From the Land of Squat Houses to McMansions to Shannon Avenue

I just read a posting on Freakonomics questioning the sustainability of suburbia, what will happen to all those houses that contributed to the housing bubble? This is a question Richard and I have pondered when we drive past say, Misty Pines, and there is an absence of any trees, or maybe...Fawn Lakes, where the only lake in the local drainage pond and the fawn is more likely to be a resin lawn ornament than an actual animal. All we see are variations on a theme for housing and a whole lot of beige. This is my encounter with suburbia.

In 2000, we started our housing search and looked at so many houses my eyeballs hurt. There was only one other house that was memorable for us but, for all the wrong reasons, it happened to be a Country Wide home. Upon pulling into the driveway Richard remarked: "Good Lord, we couldn't even have two beers and try to come home, we'd never find our house. These pieces of crap all look the same!" And then we broke into "Once in a Lifetime" by Talking Heads singing "this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife, well, how did I get here?!" My analysis of Country Wide subdivisions: "If I have to live here, I'll slit my wrists within six months." Richard's analysis: "Honey, you are looking at the future slums of America, congratulations Country Wide."

While the search for a house to call home was commencing, we were living in basically the slums, in a charming half double. We were the minorities in the neighborhood and local food source for any child willing to eat vegetables. The houses in our neighborhood were built from late 1890's to around mid 1930's, former farmland parceled out to bring money to a family and build more homes for the increasing population. Never was I so happy to return to our "shitty Keystone Avenue" (a term coined by a friend, not me!) after the ghastly viewing of what Country Wide did not have to offer. Where was the charm, dignity and pedestrians of a neighborhood? All I saw that day were garages as front doors, the kind where you drive in , shut the door and then punch the alarm code in to enter a door that leads somewhere into a house. Thanks but no thanks, borrowing yet again from the Talking Heads "I wouldn't live there, if you paid me to!"

That said, I'll tell you of the suburbia I grew up in, I call it the land of squat houses, not affectionately either. Our house was "ranch style", which really means flat and built on a concrete slab, built in the mid-50's by National Homes. How I hated ranch homes growing up, no stairs in the house, no front porch to sit on and spy on your neighbors, no floors with floorboards that creaked when you walked on them, no arched doorways, no fireplace. You can see, my list of requirements is high. I wanted to live in a house with character; warm my bones and naked children in front of a wood burning fireplace, live in a house where the basement is dug into the earth, rooting the house and my family (and can store all my stuff!)

Deciding against the new suburbia helped us seek out and find a gem for a home, to fit us perfectly and root our family. We opted out of a McMansion, out of the "appeal" of shopping centers full of the latest and greatest consumer goods, and chose the nuts and bolts of what a neighborhood needs to function. We chose sidewalks, porches, a grocery store at the end of the street, a thrift store 5 minutes away, a park 8 minutes away,people walking dogs or children, and a church as the navel of the neighborhood. Even though we didn't attend Little Flower, my sacred self loved that this neighborhood was built around the church, a beautiful metaphor. Purchasing our 65 year old home required acceptance: of other people's decades of dirt, their emerald green carpet, their vintage Florida orange keyhook with keys to the unknown, we knew we were home, rooted.

Easily we could have obtained a larger mortgage, moved to the 'burbs to live in a pre-fab house with a 2 car garage, but our souls screamed out "You two people cannot!" Suburbia would not have sustained our family happily, it was missing all the charm, dignity and quirkiness you get when your home is built in 1936. Richard and I had finally shrugged off the confines of suburban baggage and made a home for our family outside of the canned, processed and highly marketed housing market.

The neighborhoods we (Richard and myself) grew up in as children have suffered from "white flight" and the loss of middle-class families, the properties are ill cared for by landlords and the crime rate is inching it's way up, National Homes are becoming inner city homes. Downtown, where formerly the poor were annexed, has seen skyrocketing property values and the middle class, largely, is flying to the suburbia formerly known as farmland, those with less economic power have very few choices but to move to the old suburbia I grew up in. But not to worry, when those houses wear out, Country Wide has supplied us with a fresh batch of future slums. Now ask yourselves a couple of more questions; What shall we do when there is no land left to farm on? And another thing... the $25 billion bailout of Fannie and Freddie, don't we the people logically own all those houses in foreclosure since we bailed public lenders out? Looks like we just paid for the next wave of public housing, but then what do I know, I was only a B+ student.

P.S. That is our lovely home in the picture, you can see why we chose to live there!