Of Foreclosure, Families and Furniture

A lot of times this blog comes across as very cavalier about foreclosure. It's my job and the ho-hum of scouting empty houses can become impersonal. The reality of foreclosure's impact on real people collided with routine earlier this week. We visited a house with furniture still in it. NSP regulations require that homes be vacant for 90 days prior to putting in an offer so usually the houses are empty. However, entering the first house we encountered a pile of furniture -- a bookshelf, a chair, knick knacks -- right in the entryway. Someone had tied a small wicker basket on the pull chain of the living room ceiling fan as decoration. The basket was not HGTV-ready, but it was an authentic and personal trace of the people who once lived in that 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath home on an awkward corner of a middle income subdivision just about 10 miles from my office.

The presence of furniture gave me pause. It drew my attention to the dark spot on the floor where a dresser once stood. Furniture humanizes the insane paint schemes I have seen in many bedrooms, transforming tacky walls covered in little pink hand and footprints and ceilings decorated in purple rabbits into nurseries that once held children where parents planned to raise them in safe, stable surroundings. Then the market tanked. Or the job vanished. Or the landlord went under. Or all three. All that gets left behind are walls that I am going to hire people to paint over in pleasing neutrals, carpets that I will replace because they are stained with juice, food, mud and furniture spots. I felt complicit in erasing the memory of the people who once made their homes in those places and who were caught up, as renters or as buyers, in the orgy of easy money and easier real estate that brought about a personal, national and global economic implosion.

Sometimes I feel like I'm cleaning up after a disaster: every bit left behind is a reminder of what was destroyed, yet I know that something new--and sustainable--will spring from the destruction. Those former residents have moved on and to remain viable, the neighborhood needs to ensure that vacant houses get occupied to maintain values, safety and aesthetics. So I paint over carefully-drawn designs and stickers of smiling zoo animals; I tear up heavily used carpet and torn vinyl; and I replace woodwork chewed away by the family dog, hoping that the restart I provide will create the conditions for a renewal.