Strollerderby : homes

Elderly Chinese Women Sentenced to "Re-Education"

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:17:00 GMT

Chinese authorities have sentenced two elderly women to a year of “re-education” through labor because they repeatedly sought permits to protest in one of the official Olympic protest sites—areas that Chinese authorities designated as the only places where protests were allowed during the Olympic games, but which have yet to see a single protest.

The women, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying, are 77 and 79. They went to the police five times seeking permits to protest inadequate compensation after their Beijing homes were demolished for a redevelopment project. Instead of being given a new home in the new development, as the women thought would happen, they were moved to a dilapidated apartment outside the city. Although the New York Times did not mention whether the redevelopment was linked to the Olympics, it's possible that it was part of the Chinese government's Beijing makeover in preparation for the games.

Wu’s son, who says that his mother is nearly blind, has worked hard to seek justice for his mother and her friend, and he is outraged that two women in their 70s would be sentenced to re-education, which often involves hard labor in agriculture or factories and forced confessions. Although the women were allowed to return to their homes, officials said that they could be whisked off to a re-education center at any time. Re-education sentences are handed out without trials or means of appeals.

Such a sentence is perhaps one of the lighter punishments for seeking an Olympic protest permit: some of the applicants have disappeared.

Photo: A Chinese labor camp (New York Times)

House Lust: Teeny, Tiny (Yet Somehow Furnished) Home

Madeline Holler — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:27:00 GMT

The challenge of packing a family into a tiny living space isn't so much about lack of privacy, forced quiet hours (shhhhhh, the baby's sleeping!) and a useless Costco membership. It's furniture and furniture arrangements -- ones that work for grownups (look good) but also work well for kids (and messes they create).

I love my four-person family's teeny, tiny house because it's affordable, we have enough rooms for a little office, it has a matching tiny yard (with garage!) and, best of all, zero shared walls with virile young construction workers and their vocal lovers.

But I've found it's really hard to furnish. Everything has to be on a smaller scale, stand up to kids, not add or show clutter and serve a dual purpose -- seating and storage/beauty and storage/storage and storage. Everything has to be arranged just so. Which is why I'm always looking for tiny living ideas and/or commiseration. This slideshow of a suuuuuuper tiny townhouse in Washington, D.C. opened my eyes.

Called the Spite House, it's only 7-feet wide. It's 325 square feet and two stories. There's a narrow yard. And the family that owns it even entertains! (Max. 12 guests).

So I studied the accompanying photos of the home carefully, noting how they provided adequate seating without making it look too cramped (though, curious, what'd they do with the TV?). I was disappointed to learn it's just their sometimes home in the city -- they live in a bigger place somewhere else.

Still, I'll take what I can get. We families with tiny dwellings need to help each other out. Because it's an oversized, deeply tufted, dark-wooded world of furnishings out there. Don't we all deserve enough room for end tables.

Do you live in a tiny place? How do you cope? Give me your furnishing tips. Where do you hide your kids' crap (trash can? I knew it!)?

Photo: NYTimes.com

Family Home-Buying Needs a Remodel: Mortgage Messes, Foreclosures and Second Jobs

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 15:01:00 GMT

We live in an apartment, a small vintage apartment tucked into a lovely, expensive neighborhood in Chicago. Our rent hasn't gone up in the seven years we've lived here and we have a compassionate landlord and wonderful neighbors. Despite this just-fine set-up, we want to expand our family, we need more space and we really want to buy a home. Sometimes, I curse the days when we were not yet married or parents and made nearly double the income we now earn. Instead of investing in a home back then, we invested in eating out, happy hours, vacations and dry-cleaning. It all seems so frivolous now, but it all seemed perfectly reasonable then. The thing is, if we had bought a home back then, there's a very good chance that all the life changes, wedding costs, medical bills, layoffs, following passions, family traumas, credit card pay-down and a child later, we wouldn't be able to afford it now anyway.

The what-if game is just that, game. But the reality of paying a mortgage while dealing with the stress and changes that your family goes through over the course of your life together is very serious business. Perhaps my husband and I are dreaming and planning at the right time, when foreclosures and mortgage messes are at the top of the news many nights a week. We're thoroughly scared and trying very hard to save enough and find the right place at the right time, all with an understanding that everything can change in an instant.

Some families are facing each month's mortgage payment with desperation and dread, feeling the effects of being in way over their heads in the house they call home (for now). Some people blame the banks, others the lack of reliable credit and home-buying counseling, still others blame the families for being wooed by McMansions or not saving for rainy days and lost jobs. Katherine Meyer at The Juggle's opened up the issue to a stream of both critical and compassionate comments in her post on the subject that highlights families forced to take second -- and even third -- jobs to keep their homes.

I have to think the McMansioning of America and the false sense of wealth perpetuated by credit card addiction are at play here, along with piles of other issues many families choose to keep locked away in the basement (or the fitness room or the three-car garage or the crawl space above the fifth floor). As hard as it is to be realistic and honest about what we make and where we live and what we can really afford, I have to believe it can only help us get our houses (or our mortgages-to-be) in order.

Beautify the Man Cave

Kelly Mills — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:04:00 GMT

Ah, remember when we used to call them "rumpus rooms"? Lots of people are revamping the garage to make it into usable space. This often means fixing it up with some gym equipment, a television, and some tasteful sports wall hangings as a surprise for the husbands- I guess that's the "man cave". Other people are turning that diamond in the rough into space the whole family can enjoy. Or just throwing up big-ass doors for the SUVs. After the kitchen and the bathroom, the garage is just ripe for a big remodel.

Now here's what I don't get: one garage-enhancement professional says 70 percent of his customers are women. Why so many man caves? But I'm ready to be the next customer, because I sooooo want my own man cave now. A big screen TV, a stocked mini-fridge, some weights, a pull up bar, a few Gabrielle Reece posters... I'd hibernate year round. Maybe I'm just a frat boy at heart, but if you want to ask me about it, you'll have to pull me out of my happy daydream of living in my man cave, surrounded by empties while I play my Wii and watch porn with my buddies.

How Big Are Your Family Digs?

Jessica Ashley (Sassafrass) — Tue, 29 May 2007 22:06:00 GMT

Another old house in my beautiful neighborhood is getting knocked down. It is a house kiddy-corner from our apartment building and granted, it was on the market for a very long time and then for rent for an even longer time. It is not beautiful, not in great shape. But it is an old house on an over-sized lot with a great yard and its own character. And like many other homes turned construction sites within blocks, a Starter Castle will surely be built up in its place. With lots of bathrooms, more bedrooms and no trace of Earth on the lot.

This McMansioning of America cannot be surprising to anyone who owns a home, is buying a home or just walks past homes in their 'hood. A recent report citing one in five homes now have four bedrooms and 2.5 baths is up from a one in six ratio in 1990. This trend toward bigger home size doesn't match up with the trend toward shrinking family size. It is, however, right on track with our need for more expansive space to fit all our stuff, no matter how much greenspace it means we chop away or how big our environmental footprint is on our cities, counties or country.

All this construction comes at a price (and not just environmental). The average home price has risen 40% since 1990, hitting $167,500. I almost choked on my latte when I read this since our family's hunt for even a crappy fixer-upper keeps landing us at doorsteps with at least a $400,000 price tag. While I loved our own Crank Mama's ode to small spaces and while I can go on and on and freaking on about the horrific crapification of monstrous new builds in our neighborhood, I know that when we are finally ready to move out of our tiny apartment (noooo, not bitter about that at all), I will have every home-office/playroom/kid's bathroom/guest space/art studio/fitness room reason in the world to hit all the 4 BR/2.5 BA open houses I can find.