By making a deal!

The deal is this: that we build healthy shelters using natural resources that nature can replenish in less time than the service life of these shelters and that we do this without regard for any factor other than that every human has the basic right to shelter. We can do the first two right now, it’s rather simple. It’s that equitably part that I have not figured out yet. Hence the ’s in, Let’s Make A Deal!

Shelter, like food and water, is a necessity for human life. The requirements for shelter in a northern climate, such as we build in, here in Ontario, Canada, consume vast resources in order to function in both extreme cold and hot. But they don’t have to. The building industry in North America continues, by and large, to pursue conventional approaches to the construction, material sourcing and financing of this, one of our most basic needs, shelter. There is a lot to be said about where and how we get our food, water and clothing – the remaining basics – but I am going to try to stick with my area of expertise.

There is no intention here other than to open a dialogue between myself and anyone who is building a home/shelter. I can’t promise that we can find a workable situation. I am not in a position to act as a shelter philanthropist, though I dream of such a thing, I’m not wealthy. I am willing to be straight forward with my clients about why I build and what mine and my families needs are, (which is why I get paid to build, to support our needs), and what the needs of those I work with are. I want to talk over other ways to finance shelter building. I want to be a part of forwarding the equitably built home.

As the owner of a company that builds using mostly raw materials, close to their natural state, I have seen first hand that our effects on the planet are immense. I’ve personally worked timbers that where cut out of virgin forests over 250 years ago, trees that began growing 450 years ago and can tell you that oak or pine or any species of tree that remains today is a pale shadow of what our ancestors had to work with. The maddening pace at which we plant trees for economic harvesting to build inferior toxic shelters is not thought out from a sustainable approach, but for economic profit. I know that in order to pass over a functional ecosystem to our children and grandchildren, an ecosystem that we have put in peril, that we will need to establish a new model for doing business. Today more than at any other point in human history there is a need to reinvent our personal and collective goals. We will always need shelter. And now, after decades of warning, we are becoming conscious of the impact that 120 years of fast, cheap construction is having on our planets health, on our personal health and on our general enjoyment of life.

I am not an economist. As a business owner I have operated my company only from a sustaining perspective. Meaning that though we take money for our services I do not spend my time paying employees, working estimates, reselling materials all with the end goal of banking money for the company, a.k.a. profit. An accountant might say that all our profit is reinvested in the company, I would say we manage to have the tools we need when we need them and keep the lights on. This will be how I always operate my business. Until we can find a better, dare I say, more natural way to finance our shelters.

And now comes the pitch: I want there to be a different way. I want to be able to build efficient, healthy, long lasting (and I mean hundreds of years, real heirloom structures, not this building code bulls__t that relies on manufactured pieces being stuck together like so many Lego blocks), beautiful shelters not just for those who have flourished in our economic system but for any who make the choice to build well, to build for keeps, to build a better footprint.

So come at me with any and all ideas.

If all this sounds Hippy-Dippy then so be it. I know that not everyone can build their own home. I know that I can build and well. So what I have to work with and offer is that knowledge and skill set. What I want to do with what I have is, at the very least stop hurting the environment, become neutral — my three boys deserve it. You and yours deserve it. At best, we can, together, lay the ground work of a system of building that means that everyone can have healthy, sustainable shelter that is unconstrained by economics.

I am trying to forward the chance for us to come up with the answer to the third question — How can we build equitably? Follow future posts under this portion of the Timber Wall for philosophical, practical and attempted solutions to the question of building economically neutral shelter.