[ back ]
In with the old, out with the new
(by Barbara Christian - August 25, 2011)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
In with the old, out with the new
The stock market had a minor hissy fit, with announcement that new home construction is the lowest it's been in 40 years.
That's cause for celebration in this humble opinion, and I'll tell you why. We have too many good, usable homes on the market as it is. Why build new ones when existing houses are going too long without owners to love and care for them.
Naive? Maybe. But while construction jobs may be affected by this news of a downturn in the home-building market, isn't there plenty of work available to be done on existing homes?
There ought to be a law: No new houses may be built until those that are for sale have been purchased. Yes, I know that's not going to happen.
If you live in Chagrin Falls, you likely live in an older home. It's an old town, and the houses here match the history. These old places of ours may not be shiny and new, but they are built a heck of a lot better. That's because they were built in a time when houses were homes for a lifetime, not just trophies.
Older homes have history, character, a built-in patina that should be valued. That does not mean they can't be updated. Plenty of new kitchens have found their way into our older homes, and century houses in town are sporting new family-wise additions that match today's lifestyles.
Here's a shocker. Did you know that new homes are built to last a mere 20 years? That's what two architect friends, independently of one another, told me recently.
Why do we need one more new home or housing development further away from our core towns and cities? New housing developments mean new roads, new strip centers and so on and so on.
Do we really want disposable homes built on former cow pastures and cornfields, new neighborhoods separated by too much grass to mow on the weekends and occupied by neighbors who no longer interact because they can't see each other from their secluded decks? Unless we want to raise corn or cows, is that logical?
And what about the tanks of gas spent to shuttle ourselves and our kids from these distance developments to civilization and all the amenities that make up our society.
While all of these new houses and highways may be a good thing for the construction industries, you have to wonder if all that work might be diverted to fixing what is already here.
A lot of inner-ring suburb and city houses need some TLC, and anyone who has driven any distance at all these days can attest to the fact our roads could use some help too. Why can't we divert our energy to restoring what is rather than building what will become an added drain on our resources?
Of course, this rebuilding of what is here and now is not a new idea. President Barack Obama talks about it quite a lot these days as a way of bringing us out of our slow-to-recover Great Recession.
That should be the kiss of death to the antis and knee jerkers who believe anything he says, does or proposes is a bad idea. Just as bad as FDR's New Deal? You know the one. The same New Deal that brought this country out of the Great Depression.
[ back ]
