Re: [GBlist] houses old, new, borrowed recycled blue

["malcolm.scott" <malcolm.scott@ntlworld.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Beverly A. Weiter" <environs.com@juno.com>
To: <sbtdesigns@earthlink.net>; <greenbuilding@crest.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: [GBlist] houses old, new, borrowed recycled blue


> Steve,
>
> I agree with you.  Housing has become way too expensive.  What's worse,
> we have as a nation lost perspective on our priorities.
>
> Here in Central Florida a number of communities, in an effort to save
> money, are closing homeless shelters or banning the homeless from a
> number of public facilities.  Meanwhile our government is spending
> hundreds of millions on homeless and displaced persons in other
> countries.
>
> It may be an unpopular sentiment, but I think our own people should come
> first.  If we continue to expend our resources on others by draining the
> well here, we will increasingly find those is this country unable to
> sustain the drain.  What we need to do is make more of our people
> productive so there is a larger base from which to funnel aid elsewhere.
> That can only be done by helping homeless people to find a place to live
> so they can concentrate on finding work.  While it's true some are
> unemployable, an increasing number of them are laid off workers and
> families.

You need to re- locate people to where there is work available first, then
house them, not the other way around.

On foreign aid, you may feel comforted by the following:

Some facts and figures on US aid.  As you can see, the
US gives the most money in absolute terms, but the least as a
fraction of its GNP of all the OECD countries

Country     ODA in U.S. Dollars (Millions), 1999 ODA as percentage
                                                                          of
GNP,1999

1. Denmark                   1,733                                1.01
2.  Norway                    1,370                                  0.91
3. Netherlands              3,134                                 0.79
4. Sweden                    1,630                                   0.7
5. Luxembourg                119                                  0.66
6. France                      5,637                                 0.39
7. Switzerland                 969                                  0.35
8. Japan                       15,323                                0.35
9. Finland                      416                                   0.33
10. Ireland                     245                                   0.31
11. Belgium                   760                                   0.3
12. Canada                  1,699                                 0.28
13. New Zealand             134                                  0.27
14. Portugal                   276                                  0.26
15. Germany                 5,515                                0.26
16. Austria                     527                                  0.26
17. Australia                  982                                  0.26
18. United Kingdom       3,401                                0.23
19. Spain                     1,363                                0.23
20. Italy                       1,806                                0.15
21. Greece                    194                                  0.15
22. United States          9,145                                 0.1

This chart is copied from that at
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp




______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________