The Next Slum?

[StClone]

March 2008 Atlantic Monthly

The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.

by Christopher B. Leinberger






Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”



http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/subprime

[annabanana]

1. They should all be broken into modest apartments and rented

at affordable prices...

[Kitty Herder]

11. That would be the smart thing to do.

But what's more likely is that they will just molder and go to ruin as the banks can't find anyone who can afford to buy them.

[provis99]

2. what I can't figure out

Is why someone with the money to build a mansion would build a butt-ugly cookie cutter McMansion. There's something peculiarly American in that having money simply means moving from a shotgun shack to something that looks like a gigantic shotgun shack.

[Warpy]

5. I don't get it, either

My dad thought this area was a really bad one and said he hoped I'd move to a bigger house in a better area. Well, I know and like my neighbors and this area is one of the safer ones in this city and owning a bigger house means cleaning the damned thing so I've stayed put.

Ostentation just doesn't appeal to me. The silliest fad in the world is the stone kitchen counter. Drop a can of beans on that, you can crack it and need to spend thousands to repair or replace it. They needed to drop a bowling ball from 15 feet to break a cheap laminate countertop, and that's fine with me. I don't get the open kitchens where you can see the mess from the entire house, as well as smell the cabbage. I don't get the can lights in the ceiling. I'm living there, not selling jewelry. I especially don't get having more bathrooms than bedrooms. Even if you don't use them, you still have to keep cleaning them. Over and over and over. A media room with a popcorn wagon? You've got to be kidding. I'm always doing something while a movie is on, and it's not getting fatter on popcorn. It's usually spinning, weaving, or knitting. A game room with a pool table and a bunch of commercial video games? Give me a break, I'm way over sixteen.

I still think those are going to be the biggest white elephants I've seen since I did the tour of the old Newport mansions. At least the McMansions can turn into multiple occupancy places eventually. Those marble barns in Newport weren't even worth trying to turn into hotels.

[Captain Angry]

15. A gigantic shotgun shack with a granite countertop

Or is it marble? I can't remember. :-)

I was just chiming in to say that a lot of the cookie cutter homes were built to make people who could borrow an unreal amount of money feel wealthy. They could talk about jetted tubs and three car garages.

Now, who benefited from the building of all these huge places?

Each municipality that determined the house was worth X now got some percentage of that every year in new revenue. If they had said, no we need affordable housing, the property tax take would have been lower.

Each bank said, we can lend these people the money, or the bank next door will.

The builders were putting up homes as fast as they could because they knew the boom would only last a little while. I knew people buying these kind of homes in cash. They were in construction and were paid under the table. Whole neighborhoods of construction workers exist now since they all made so much money in the boom that they were able to buy in themselves.

Now of course, the building has stopped, and the construction people have no jobs.

The banks are closing because the loans they generated were not realistic and didn't reflect the risk involved with that loan.

And the municipalities will cut services to the citizens because the tax income will fall with the empty houses.

It sucks.

[Warpy]

3. Actually, some of them will just become zoos

which is what I used to call a lot of the old Boston brownstones where a gang of as many as 20 people would rent the place and cram as many beds into the bedrooms as they could, sharing bathroom and kitchen facilities. The McMansions at least have enough bathrooms, but the bedrooms are few. People will be sleeping in the media room, the game room, the family room, the formal dining room; not very comfortable or particularly private situations.

Cities I think will revert to their old ways and be a center of fashionable areas surrounded by a ring of slum housing to service them. The first slums will be the McMansion areas, because there is no way a single family will be able to heat and cool those monstrosities, let alone keep up the mortgages and taxes on them.

The exurbs will either grow into agricultural communities or ghost towns. Few will be able to afford that hour and a half daily commute each way just so the rug rats can have a big back yard.

We're due for a big change in the way we live in the short term, that's for sure. Whether or not we will come out of it on the other end with a sane economy is anyone's guess and depends entirely on what our leadership is willing to do to piss off the plutocracy.

[lurky]

4. Peak oil will ensure it.

The exurban lifestyle would not be possible without cheap petroleum. A car is required to do anything in those places, even get a loaf of bread, and many people in those megamansions commute 60 miles to work every day (in a car, of course). And let's not even talk about how much energy it takes to heat and maintain one of those behemoths compared with an urban apartment, or even an attached townhouse.

These things are the SUVs of housing, and will enjoy the same fate.

[DinahMoeHum]

6. I'd rather convert those monstrosities into affordable duplexes

triplexes and four-plexes.

But first you gotta get rid of those fucking granite countertops and industrial-size stoves and refrigerators. And I know such a place that will take them:

Green Demolitions
www.greendemolitions.com

Hey, you gotta find a way to recycle, instead of just tossing that stuff into a landfill.

:think:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. When things started to take a turn for the worse...

..."property management" slime started to rent townhomes in my former neighborhood that WERE on the rental market for $1700 to $2000 to multiple renters.

One home across from me and a few doors down became a veritable frat house. There were 6 people living in there. $1850 per month rent, 6 20-somethings living in the house, $308 each. One or two seemed to have jobs, the others were around 24/7, either getting the rent from Mom & Dad or those little plastic baggies at $5 and %10 a pop. A couple of them had big, roaring Trans Ams and Camaros and they'd start tem at the crack of dawn and let them warm up for ten minutes before driving off. Ten minutes after that they'd be back from 7-11 with the day's 12-pack of Bud or Miller. They washed these cars daily. The guy who had the Camaro also bought a brand new Chevy Silverado and had the words "Big Blue" painted on the window. He would walk around the thing looking for specks of dirt which he would immediately buff out. I am guessing he either had his penis surgically removed or lost it in a bizarre gardening accident.

The duplex behind the property was rented out to another group of assholes the cops described as "either on probation, out on parole or on their way back to jail." They put in one of those crappy above-ground pools, then took it down after a couple of weeks. The owner's back yard was completely destroyed. They moved out suddenly in the middle of the night. The landlord lives off of Farm Hill Boulevard in Woodside, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Silicon Valley. I Googled him. He was a major RNC contributor. I looked at his f**ked-up back yard and empty house and laughed my ass off.

Meanwhile the people who work for a living and have invested everything in owning their home bear the brunt of the pricks who rent to anyone who can come up with the cash. Sometimes Karma prevails. Sometimes it does not.

[grilled onions]

8. Starter Homes?

There was a time when a starter home was the old fixer upper. The young couple moved in with barely a stick of furniture and refurbished as the money came in.
These huge homes with high ceilings and far more bathrooms then you could afford toilet paper for cold house how many in third world countries? At a time when utility bills are hitting the roof they seem to be building homes that will cost twice as much to heat and zap electric thru.
Why can't builders be realistic for a change and build homes people for average and lower incomes? Ther used to be a few homes that actually had only a single bedroom. Image how fast those little puppies would sell today!

[Skittles]

10. yes

I cannot understand the need for houses that are bigger than most apartment buildings

[SoCalDem]

9. Large homes have been partitioned into rooming houses before

Perhaps it will happen again..:(

[BlackVelvet04]

12. I'm so glad I live out in the country

in a relatively inexpensive home. I live on 1 1/2 acres so I'm seldom bothered even seeing a neighbor.

I sometimes watch "House Hunters" and see people who think a 2800 sq. ft. house is too small for 2 people. What the hell is up with that? My husband and I have 1600 sq. ft and that's really more than enough room.

[kineneb]

13. smaller property, but also rural

actually a nice country village, with a post office, grocery store, and several small restaurants. Our property is only 1/4 acre, which is fine, and the mfg. house is just under 1300 sq.ft. I can't imagine cleaning anything larger.

[balantz]

14. I'm afraid most of America may soon be the next slum.