell, food security is political!
That means that these laws can’t be allowed to stand. And that means that one of the first things you or your community, your transition group or your neighbors can do is to push to change your zoning laws or your neighborhood covenants.
That means you need to get involved. Go to the town meetings. Get to know you zoning board. Talk to your neighbors. Strategize – can you find some people who want chickens to get together with? Find out what the objections are and address them – if people are afraid of bird flu, remind them that bird flu is largely a problem of industrial production. If people think that lawns are beautiful and food gardens are ugly, show them otherwise. Show them that other towns are doing it – remind them that Seattle allows chickens and that there is a national “Right to Dry” law.
If the law won’t help you, consider whether you are willing to consider civil disobedience. Unjust laws need to be overturned – you don’t have to go to jail to be Thoreau, sometimes you just need to plant some kale. But before you do that, do know the price you may have to pay – make sure you are willing to pay it. Someone with courage who is willing to pay a price may have to go first – and if you have the willingness to be the one to fight that battle, well, all honor to you.
The reality is that some of the zoning restrictions and covenants will fade as times get tougher, but we really can’t afford to wait for things to be really bad to get our chickens – because it will likely to be harder to come by diverse stock then. We can’t wait to grow food until we’re already hungry. We can’t wait to collect water until our well is dry. It is worth fighting these battles right now – particularly since many of them truly are rooted in ugly prejudice against the poor, and separation from our agrarian past.
Well, most Americans couldn’t get much more separate from our roots, so that’s sort of silly. And bit by bit, people are bringing clotheslines and front yard gardens back, and making them cool again. But we can’t wait for that to happen – because the reality is that many of us will be poor, and the utility of these activities will be needed to soften our poverty.
We can’t wait until everyone sees a garden full of food as beautiful and lush. Instead, we’ve got to make sure that even those who still think it looks old fashioned and dirty don’t get to control something so basic as our future anymore.
Sharon
- adapting in place , garden design
- Comments(61)
It it time for you to plug “The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalized Economy” yet? I discovered that in your “bookstore” and checked and they had it upstairs (I work in a library) and I took it home, and — wow! A sound theoretical basis for lobbying for chickens!
A small point about clothes lines: as long as your living quarters aren’t absolutely tiny (e.g. a dorm room), you should be able to hang dry your clothes indoors. I live in an apartment, and I never use a dryer (even though there are a couple in the building); I just hang dry my clothes in the living room. I do mind the idea of people looking at my underwear
, and so since I have roommates, I hang those to dry in my bedroom. (My bedroom is quite small, but there is enough space for a small drying rack.)
Just an idea for apartment dwellers, and also for people who live in neighborhoods that don’t allow clothes lines and who do not feel up to making a fuss about this.
It’s not just zoning, you also have to deal with the “Home Owners Associations” They are more of a problem than the local planning/building departments
In my little corner of suburbia, the HOAs will take you to court and fine you if you try to have any garden on your front lawn.
We don’t really have zoning issues in my town, except we wouldn’t have a big enough yard for pigs or cattle (but wouldn’t want to cram them in under 2 acres either), but we can have chickens.
However, I just read an article about my in-law’s town, next to ours, and how they passed a “blight” law. It’s mostly to deal with neglected/rundown properties… but I can’t help but wonder if it will affect them because they keep all their equipment for all of their activities… aquaculture business, maple syrup, boats, tools, animals, etc. outside. And my FIL is building a log cabin in his yard, which he will eventually disassemble and bring up to some property of his in Maine. He hand fits the logs, so he’s been working on it for a few years… a half-contructed cabin will probably come under the blight law. Their home isn’t dirty or neglected, it’s just a busy little farmstead and I worry that they’ll have issues to deal with.
or leave your garage door open…or put up a basketball hoop…or plant a tree they don’t approve of…..which is why we moved to the way boonies where we can still have a legal outhouse,no permitsr required to build anything and if I want to have clotheslines,junk cars,the front yard planted in dandelions that I never mow ’cause the bees love them nobody can say a darn thing. DEE
I’m not that much in sympathy with your apocalyptic notions, but you are dead on here.
Zoning is so often an instrument of oppression, usually in the name of preserving the environment or esthetics.. For many years Houston didn’t have zoning, and was none the worse for it.
I’d keep a few chickens if the city mothers would let me, perhaps even a she-goat.
I live in Houston and although we have almost no zoning here, we do have laws against raising chickens!
You next door neighbor can open up a porn shop (as long as it is 500 ft away from any school) and that is legal. Put a couple of chickens in your backyard, and you risk arrest.
I learned the hard way. Houston laws do allow for chickens (hens only) as long as they are in an enclosure that is 50 feet away from the nearest dwelling (including your own).
Arrrggggghhhhhh.
It’s just insane. As you point out, I can have dozens of dogs and cats, but no chickens.
Here’s hoping that we can get things changed soon.
Under the water law in several western states, the rain that falls on your roof does NOT belong to you. The government has already sold the rights to all of the water that falls on your land.
It’s one of the reason I won’t move out there.
AMEN, Dee!! Same reason we moved to the boonies! Living in town made us claustrophobic. I’m checking out the Farm and Dairy sales pages (local publication) for chicks and dairy goats. I started hanging out my laundry after I read Depletion and Abundance last fall. My stepdaughter and her husband have gone rounds down in Florida with their local ‘association’ because they don’t keep their lawn perfectly manicured. If you’ve seen the movie “Over the Hedge” you get the picture. Forget livestock – I’m not sure a beneficial toad could survive there! And I’m sure they’d be tarred and feathered if they tried to hang laundry out. They can’t even leave the kids’ bikes outside. I just bought The Subsistence Perspective (one of the books in Depletion and Abundance’s bibliography), but I haven’t had a chance to read it, yet, Risa. Still working my way through my dairy goat book and my poultry book ( and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Nourishing Traditions and Survival Gardening . . .) I’ll get to it eventually, though.
Joel Saletin has written an article about just this problem: Everything I want to do is illegal.
http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/2003/Everything-Is-Illegal1esp03.htm
Can’t process animals. Can’t sell food that hasn’t been prepared in a sanctioned kitchen. Can’t employ kids in meaningful ways.
There are lots of folks in cities doing it anyway, discreetly. The more economy will cave in, the more the law will look the other way.
Makes sense to change HOA rules though… how hard is it among your neighbors? Why would anyone care if you have hens in the back and give’em an egg or two here and there?
All I really mind is people who have rusting widgets and machines lying about.
I live in an unincorporated part of our county. We do have a community association in this corner of the county and they do send out volunteers to look at yards and houses that might come under county neglect ordinances. If they find unmowed yards or houses that are in need of repair, they’ll report them to the county housing department. But, fortunately, the county doesn’t have ordinances against food plants in front yards, or livestock, or clotheslines, or rain barrels (in fact the rain barrels are actually being encouraged right now), or businesses in the home as long as you get the right permit. All these things can be found within 2 blocks of our house, rain barrels and front yard food in our own yard. My mother-in-law lives in a subdivision in which the HOA outlawed food plants in the front yard. It’s kind of ridiculous because the lots are a half acre and the houses are post WWII 2 bedroom brick ranch style, so we aren’t talking big money. When we were looking for a house with more land, we passed that subdivision by just because of the no-food-in-front law.
It’s frustrating to live in a small town and have no real ordinances EXCEPT small livestock. We have a clothesline, rain barrels and gardens, but b/c of a large hispanic pop, some of which had lots of cock fighting stuff going on a while back, they changed the laws about poultry. Anyway, I’m hoping we can get it changed to something that still excludes roosters, but allows for hens.
I live in a working-class, 1920s-and-earlier vintage “garden suburb” in california where they never got around to outlawing chickens, bees, or clotheslines. Since we are replete with artists/techies/tree-huggers/permaculturists/immigrants and Okies, we are blessed with plenty of gardens, chickens (neighborhood Yahoo newsgroup just reported ANOTHER stray chicken wandering the streets, everybody check your flocks for a missing bird), and laundry hanging on the line.
In fact I just noted an email from a front yard sign offering fresh eggs, honey, vegetables and herbs. I want eggs.
Now the email list is abuzz over my idea to start having jam and canning parties. As I told Sharon privately, we have fruit dropping off trees around here. Right now it’s Meyer lemons, oranges, and a few grapefruit. Later on it will be loquats, plums, pears, apples, prickly pear cactus, apples, figs, rosemary, lavender, nasturtium, carob, olive and black walnut. Whew! I suggested to the group that we start foraging for the food and helping each other preserve it.
Turns out somebody on the north side of town is doing this already, and because it’s the Bay Area, they have a blog – google Forage Oakland. And the next town has Alameda Gleaners, blogging, foraging and canning.
The problem is, some people want to donate their jams and such, and others have remarked that the health laws won’t permit it. Pro canning involves a lot more attention to sanitation and a lot more expensive equipment than what you do at home.
I want to pursue the house parties idea just to make sure the skills spread virally. I want to improve my VERY rudimentary skills, I want to do it with a crowd ’cause I will never do it on my own, and I want to build community as well as food security. Selling or donating the product? That would have to be way under the radar for now, because it ain’t legal.
People are fired up about jam/canning parties in our neighborhood. I hope to organize a kimchee and sauerkraut party as well.
I dunno Sharon, maybe you could sell out and move here to paradise where we farm and garden next to the San Francisco express bus line! Chickens, bees, mini goats, and for $3.50 you can catch a ride to the city every half an hour. Libraries. Every flavor of Jewish synagogue you could want, plus Muslims, Christians, atheists, Buddhists and pagans. Cheap Asian food in copiously stocked markets! Farmers markets year-round! BART trains!
Yes, yes, I know, drought, earthquake and zombies. Well, until then, we’re eating local olives, rosemary, lemons, kale, potatoes and garlic, and enjoying the view!
Oh yes and we’ve got local crab, lamb, beef etc. etc. etc. Come on out folks while California is still here! If you’re worried about carbon emissions, take Amtrak!
I live in a medium sized city – Brisbane, Australia. I cannot believe the restrictions you seem to have in parts of the US! Not only are clotheslines acceptable here (apart from a few modern landscaping designers ideas of how your yard should look), they are considered essential equipment. Modern homes have them somewhat hidden off to the side but most homes proudly display a Hills Hoist in their backyards. The Hills Hoist is an Aussie invention – you hang your ’sinful’ undies on the inside, then hang bigger things on the outside, thus preventing neighbours accidentally catching sight of your smalls! There are folding versions and compact versions to suit every yard.
We are allowed, by council law, to keep 6 items of poultry (chooks, ducks, whatever) in our yard anywhere in the city limits. The only limitation is that you cannot keep a rooster.
We have been encouraged, as a water saving exercise, to install rainwater tanks and plumb them into our laundries and for use in the garden. In fact, the council has for the past few years offered a generous rebate to do so, resulting in a visible sprouting of tanks across the cityscape. It is now an asset to a home to have one, because it means that you are allowed to water the garden and wash the car whenever you want, for example.
We have both a ‘Home Water Wise’ and a ‘Home Energy Wise’ service from the state government. For a tiny fee, someone will come around and audit your home for water and energy savings, install CFL globes and energy meters , water saving showerheads and taps (faucets) and give you lots of tips to save even more.
We also have various rebates for installing roof insulation, solar hot water, solar PV panels, grey water re-use devices, worm farms, compost bins, mulch for the garden (saves water), free native plants and trees for planting in your yard.
The council has regular displays in shopping centres to promote all this stuff as well as green community fairs to encourage other companies to display theirs. We can buy subsidised water saving devices and energy saving devices. Recycling of all kinds of materials is highly encouraged – plastic, paper, etc as well as batteries, electronic waste and paint, to name a few. We all have a regular, landfill bin as well as a recycling bin (of equal size) into which all recyclables can go.
Community gardens are flourishing and everyone I know is starting a vege garden. The vege garden is not about not affording food, but about having better tasting food, free of unknown chemicals. The line drying is not about affording a dryer but about enjoying the lovely fresh smell of sunshine in your clothes.
No one minds if I have dug up my front lawn for food gardens (I have) or that I have chickens or that we re-use our greywater or that we have solar panels on our roof. Line drying is not, and never has been an issue.
We didn’t think our governments were doing enough! I guess it starts with the attitudes, as you say Sharon, of the general public. So I encourage people to hassle your council, your government for change.
Art said:
“It’s not just zoning, you also have to deal with the “Home Owners Associations” They are more of a problem than the local planning/building departments”.
He’s right. HOAs are actually a much bigger problem because they are generally defined as covenants or deed restrictions. In NE, many newer subdivisions have such associations, along with many of those in recreational areas (lakes, ski areas, golf course, etc.).
Changing zoning ordinances (or other town ordinances) may not be sufficient to override the restrictions. The law provides wide latitude for these things, so they can be terribly difficult to overcome.
Generally, you must get the HOA to overturn them via whatever mechanism is written into the covenant or restriction. Succeeding can mean that every homeowner will end up requiring a deed modification (although that may not be required depending on the structure of the documents).
Basically, this is another political effort. In essence, you need the same kind of effort as you would to change the bylaws, but directed at all the HOA members (not just the board or committee or leadership or management, whatever yours may have). Make sure you have read your deed and tracked down all covenants, deed restrictions, and referenced articles. Understand what it takes to change the HOA rules and bylaws. Then you can figure out a plan of action and start trying to convince the neighbors.
Note that this can be a real challenge. Many people living in HOA neighborhoods are there because they want to be, not because they didn’t realize what an HOA was. The chose an HOA because the like the standardized look and feel of the neighborhood, or for other reasons that mattered to them. Now, whether you agree with this choice is irrelevant. It’s the way they feel, and many will resist change.
Oh, one more thing. Many HOAs have the right to assess fines for violations of their bylaws. Unpaid HOA fines can result in a lien on the property and prevent a sale until they are paid. Your best protection is to know what your property documents say and what your state and local laws say.
Regards,
Brian
remind them that….there is a national “Right to Dry” law.
I beg your pardon? Is there such a thing?
Our local zoning laws forbid chickens and bees. I can see a valid concern about bee swarms but as for chickens – the neighborhood dogs are so noisy that I feel no guilt about having a chicken coop in our garage. I’m considering raising meat rabbits and quail in our garage, as well. As long as we are clean and I have a rodent control program in place (mice are a problem around here), there is no reason why anyone should notice or care.
My hat is off to Joel Salatin – everything I want to do is illegal, too. I respect the authorities but there are certain rights that ought not to be tampered with, including the right to supply food to one’s family, so long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others to enjoy their own properties.
Not all of us are born organizers or live in communities where our sentiments about these things are shared but nevertheless we can all do something toward sustainability and greater independence.
Let’s see, I have kale in the front yard, a rooster and a clothesline in the back yard, and the legal right to operate a one person brothel out of my house if I so choose. What more do I need to lobby for?
Although apparently Animal Control will come around if you try to keep ostriches in your backyard…..
I couldn’t wait to move out of our exurban neighborhood and their covenants – I just could never fell comfortable there. My dad always said it reminded him of “Pleasantville,” but it really wasn’t very pleasant. It was one of those “New Urbanism” designed communities, with sidewalks, lots of parks, a business park and a retail area. All the houses had to have front porches – I know this all sounds good, but in order to put a bench on your front porch, you had to have it approved by the HOA, which was run by people who didn’t have anything else to worry about besides how well your bench paint matched your trim paint, or how high your kids play structure was (if you could ever get one approved), or how long your grass was, I could go on. I think the people who were attracted to that job, really just like to have power over other peoples lives – it was nuts. Of course you had to have lawn in the front yard, and it had to be kept clipped to no more than 2″ – and yes, they would come around and measure, there were absolutely no clothes lines, no chickens, no rain barrels, on and on. I now happily live in an little city which became a suburb due to its proximity to the larger city next to it. We have a fairly enlightened city government with a sustainability branch – they’re trying. No regulations, on paint, benches, gardens, clothes lines, I think you can even have roosters. Much better.
I’ll brag here about this community canning project I started this morning. All of a sudden I have 20 people interested from my little nabe, two other local organizations doing the same thing but out of the neighborhood, a local pastor who is offering the church kitchen, another generous soul offering her own kitchen, many people offering extra produce, and more.
THere’s a nutritionist who is an expert sauerkraut maker who wants to get us all started on sauerkraut right away.
THere’s a guy who makes pickles and olives and will be happy to teach the rest of us when the time comes.
Then a different email entirely arrives from a local organizer who has started a tiny farmer’s market in our neighborhood. He’s also doing a food gardening and prep program in a poor, minority high school nearby, and they just announced that they’re starting two new community gardens in the ‘hood. One is for youth and the other is for all. The farmers’ market sponsors also sells bulk staples – I bought popcorn, pinto beans and green tea from them at decent prices, packed up in smallish bags.
I feel like a little bit of utopia is coming to life here! But we do have a major permaculture program at the community college up the hill, so I am not *really* surprised.
We are fighting this in Salem, Oregon, which is in the Willamette Valley, some of the best land in the world. (Marion County is still Oregon’s no. 1 Ag. county.)
Sometime in the 70s, when the city was on an annexation binge, they annexed a bunch of people who were still farmers — keeping cows, horses, etc. Well, the city fathers said, we can’t have that – if we’re going to be an auto-sprawlopolis like everyplace else, we’ve got to get gussied up and get rid of the cows and horses and what not, and shoo those folks back out into the county (where we found them).
But, in the purge, they got rid of chickens too, although I can find no evidence of any problems! A man I met in the neighborhood assn. said his parents lived right in the heart of town and kept hens from 1946 to 1976, when they got zoned out — and his brother’s friends didn’t even realize that they had been keeping chickens because they were so unobtrusive.
But, in line with the class bias theme, Salem later explicitly said you could keep pot-belly pigs in single-family residential zoned areas.
So, today, you can keep a 100# pig that produces toxic waste — along with your six huge dogs, a dozen cats, and screeching birds — but you can keep exactly zero chickens. (Oddly, dogs and cats aren’t mentioned as allowed uses in residential zones either, but animal control comes down on your for chickens, but not dogs or cats. Even though dog and cat poop is a toxic health hazard, and NOBODY keeps their cats out of your yard.)
A couple of stalwart folks have organized CITY (Chickens in the Yard), and we are going to the City Council meeting on Monday night, 2/23.
Wish us luck!
John,
I live about 8 miles east of Salem. None of those pesky ordinances here. Good luck with your CITY project.
Macleay Grange is hosting an Earth Users Guide to Permaculture study group. It meets the 1st & 3rd Thursdays from 6:30 to 7:30. If you have an interest, we’d love to see you there.
The latest zoning ordinances being adopted by many Pennsylvania municipalities (more towns, not so much in townships) are banning of the outdoor woodburning furnaces. To save on oil consumption, numerous people are installing the outdoor wood burning furnaces as their primary heat source and neighbors started complaining about the smoke and smell; thus, banning is born and ordinances are adopted. Its quite the controversy.
Sorry, Stephen, my brain blip – that should have said “movement” not “law.” Leila, I think I’ll pass on California, not because of the zombies and earthquakes, but because I love where I live too, and it is also filled with vital sustainable activity. Plus, I like letting my goats out to roam, and the neighbors might object
.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think all zoning is evil. But I do think that a large portion of our zoning policy is used to destroy precisely the values we most need to sustain.
Sharon
I have a clothes line, an above ground pool and a camper in the back yard. Not to mention the basketball hoop in the driveway. We moved to the booney side of our little town so we wouldn’t have those ‘ordinances’ placed on us, like the new neighborhoods have. If someone tells me I can’t hang laundry or plant veggies – (or really what ever I want that is legal to grow)they can go sit on a log and rotate.
If I want to grow purple grass on my front lawn – its my lawn….When they pay my mortage and property taxes they get a say.
I wanted to share a big win for chickens here in my town of Signal Mountain, TN. I approached the town council back in September and started the discussion. This past Monday night the council unanimously voted to change the ordinance allowing up to 6 chickens. It took time and lots of education, but in the end good sense won out. I’ve talked to numerous people that are now interested and it’s been fairly big news in Signal Mountain, and Chattanooga (Signal is a suburb of Chattanooga). Our town has always held itself in high regard and it’s been known for its prosperous residents. Change can happen, we are an example. Get involved!
Oh, Sharon, you got my hopes up :-}
Anyhow, thanks once again for the great essay. You’ve managed to take thoughts on zoning and HOAs I’ve been thinking for some time and turned them into a concise and quick read for others.
Good article Sharon. Gosh I feel sorry for someone who has to live in such oppressive places. I live in the richest county in america and no problem here to raise anything. I can understand some animal restrictions in dense urban areas. We live in Mexico as well and the chickens and donkeys are extremely noisy and start in about 4 am. Clothes drying restrictions seem utterly unbelievable. Clothes lines are all over Europe even in rich countries like Switzerland.
Great post. My neighborhood is a mix of old school victory garden/immigrant yards with fruit trees, gardens, chickens and clothes lines; middle class “we’re not poor” folk who have stripped their yards to bare earth, concreted all surfaces and think trees are messy and troublesome; and everything in between. I get upset when a home gets a new owner who fells an old fruit bearing plum or trees are taken out because their owner is too elderly to care for them anymore. Silly me – I consider trees to be a resource for the entire neighborhood. I’ve got my eye on those bare lots – there’s future potential there.
One thing you didn’t mention is an ordinance that we have in the Bay Area for not burning wood on designated days. Our house is heated primarily by our wood stove and, though I get the clean air reasoning, I’m never happy when I’m cold on a “spare the air day”. You can get fined for burning wood from your own yard.
Question for Leila Abu-Saba: Sounds like you live near me. Oakland? Alameda? Would you mind giving me your email address so I could get in on some of the community events you mention? I’m in Richmond. How about a group baking day? linda_kalin@sbcglobal.net
Thank you for this post. Last year, I posted a series of blog articles entitled “Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs”, and I talked about this sort of thing. I received a lot of negative feedback from people who said stuff like, “Oh, I *can’t* because of my HOA.” Like some of your other commenters, I think it’s just a shame to have to live in a place where those kinds of limitations are accepted in the name of “aesthetics.” One can’t eat “pretty.”
I just received an email announcement from the Food for Maine’s Future e-list. A proposal is going before the Portland City Council to allow chickens to be raised in the city limits *grin*.
I just think that’s totally groovy!
Chickens are already permitted in South Portland, thanks to the efforts of a homeschooling family
, and I’m looking forward to the ordinance change that will allow chickens in downtown Gorham, too. I can’t wait to see all of the funky coops 
.
Great piece. I don’t visit your site often but I very much appreciate the information.
It’s high time we reclaim the right to sun our drawers au naturale.
Just a quick share on #4:
Being a Pac NW’er, rainwater collection systems are fairly common here. Many people use above/below and/or hybrid cisterns to collect water. My Alaskan grandmother put one in most economically using a swimming pool liner. My son will be repeating the process for a friend’s farm in Norcal this year. If anyone objects, he plans to make it look just a like a supercool doughboy.
Blessings and great blogging!
No zoning!!! no zoning laws even ostensibly make sense and they are all designed to outlaw self sufficiency. If your town has zoning, MOVE OUT!!!
I love this post. I am the only one in my extended family (well other than my husband and girls
who thinks that urban chickens are great and am always interested to look and see what someone has in a garden.
[...] Facing the Zoning Monster [...]
What a timely post!
I just returned from my town hall. I spent an hour running from one office to another (and back again) – my 3.5 year old in tow – to get all the info and paperwork needed for our chicken plan: permit to keep livestock, permit to build a coop and run, list of abutters (one of which is The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: it’ll be fun finding someone to write to there!), and something else, I forget which. I’ll need to write my neighbors (by certified mail) and, if no one objects, justify my decision in front of the Board.
The cost of setting this up will be $95, that is not counting the hens, feed, buildings, bedding, etc.
That is, in short, $95 in FEES.
The small city I’m currently in bans chickens, clotheslines, and will come down on you for front-yard gardening if it isn’t ‘tidy’. I have a clothesline in my back yard (where they can’t see) and would keep chickens if my neighbors on all sides weren’t such busy bodies. I also garden in the front.
A lot of people still have chickens, particualrly in areas with high ethnic populations (notably the Hispanic immigrants). They just hide the chickens when the zoning officer comes around. And the clotheslines, too.
So I scroll down through this ever so meek and mild comment stream only to find that I am already set up to add a comment. How can I resist? I can’t. Half pint of cheap vodka, 7 or 8 cheap beers, similar amounts of cheap wine, many home rolled cheap cigarrets and yeah, I’m ready to comment. Seems I’ve been set up. Fine! Chickens, clothes lines, rain barrels? What the fuck are you all writing about? I have a friend who is brilliant, very well informed and cannot see the forest for the trees. Same as you. “Oh mommy, what is that nasty man talking about?” Well children, we’ve been had, and all the chickens and clothes lines and rain barrels that you can ever imagine will not save us. Get angry, be enraged, revolt!
I can’t believe they have laws about clotheslines. That’s so crazy. Here in Australia everyone has a clothesline. An American colleague who was visiting went on a ferry ride down the river and commented that even the riverfront mansions had clotheslines. No-one else understood why that was a big deal to him except me, as I used to live in Texas.
That being said, while I already knew that most people in the USA use dryers, until I read this post I didn’t know that it is actually illegal in some places to use clotheslines – I just thought it was preference!
It must feel like everything is against you, trying to beat/prepare for climate change.
sharon: this was so well written. would it be alright if i borrowed bits and pieces as i lobby my civic association to change the prohibitions in place since the 60’s? i promise i won’t use it word for word, in fact i’d like to use your site as a reference if that would be ok.
bucky: what part of houston are you in? maybe we should buddy up and work for some changes in our fair city before mayor white leaves office. whatcha think?
I’ve bragged about my neighborhood so often here that I want to share my new local food blog with you:
http://foragelaurel.blogspot.com/
Yesterday I casually asked the neighborhood email list if anybody wanted to get together to forage local produce (lemons and oranges right now) and preserve it. I got 20 yes responses in twelve hours, plus offers of two church kitchens and a private home to host.
I also received a flood of suggestions and links – somebody is doing something similar in the next town over, and somebody else is trading preserves for fresh foraged produce on the north side of town.
I have my own interests around our local food and sustainable living scene, so I thought I’d round it all up in a blog.
It’s called Think Global, Eat Laurel (neighborhood is called The Laurel District or ‘the Laurel’).
http://foragelaurel.blogspot.com/
Please drop by and give us a shout. Our first marmalade-making party with foraged Meyer lemons (and oranges too) is shaping up for March 7. A nutritionist in the neighborhood wants to teach us all to make sauerkraut, and there’s a guy who makes olives every year who promises to help us with that next fall when they ripen.
If you have a blog and think mine is suitable for your roll, I would greatly appreciate being added to your list. Thank you in advance.
[...] brings me back to my title. Sharon Astyk is stirring up trouble and has her sights set on zoning laws that require us, essentially, to be more energy dependant [...]
Ehswan, wow, that’s a lot of lead in for just one comment
. Wanna comment sober sometime?
Debra, I’m pretty liberal about letting people republish my stuff in general, as long as the attributions are appropriate, and for this cause, you can do anything you want with it, as long as you don’t make money
.
Sharon
thanks so much
CT daffodil- I hear you! With the cost of property taxes (my grandfather says we never really own our land, we lease it from the town), I’m pretty much going to do what I want and don’t give a hoot what anyone else says. I pay plenty to live here.
We’d avoid HOA’s like the plague, if there was ever a chance we wanted to live anywhere likely to have them. But since I like working-class neighborhoods in towns & cities, I’ve been pretty safe so far.
Our zoning structures can be a pain, but they’re democratic (that is, if you have a problem with your zoning, you can bring multiple levels of local & state gov’t to bear, try to get an obstructionist board out of office, or run yourself.) We can have chickens, but not fighting roosters, dogs & cats as long as they’re being taken care of, any artwork we please (though the political art installation down the block got some pressure when the President of Mexico came to town, he didn’t back down and the city gave up), the city encourages rain barrels, all that jazz…but we do have some recourse if, say, the neighbors decide they want to smelt scrap metal in the back yard.
So, as much as I admire all of you trying to change where you are…for lazy people like me, these places already exist (I’m in South Minneapolis, for the record, and there are a *lot* of houses for sale here.)
My mother lives in a very upscale suburban McMansion neighborhood and they cannot even have yard sales once a year (brings in the “riff-raff!). No political signs are allowed in yards. Everyone has to have the same monogrammed mailbox ($500 each).
It’s ridiculous. I can’t afford it anyhow, but we live out in the boonies away from the stupid restrictions. And yes, I have a BIG garden in my front yard! LOVE IT!!!
And now for a few comments from the other side of the fence. I am the Chairman of the local Planning & Zoning Commission for my township. And I agree with many of the comments here. But, you know, there would be no need for zoning laws if we could depend upon everyone to show restraint and consideration in what they do to and with their property.
I daresay that most of the rules we have are demanded by residents who wish to protect their (dwindling) property values from other folks who would live in messy conditions that would detract from the values of their neighbors.
They try to cram too many farm animals on lots that are to small to support that number, they don’t clean up after their animals and they house them in homemade sheds that are extremely unattractive.
Others let their yards run to weeds claiming that those weeds are “naturalized areas”, when in fact they are nothing more than living proof of the owner’s laziness. When their front-yard gardens are done for the season, there’s no clean-up that goes on – just old stalks, black leaves, and trellises with strips of pantyhose waving in the wind all winter.
And now for a few comments from the other side of the fence. I am the Chairman of the local Planning & Zoning Commission for my township. And I agree with many of the comments here. But, you know, there would be no need for zoning laws if we could depend upon everyone to show restraint and consideration in what they do to and with their property.
I daresay that most of the rules we have are demanded by residents who wish to protect their (dwindling) property values from other folks who would live in messy conditions that would detract from the values of their neighbors.
They try to cram too many farm animals on lots that are to small to support that number, they don’t clean up after their animals, and they house them in homemade sheds that are constructed of leftover building materials, often in many different colors and shapes.
Others let their yards run to weeds claiming that those weeds are “naturalized areas”, when in fact they are nothing more than living proof of the owner’s laziness. When their gardens (front or back) are done for the season, there’s no clean-up that goes on – just old stalks, black leaves, and trellises with strips of pantyhose waving in the wind all winter. Lovely.
And one final comment, many residents (mis)use their property in order to wreak revenge on their neighbors. If you don’t like your neighbor, plant tall bushes or build solid fences to block their view. And be sure to build an ugly fence, preferably with the “wrong” side toward the neighbor. There are so many ways to create animosity — so we have to have zoning laws just to keep people civil to each other.
Sorry for the double post — and, yes, I do hang my laundry outside!
Very timely and interesting post Sharon. Here in tony Westport, CT, there was a recent petition by some troubled neighbors to ban roosters. Our uptight neighboring town to the North, New Canaan, CT already bans them, and the petitioners pretty much took their ordinance and promoted it here.
The situation stemmed from the rooster being in a neighborhood where the houses were fairly close. After some negotiations, a volunteer came forth to accept the rooster (and a hen) to remove the rooster from the disturbed neighborhood. The family still has hens, and there is no effort here to ban them as well. This solution has apparently made everyone happy, and the issue has been dropped–for now.
There is a clear slow food movement going on in town, and the ordinance was going to receive fairly strong opposition. Your reference to a class issue is rather perceptive. In some of the discussions, it was clear there was a mentality, mainly held by older people, that somehow growing one’s own food and keeping farm animals was not appropriate for Westport anymore, that we had become a wealthy suburban community in the New York City metropolis, and that we really should recognize that fact and act appropriately.
The opposition to the rooster ban ordinance, which didn’t speak out too forcefully, because the issue was resolved prior to the big Town Meeting showdown, was represented mainly by younger people, also relatively wealthy, trying to hold back this suburban tide and trying to push hard on the greenhouse gas issue by, among other ways, reducing the amount of fossil fuels used in agriculture through advocating local gardens/farms, etc.
Last year, I had some extra tomato plants that I grew from seed. Since I had ran out of space in my garden, which is in the back of the house, out of site, out of mind, I put the tomato plants in the front. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything.
The local movement is young here, but it seems to be growing.
Cathy, I have some sympathy, but not tons. Zoning is fine with me if used with a scalpel, not a scimitar, but generally speaking, the prohibitions don’t work to provide the minimum constraint with the maximum benefit. As they say, when you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Moreover, many of the people who grow, say, food in the front yard, are trying to eat – the tiny reduction in property values caused by a few stalks or shed in a non-approved color seems like a pretty small problem in a country where we’ve got 12 milliion hungry kids.
Zoning is always phrased in objective terms, as protecting the character of a place, or conserving aesthetic considerations. But our aesthetic considerations seem often to come down to class prejudice, and character exists in many places without restrictive zoning policies. So no, mostly not buying it.
Sharon
Portland, ME city council approved the chicken ordinance last night:
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=240265&ac=PHnws
4. No rainwater collection. Reason: This is mostly in dry places in the Southwest, for fear that the tiny amount of available rainwater might not reach people who can’t afford to pay for it, or strangely believe that water that lands on their roof might belong to them, and who would like to have gardens anyway. A few other municipalities do it for fear of west nile disease because they seem never to have heard of screens or mosquito dunks. Oh, and barrels look like you can’t afford to water your lawn with sprinklers, even when it is raining.
If you’ll permit me my favorite soapbox….
Actually, it has a lot more to do with Water Compact laws. Western water law is a many headed hydra, that doesn’t much resemble what they do out east where it rains all the time. For example, we get about 12″ of rainfall annually here in Albuquerque. If you catch every drop that lands on your roof during the wet summer monsoon season, that’s actually thousands and thousands of gallons. But New Mexico owes a certain number of acre feet of Rio Grande water to Texas every year. Likewise, Colorado owes NM a certain number of acre feet. The Rio Grande is the primary conduit for these acre feet of water. This Compact Law was codified mostly in the 1930s, during one of the wettest periods in Western history. Because of that, the Compact laws require too much water to move south, in all cases. The quite legitimate fear, backed by the numbers, is that if the water that falls on Albuquerque rooftops does NOT end up back in the Rio Grande pretty directly, then we fall short of our Compact requirement. We are presently pumping water out of our aquifer to meet Compact requirements. Not every year, but often enough.
The thing is, if every person in sprawling, 1-million-person Albuquerque started harvesting all of our rainwater tomorrow, in the short term, we *would* fall short on the Compact. However, in the long term, we would re-create a healthy underground aquifer (the one we’ve been steadily and increasingly depleting since WWII), thereby recharging the river underground. It’s a slower process; it would take 50-100 years of 100% rainwater harvesting plus a complete and total stop on development to get the aquifer healthy again, but if we kept all our rainwater *right here*, by harvesting it into gardens & landscape use, then we *could* do it. And ultimately, the Rio Grande would run full again. As it no longer does.
Getting the legislatures of the various Compact states to agree to such a thing, however, is probably impossible. Not to mention the ticky-tack real estate developers, who want to stack more crap all over the mesas, and then pump aquifer water uphill fifty miles to feed their cheap waterless developments. And it would complicate irrigation for farming, which is a much more valid concern. People would have to start irrigating through rainwater harvesting as well as through the acequia system, and we would not be able to count on as much acequia water, because Colorado would be harvesting some of the rainwater that they presently send down the river because of the Compact. Which would mess with everybody’s traditional Spanish farming methods (which are pretty dang good on the sustainability front), not to mention it would mess with the *conventional* farmers, outside the Rio Grande basin, who spray water through the AIR, where up to 50% of it vanishes immediately (more if it’s windy, which it often is), to “irrigate” their crops. Idiots. Spraying water around here is just plain stupid. Flood irrigation allows it to soak into the ground with no more than a 20% evaporative loss, and it expands/preserves wildlife habitat and native plant habitat as well. But you can only flood where there’s a river to support it, and where the river has summer-long water in it. Which means there are some areas, many areas, which should never be farmed, because the water situation does not support it, and many of these are being farmed anyhow. This is a real problem. As well as being a situation where growing livestock that can eat the native grassland (without destroying it utterly! which is mostly a matter of proper rotation and not grazing too many head per acre for the actual land conditions) makes a heck of a lot more sense than growing corn.
Now, all that said, the cities of Albuqueruqe, Santa Fe, and many other municipalities in New Mexico and Arizona are actively encouraging rainwater harvesting. We’re behind the curve, it’s true; we should have been doing it all along, and doing more of it than what they’re currently promoting—but they ARE encouraging it. (Colorado’s the one with the anti-rainwater-harvesting laws, that i know of; I’m not sure about Utah & Nevada.) There’s a tax rebate on rainwater barrels these days, and we just managed to pass a law requiring all new development to have rainwater catchment installed as part of the building process. Not enough gallons per structure, and they’re putting a lot of it underground, which means it requires pumps rather than gravity flow—but anything at all is better than nothing, and I am very pleased our city council got that one through. Likewise, greywater reuse in landscaping is legal and becoming more popular, though certain code-based restrictions apply on a municipal basis, in both New Mexico and Arizona. The code restrictions are workable—in Abq, the greywater garden must be 100′ from a well, you can’t allow greywater to stand or to be stored, but must use it immediately for landscape purposes. That makes *sense*. The one that annoys me is that kitchen greywater can’t be used. They’re concerned about microbial contamination in poorly designed systems, (or “pipe out the back” systems), which does make sense, but they don’t allow room for properly designed systems that take the actual content of kitchen water into account. Like underground pumice wick systems with a particle trap. No standing water, healthy soil that eats the microbes.
I highly reccomend Art Ludwig’s Create an Oasis with Greywater, available at http://www.oasisdesign.net, for a lot of great greywater garden designs and systems. He is a site-specific thinker, which is an approach that really works for greywater—where building codes are deliberately *not* site-specific, which is the problem. And check out Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, both volumes, if you’re interested in using your land to catch your rain to grow more crops.
Like many of our institutions designed to solve one problem, zoning has caused at least as many unintended consequences as the number of problems it has solved. Originally designed to separate dangerous polluting industries from residential areas, reduce congestion of extremely high densities, provide for reasonable air and light to get to street level, and provide setbacks to reduce the chance of catastrophic fire spread, it has become the source of many of our modern urban, suburban, and rural problems. It has been politicized and used to stratify communities by class through arbitrary lot size requirements; it has contributed to automobile dependence through restricting large areas to residential, commercial, or industrial districts; and, when it is overly restricted, it gets in the way of needed change. Nevertheless, it is still one of the most effective tools communities have to implement master plans to shape their future. Some communities are working on mixed use districts. Many are adding sustainable activities to permitted land uses including chickens and permaculture activities. What is needed is the ability to listen, creativity, and the recognition of the need to make changes, and political will. Unfortunately, planning departments are often terrible bearcat staffed by well meaning people who may agree with us but who operate in fear that they may be accused of making a mistake or of having spoken out of school. To remake our communities, we will need to remake the way we plan them.
Has anyone considered the subversive role played by obese corporations in all of this? The manufacturers of clothes driers seek profits! Given the built-in corruption of our business-political complex does anyone doubt that they pull special favors – via campaign donations – to force “consumers” to buy their contraptions instead of using a bit of rope?
And how about the mega food giants — do they not make outrageous profits when they discourage, nay, stop people from growing their own food? By making “dirt” “unfashionable” through subtle advertising, by stopping community garden projects, by working through old boy networks to zone out self-sufficiency?
Let us not be duped or confused — these corporations exist for only one reason… -written into the law- to make profits for shareholders… Not to support sustainable lifestyles. It is time to stop trusting them, to stop the insanity, to see through their lies and obfuscations, to retake control of our own lives… before they kill us all with their unique brand of “kindness”.
[...] Astyk makes the case (pretty convincingly) that zoning laws, and more specifically their enactment as “property [...]
[...] http://sharonastyk.com/2009/02/12/facing-the-zoning-monster/ [...]
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[...] I know that this isn’t common in the US – in fact, in some places it’s actually illegal to have a clothesline – but here in Australia it’s totally normal to have a clothesline. Every house has one, [...]