Thursday, July 30, 2009

Re: [papercreters] Sunny Acres (was Papercrete Nirvana)



Perry, that is fantastic. What a wonderful undertaking and am very interested in knowing what happens. If there is anything I can do let me know. Ev

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Perry Way <perryway@gmail.com> wrote:
 

Sunny Acres Update Addendum:


Evelyn and fellow lurkers,

I just met with Dan DeVaul, owner of DeVaul Ranch and Sunny Acres (I had the spelling wrong earlier) briefly after lunch and gave him the quick 2 minute spiel about papercrete since he pressed me for some kind of details.  I have invited him to dinner tomorrow night where we can discuss this Co-op idea I have that will benefit him, the community and future papercrete builders here in San Luis Obispo.  I don't know if you knew this already but recently Forbes did one of those ratings for the best place to live in the country and the city of San Luis Obispo came up as the #1 ranking.  That blew me away!  Little San Luis Obispo, city caught midway between the history and the future.  Perhaps this is apropos, a Co-op in San Luis Obispo and we can take a leading role in getting papercrete approved as a building material.

I will let y'all know what happens over time, as well as the details to the Co-op idea I have.  But for the moment I'm stealing some time from work to write this email so I've got to go.

Perry

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 11:54 AM, Perry Way <perryway@gmail.com> wrote:

For the lurkers, Sunny Acres is an 80 acre site on the outskirts of San Luis Obispo.  It is the remnants of an old old ranch (DuVaul Ranch), the man who owns it is a recovered alcoholic and he runs a non-governmental controlled sort of halfway house for people who needed to get back on track in life.  Homeless people, recovering alcoholics, battered women, ex con's etc.  His method of working with people was a special method, one filled with love.  It was highly successful from the standpoint of helping those who went through his special program.  It was always a money pit of some kind, it never turned a profit even though they busied themselves operating a roadside vending stand selling things they grew on the ranch as well as seasonal things like Christmas Trees and Pumpkins.  The recovery and assistance program was so successful that the County would sometimes send people to Sunny Acres for improvement when the County facilities weren't able to help them.  Some time ago, in more recent times, some developer took hillside property nearby and subdivided and built some expensive homes that overlook Sunny Acres.  There is a nasty woman on the City Council who bought one of those homes. She's an import from Los Angeles and brings along with her all her big city methods for shutting down honest people like DuVaul (who owns Sunny Acres) because it was an eyesore to her.  She pursued relentlessly for years to get Sunny Acres to raze some old barns they had on the property that were in a state of disrepair.  And she was successful at forcing them to take down their roadside vending operation because it was being run from a "non-permitted" chicken coup like structure and operating with a business license.  DuVaul had to pay out some outrageous fees for attorneys and permits and whatnot.. and because he was operating his ranch as a full blown charity, he had no money to fight the "evil witch".  Not being able to even conduct any sales from their vending structure and having to tear it apart, they lacked funds to continue.  From what Evelyn is saying, they finally got to DuVaul and now have broken him to the point that he can't keep Sunny Acres running as a charity halfway house any longer.  So sad... 




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