Smart Growth Around America

Vacant homes are becoming an increasingly visible problem in this country — some 15% of all homes in the second quarter of 2009 are sitting empty, according to the US Census Bureau. That’s 18.7 million unoccupied homes slowly decaying on lots across the country.

Yet there’s no lack of people in this country who need a place to live. What’s lacking are the kinds of homes that people want or need or, at the most basic level, can afford. Many people can live in whatever kinds of homes the developers are building, even if they would prefer to live in more walkable, livable communities — but the poor cannot afford the lack of housing choices that are presented to them.

I finally picked up Barbara Ehrenreich’s now-classic Nickle and Dimed last week. I’m sure it’s redundant to recommend it, but it offers some insight into where people are going when their houses are foreclosed on: their cars. Motels. Living in cramped quarters with people who may or may not be related to them. Here is a conversation that Ehrenreich has with a coworker at a waitressing job in Florida:

“When Gail and I are wrapping silverware in napkins—the only task for which we are permitted to sit—she tells me she is thinking of escaping her roommate [a male friend who has begun hitting on her] by moving into the Days Inn…I am astounded: how can she even think of paying $40 to $60 dollars a day? But if I was afraid of sounding like a social worker, I have come out just sounding like a fool. She squints at me in disbelief: ‘And where am I supposed to get a month’s rent and a month’s deposit for an apartment?’ I’d been feeling pretty smug about my $500 efficiency, but of course it was made possible only by the $1,300 I had allotted myself for start-up costs when I began my low-wage life: $1,000 for the first month’s rent and deposit, $100 for initial groceries and cash in my post, $200 stuffed away for emergencies. In poverty, as in certain propositions in physics, starting conditions are everything.”

Since the book was published back in 2001, housing has not gotten more affordable at the lower end of the price spectrum, and income sources have dried up. In 2001, there was a plentiful supply of minimum-wage jobs, and Ehrenreich easily moved into town and began working within the week—three different times. Now, many people might spend months trying to get those same minimum-wage jobs. If I can’t recommend Nickle and Dimed, I can at least recommend Ehrenreich’s three-part series in the New York Times from earlier this summer on what the recession is doing to the already-poor:

“But yes, the recession has made things palpably worse, largely because of job losses. With no paychecks coming in, people fall behind on their rent and, since there can be as long as a six-year wait for federal housing subsidies, they often have no alternative but to move in with relatives…The most common coping strategy… is simply to increase the number of paying people per square foot of dwelling space — by doubling up or renting to couch-surfers. It’s hard to get firm numbers on overcrowding, because no one likes to acknowledge it to census-takers, journalists or anyone else who might be remotely connected to the authorities. At the legal level, this includes Peg taking in her daughter and two grandchildren in a trailer with barely room for two, or my nephew and his wife preparing to squeeze all four of them into what is essentially a one-bedroom apartment.”

With tens of millions of properties sitting empty, and an unknown but unacceptable number of people in what Ehrenreich calls “Dickensian” living situations, something does not add up.

Tags: Equity, Poverty, Vacant Property.
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