**Subject:** A Bottom-Up Regenerative Homestead Pilot — Starting Where Real Change Begins
Dear President Obama,
I write to you as an elder who has followed your journey from community organizer on Chicago’s South Side to the highest office in the land. You have seen both the view from the bottom and the view from the top. That rare perspective is exactly why I’m reaching out.
The focus has to be the homeless and those reentering from our prisons and jails — people who have been starved of empathy for far too long. Training and skills are important, but they are not enough. These men and women must be the ones who create the force for change in our cities. Decent. Sensible. Ecological. Community-powered. Where, at every turn, they become the architects of something better.
On April 30th I developed a practical, shovel-ready pilot that could serve as the starting point:
A 20-acre regenerative homestead located directly across Panorama Drive from Bakersfield College. The county would lot the land. It would feature one circular canal with slow water taxis, about 35–40 half-acre plots for families ready to homestead — raising rabbits, quail, ducks, dwarf goats, tending abundant gardens, plus small hemp and bamboo fields to build the soil. Simple bamboo shade covers over the canal and a small fresh meat market. Total estimated cost: $1.4 to $1.9 million.
This modest version could generate real interest and prove the model. If it does, I have a much larger 20-year vision that could eventually regenerate the entire Bakersfield Basin — one group building from the center and spiraling outward while Native American tribes start from the mountain ring and spiral inward, the two efforts meeting in the middle.
You are uniquely positioned to champion this work — to give it national visibility, credibility, and the platform it needs to scale. Not as another top-down program, but as a living demonstration that the people who have been pushed to the margins can become the very force that rebuilds our cities from the ground up.
If this resonates, I would be honored to share the full grand design and explore how it might grow.
With respect and hope,
David aka d1