Resident-Owned,Informal Mobile Home Communities in Rural California: The Case of Rancho Don Antonio,Coachella Valley

California's farmworkers are among the lowest-paid wage earners in the state. They often live in crowded or substandard housing. The Polanco Bill—state legislation enacted in the early 1990s—aimed to increase the supply of housing for farmworkers by encouraging the development of employee housing on land zoned for agriculture. This article discusses the implementation and effects of the Polanco Bill in the agricultural area of the eastern Coachella Valley. It finds, somewhat unexpectedly, that groups of farmworkers, often family members, have used the bill to collaborate and develop small, resident-owned, informal mobile home communities, called polancos, and focuses on one such case. Although the article's key contribution is to identify the informal approach and its key attributes, it also discusses whether a new housing model based on the collectively owned polancos is possible.     

Necessary Evil: Justification, Excuse or Pardon?

The problem of necessary evil is a sub-class of the problem of moral dilemmas. In cases of genuine moral dilemmas the agent cannot avoid doing evil whatever he does. In some cases of genuine moral dilemmas, the options facing the agent are incommensurable. But in some other cases of genuine moral dilemmas, though wrong doing is inescapable, there is a rationally best course of action. These are cases of necessary evil. There are several views regarding the doing of necessary evil. On the closure view it is never necessary to do what is evil. This is the view of some utilitarians and of Kant. Then there are people who believe that it is sometimes necessary to do evil. Of these some (like John Gardner) believe that evil in such cases is justified even though it remains an evil; while there are others (like Gandhi) who believe that evil in such cases can never be justified but it can at best be excused or pardoned. Some even think that in some extreme cases the individual who does evil (even if it is the lesser evil) should be punished even though the individual could not avoid doing evil whatever he chose. The paper stresses the significance of the distinction between justified wrong doing, pardonable wrong doing, and excusable wrong doing.     

The Importance of Design in Affordable Housing: Lessons From Mutual Self-Help Housing in California

We focus on three nonprofit organizations developing mutual self-help housing and analyze their projects to examine how they are addressing cost increases. We find that instead of using simpler designs, they are developing more elaborate homes through intricate financing. We are critical of this evolution. First, we suggest that the original modest house design of mutual self-help housing allowed for more affordable housing through post-occupancy improvements and de facto incremental development. Second, after the modest design was replaced with a larger model, development costs increased. Despite financial innovations, including longer loan terms and secondary financing, participation by poor households dropped. Third, we urge a return to the modest housing idea. Fourth, we call for policymakers to better integrate design-based thinking in housing policy.