Column Search for a new home creates clash of ideals
By KRIS BERGGREN
Ive seen this commercial on television recently for a local
realty company. In it, a smiling family is pictured sitting on their front
steps: a mom, dad and three kids looking, well, a lot like us. The suave
voice-over says I, too, can find the house of my dreams.
Cut to a three-story Victorian with a wraparound front porch,
original scroll work and a double lot. I can picture it -- the home office, a
bedroom for each kid, a sewing room, tons of storage, an eat-in kitchen, den,
fireplaces, pantry, sunroom ... you get the idea. I shake myself out of my
tube-induced reverie and click mute on the remote.
My family is facing a housing crisis. Okay, not a crisis --
lets just call it a real estate conundrum. After nearly eight years in a
duplex we bought because for some reason we thought a mortgage would be just
the thing to go with the baby we were expecting, were just plain
outgrowing our space. My baby is now a growing boy with two sisters and a need
for privacy and a place to put his stuff. Id like to reclaim our dining
room from the home office that has taken root there.
The ensuing discussions about what we want -- and need -- in a
home are fertile ground for a resounding clash between ideals and values as
people who value living at least a little bit counterculturally.
Our current neighborhood is fighting to maintain a positive image
in the wider community. It was never swanky; most of the homes reflect
working-class frugality in building materials and no-nonsense design. I read a
few years ago in a local publication that our zip code is considered the home
of social workers and teachers -- in other words, those who cant afford
to live in the choice parts of town. In reality, our neighbors are blue-collar
workers; writers, musicians and artists; a few professionals (including
teachers and social workers); some intergenerational households; retirees;
renters and homeowners; dozens of kids and one or two problem households whose
occupants dont seem to care much for the neighbors good
opinion.
We have crack houses and coffee houses, seedy bars and community
gardens. Our proximity to the freeways and downtown is convenient. But it also
means we belly up to chancier, higher-crime areas. A drug bust five blocks away
and a dead body in a car trunk two blocks from here made the second-section
headlines a few weeks ago, the kind of publicity that keeps housing prices
down. But day-to-day, a fairly stable, friendly place where neighbors know
neighbors, people pay their taxes and want in return decent schools and safe
streets.
We also consider staying in our home and converting the place into
a single-family dwelling, but Im concerned that to make such sweeping
changes would do an injustice to the buildings integrity as duplex. Not
to mention the sweat (my husbands), tears (mine) and blood
(anybodys guess) this work would require.
In our search for the greener side of the fence, weve seen
dozens of homes that fit our criteria on paper but disappoint on sight. They
turn out to be right below the most-used flight path or with a freeway in the
front yard; with bedrooms the size of closets, and actual closets only if
youre lucky; or floors that tilt so much you begin to develop sea legs on
the Minnesota prairie.
Or you size up the house next door and notice two motorcycles and
a rusted pickup on blocks in the yard. Or a flock of pigeons swoops down to
greet you and settles back on the rafters, a little winged gang checking out
the competition for their turf. Or, my personal favorite: the one with a
neighboring house boasting a large ships figurehead of a naked woman and
a Jesus is Lard sign over the front door.
I know that eventually we will come to a resolution to our housing
dilemma. We have choices, difficult though they sometimes seem. But what I keep
pondering is, if my family has a hard time with finding a suitable home -- two
college-educated adults with incomes -- what about those millions of sole
breadwinners working minimum wage jobs, or paying for their own health
insurance, or seniors on fixed incomes? What about people who dont even
aspire to home ownership -- people who live doubled up with relatives, among
the invisible homeless?
Government bodies across the country are dealing with the need to
ensure affordable housing for the thousands of people whose eligibility for
public housing will end or whose federal funding for the housing they do have
has been cut. There are lots of welfare-to-workers whose minimum wage jobs will
not get them a decent place at market rents: The Twin Cities archdiocesan
Office for Social Justice reports that a worker earning $7.05 an hour can
afford a monthly rent of $267, afford meaning costing no more than
30 percent of income. But in our area, the fair-market rate for a two-bedroom
apartment is $644.
There are approximately 75,000 renter households with annual
incomes of less than $10,000. It is also estimated that 52,000 families spend
more than 60 percent of their income on housing. There is a gap between
affordable and market-rate housing, and it is dramatic.
I look down at my babys face, angelic in sleep, and know
that I would never choose for her to live in most of the affordable
apartments in my community. Two blocks from me, five blocks from me -- where
the dead bodies and the drug busts are not a newspaper headline or a distant
siren, but a next-door, living color, Sensurround, prime-time all-the-time
reality. I have some nerve whining about the lack of counter space in my
kitchen.
To be perfectly honest, my American ideal is to live in a house
that looks more like the one on the commercial than the one I live in, to seek
out a secure, homogeneous, Rockwellian landscape. But my conflicting Christian
values call me to live in a community much like the diverse urban area I live
in now, safe enough, yet earthy enough to serve as a year-round reminder of the
Lenten message that we are ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
So for now, Ill be paying my taxes and going to block club
meetings, hanging on to what Ive got until I have a really good reason to
move on. Look for me at the community education class on kitchen
reorganization.
Kris Berggren lives in Minneapolis.
National Catholic Reporter, March 6,
1998
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