CHEERS & TEARS . . .and ELIAKIM’S WAY
Cheers and tears. That’s the way of a Vineyard housing lottery.
On Tuesday, March 30th, a standing room only crowd packed the meeting room at the Howes House. At stake: seven new LEED platinum houses at Eliakim’s Way off State Road in West Tisbury. 
There was a mix of nervous applicants, expectant children, public officials, and housing advocates.
In the front of the room David Vigneault and Terri Keech of the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority, lottery administrators, explained the process. A complex matrix of preferences and qualifications was so arcane nobody could actually understand it. The crowd chuckled when David finished his explanation and said, “Is that all clear?”
But everyone understood the real meaning. Qualified applicants would drop their tickets into a slot in a gaily painted cardboard house, and public officials would draw them out one by one to determine whose future would change in a heartbeat. A large easel in front of the room showed, for each house, the qualified applicants. After each drawing Terri, decked out in a leopard skin hat, would flip the sheet with a flourish to reveal the next house and its applicants.
Philippe and Maddie Ezanno, and their 11-year-old daughter Juniper, 
embraced as their name was drawn. Future on Martha’s Vineyard: assured. George Drew and Krissy Kinsman sat eagerly in the front row. Their name was drawn. They were silent, sat back, and breathed deeply before collapsing into each other’s arms. Future on Martha’s Vineyard: assured.
It was all done in a half hour. Lives had changed. Others hadn’t. Some slipped out, disconsolate, wondering when the next one would be. As the glow wore off, others remained. They realized they would soon be neighbors. They hugged and congratulated each other.
This is the fourth time I have witnessed one of these lotteries. They’re bittersweet – I’ve seen plenty of tears of both happiness and sadness. The sad ones – they’re the reason we do it. Again and again, despite the trials and tribulations, which are ample. And also because we may be able to look back sometime soon – perhaps in 5 years, perhaps in 10, perhaps in 15, and say, “Amazing. We had a problem – a big knotty complicated problem – and we truly solved it.” How rare. How wonderful.
But for now – cheers and tears.
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This weekend the chosen families moved into their new homes. 
Here they are at move-in time.
It’s an especially poignant moment for all of us at South Mountain, as we have poured heart-and-soul into this project for the past two years – through design, permitting, and construction. It has been a wonderful collaboration with the Island Housing Trust (the property owners), the Island Affordable Housing Fund, the Cape Light Compact (who provided funding for solar and energy efficiency through the Mass Renewable Trust’s Green Affordable Homes initiative), Habitat for Humanity of Martha’s Vineyard (who built an eighth house using our design), and others. The Town of West Tisbury and a number of private donors were generous, providing the funding to fill the gap between the sale prices and the cost. Our crews and subcontractors were nothing short of spectacular – efficient, effective, and passionately devoted to quality.
Recently Island Housing Trust director Philippe Jordi, SMC designer/project manager Derrill Bazzy, SMC energy sales manager Rob Meyers, and I 
met with the eight excited families to review their new Owners’ Manuals and teach them how their houses work.
We also unveiled a new contest!
The houses are designed to be super low-energy users, and we told the new homeowners that any household that is able to get through the first year using ZERO energy (or being a net energy producer!) would win a prize: a one year membership to the Whippoorwill Farm CSA, or an equivalent gift certificate at the Net Result fish market. If everybody does it, they each get the prize. If nobody does it, the lowest user gets the prize. As Rob said, “These houses are net-zero possible. It all depends on how you live in them and operate them.”
Below is an article that will appear in the MV Real Estate Guide about a “zero-energy possible” spec house we’re building on West Spring Street in Vineyard Haven that uses an enhanced version of the Eliakim’s Way design.
Will the Eliakim’s Way houses make zero energy? Will the West Spring Street house?
Don’t know. As the headline says, “We’ll find out.”
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SMC IN THE NEWS
I’d like to share some nice press SMC has received recently.
The first two are recent articles in local magazines about projects of ours.
The third is a piece on an on-line magazine called TONIC.
I hope you enjoy these. We have. I’ll be back with something more substantive than all this fluff soon!!
FINAL DECISION
I had to take a break from writing, and haven’t said a word since March 18th – too much on my plate. Business is challenging at SMC right now, but all is well, projects are good, everyone’s busy, and we’re all in it together, working hard to keep working.
But the Cape Wind announcement in Boston last Wednesday took my mind off that and inspired me to get back to this.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said a lot about Cape Wind. But the best thing he said was, quite simply, “This is the final decision of the United States of America.” Final Decision. Good decision, great decision, unequivocal decision – by the United States of America! How rare is that?
During the past nine years Jim Gordon and his colleagues at Cape Wind 
have re-defined the words “stamina” and “perseverance.” And I hope – for their sake and ours – that Wednesday’s confirmation gave them a stiff and steady tailwind to propel them to their ultimate destination – the commissioning of the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.
None too soon. The collected intelligence tells us, as Alex Steffen of Worldchanging says, “We have five years to start making big changes, twenty years to finish making them here, and at most forty years to spread those changes to every corner of the world.” Bill McKibben, the longest-running, most articulate chronicler of Climate Change, looks at it differently his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet . 
He says we have already changed the planet irrevocably, and while we try to minimize the damage our new challenge is to learn to live in this unfamiliar place.
In the U.S. we remain stuck. Still no comprehensive energy bill, still no carbon tax, still no feed-in tariffs. We have plenty of catching up to do, and the Cape Wind decision is a good start.
It’s like we’ve been holding our breath, waiting anxiously for this logjam to come loose. Up and down the east coast developers, communities, and government entities have been waiting for Cape Wind. The state of Massachusetts and the federal government have both identified hundreds of wind “plots” off the coast. They’re ready to award them, and there are many takers waiting anxiously. Cape Wind will be the first of many.
I doubt it will be trouble-free; I’m certain there are mistakes to make and learning to do. I remember nine years ago when Cape Wind first started; they hadn’t a clue what they were getting into and they were surprised by the firestorm of resistance that met their plans. There are many things they could have done better, had they only known. There could have been a stronger package of local community benefits. But who knew? And what is ever perfect?
On Martha’s Vineyard, I’m thrilled to see Vineyard Power our very own community-owned cooperative offshore-windfarm-to-be, taking shape and making big progress. As the membership creeps toward 1000, I’m beginning to think this bold effort to create (and manage) a membership of thousands and pull off the biggest development project in the history of the Vineyard truly has a chance.
Meanwhile, we’ll be pulling hard for Cape Wind to leap over each hurdle and for many others to follow suit. Onward we go!!
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JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
of South Mountain Company and the author
of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more
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COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
read more -
