National Green Building Conference — March 25-27 in St. Louis, MO

March 3, 2007 at 2:03 am · Filed under Green Building, Conferences

This annual conference attracts more than 1,000 builders, architects and engineers with seminars, innovative new product and tool displays and other special presentations, including the National Green Building Awards and the National Arbor Day Foundation’s Building With Trees awards.

9th Annual National Green Building Conference

3 Comments »

  1. Maureen F. Wood said,

    May 12, 2008 @ 8:00 pm

    I would like to bring a group of ten senior citizens who are redeveloping their community using greenbuild practices. They will be building 60 homes and a community center. They have been able to raise the travel funds, however would need scholarships to attend. They will be traveling by bus from Cincinnati.
    Can you let me know if this is a possibility?

    They are saving an important community. See attached history. History of Valley Homes
    Written in 1980 for the Valley Homes Community Celebrates
    “Severing the Chains”
    1954-1980
    Saturday, November 29, 1980
    Valley Homes Community Building

    Valley Homes was built in 1941 as a 350-unit housing project for defense workers at the Wright Aeronautical Plant (now G.E.). It was, and is, virtually an all black project. At the time of construction there was little around it accept a few family farms. From the time of its construction in 1941 until its sale in 1954, Valley Homes was managed for the U.S. Public Housing Administration by the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (C.M.H.A.).

    In the early 1950’s, the federal government, through the Public Housing Administration, was in the process of disposing of war surplus housing. Under the terms of the Lanham Act and the other Code provisions on defense housing and amendments adopted by Congress, the first choice method of disposing of Valley Homes was to give it (without cost) to the local housing authority, in this case C.M.H.A.. Had this occurred, there would have been no change in either management or the tenants at Valley Homes. C.M.H.A. was already the manager and the project’s occupancy was virtually 100%.

    Because of Lincoln Heights’ critical problem with its tax base, this never occurred. Instead C.M.H.A. was pressured into declaring that the project was unnecessary for low and moderate income housing and therefore they would not accept its ownership.

    Second choice of disposition under existing congressional mandate required the project to be sold to a veterans’ cooperative housing corporation that agreed to accept existing tenants as members. The third choice disposition called for public sale to the highest bidder.

    It is unclear whether the residents ever understood the congressional act. What is apparent is that sometime in the late 1953 rumors swept the project that it is going to be sold to private developers unless the tenants purchased it.

    On September 8, 1953, many of the residents of Valley Homes met at Lincoln Heights Elementary School to discuss the possibility of purchasing Valley Homes. Throughout that fall the tenants worked to establish a legal structure, raise financing, and lay the groundwork for the purchase of the property.

    Late that year the Public Housing Administration, evidently without notifying any tenants, employed an appraiser for the purpose of establishing the value of the Valley Homes project. On December 31, 1953, the appraiser, Mr. Robert L. Freed, reported his finding to the Public Housing Administration in a detailed, 30-page report. The appraiser concluded that the total value of the property was $1,002,500.00.

    According to Valley Homes Records, on February 16, 1954, a committee of Valley Homes met with Mr. Harry E. Sonnemaker of the Public Housing Administration to discuss a purchase price. Mr. Sonnemaker informed the committee that the appraised value of the property was $1,401,600.00. The committee was further informed that the tenants could either purchase the property at this price or the property would be sold at public sale to the highest bidder without regard to the residents or whether or not the bidder was a coop. While there was some attempt by the residents to dispute the demanded purchase price, including a trip to Washington to meet with Mr. Schlosser, the Housing Commissioner of the Public Housing Administration, there was little that the residents could do other than agree to the purchase price.

    The residents of Valley Homes were never informed that they could bid less than the demanded price, nor were they notified of the government’s own appraisal which set the value of the property at approximately $400,000.00 less than the demanded price. In fact, the only concession that was ever made to the residents of the Valley Homes was to reduce the demanded price to $1,400,000 even.

    The injustice of this huge over-charge to the Valley Homes residents, long kept in the darkness, slowly came into the light. Through the hard work of the residents and helpful legislators and lawyers, there was recognition that had Valley Homes charged the true appraised value of the property, the mortgage would have been paid off 11 years ago.

    After much debate around the city of Washington, D. C., Congress finally declared the property paid and the mortgage cancelled.

    This is what is celebrated today. This is the freedom that allows Valley Homes to be the master of its own fate. This is “THE SEVERING OF CHAINS”!!!
    Lincoln Heights, Ohio
    (Copied from the Village’s web site)
    The Village of Lincoln Heights is a first-ring suburban community in Hamilton County. It is located about 12 miles north of downtown Cincinnati on the I-75 corridor. Lincoln Heights is a municipality of some 4500 predominately working class families. It is a close-knit community that includes many persons who have been established residents for the past 40 years.
    Lincoln Heights is a historically African-American community that was originally developed in the early 1920s through the Livingston Land Company. The first attempt to incorporate occurred in the late 1930s when residents organized in order to manage their own affairs and improve the delivery of police, fire and code enforcement services. Lincoln Heights was ultimately chartered as an independent municipality in 1945 through action of the Hamilton County Commissioners. That incorporation, however, left it with only .8 square miles of land.
    Within its borders was a limited industrial and commercial land base insufficient to support the needs of its population base. By 1950 its population had surged to more than 5000 and it efforts to annex adjacent land were thwarted. A neighboring territory (once considered a part of Lincoln Heights) was incorporated in 1951 as the Village of Evendale. Coincidentally, Evendale included General Electric Company (formerly Wright Aircraft), an entity that contributed to the prosperity of Evendale and subsequently prevented the economic success of Lincoln Heights.

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    June 20, 2008 @ 2:44 pm

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