Housing in America
The term “shelter,” which is often used to define housing, has a strong connection to the ultimate purpose of housing throughout the world. The mental image of a shelter is of a safe, secure place that provides both privacy and protection from the elements and the temperature extremes of the outside world. This vision of shelter, however, is complex. The earthquake in Bam, Iran, before dawn on December 26, 2003, killed in excess of 30,000 people, most of whom were sleeping in their homes. Although the homes were made of the most simple construction materials, many were well over a thousand years old. Living in a home where generation after generation had been raised should provide an enormous sense of security. Nevertheless, the world press has repeatedly implied that the construction of these homes destined this disaster. The homes in Iran were constructed of sun-dried mud-brick and mud.
-From the Introduction to Healthy Housing Reference Manual
An erudite introduction that nails what imperatives housing is centralized around; I couldn’t have put it better. A great deal of the history of this ‘sheltering of man’ forever seeks to outline these homely abodes in materialist fasion. Yes, it is fair to draw the conclusion that housing has to adapt to its environment. However, the multi-generational mud-brick houses that were devastatingly destroyed appears to draw a schism between traditional imperative fulfilment and current reality. It becomes a game of politics on who’s reality comes out on top and how cultures might seek to continue tried and true traditions in the face of (or with an increased respect to) environmental changes. As we will continue to expand upon these themes, we’ll showcase the underlying mechanism to housing development.
Timeline and History of Housing:
1.
If we time-skip to the modern day we might think of the homelessness epidemic, but we would be remiss to ignore the general malaise to the housing market at large. Interest rates are horrendous, the cost of living hasn’t kept up with inflation, housing market prices are up (good for current owners, but bad for first time buyers). Before we address any of these let’s go through the history of housing, as the CDC manual outlines:
Preurban Housing
Early dwelling designs were probably the result of cultural, socioeconomic, and physical forces intrinsic to the environment of their inhabitants. The housing similarities among civilizations separated by vast distances may have been a result of a shared heritage, common influences, or chance.[…]
Ephemeral Dwellings
Ephemeral dwellings, also known as transient dwellings, were typical of nomadic peoples.[…]
Episodic Dwellings
Episodic housing is exemplified by the Inuit igloo, the tents of the Tungus of eastern Siberia, and the very similar tents of the Lapps of northern Europe.[…] These groups also construct communal housing and often practice slash-and-burn cultivation, which is the least productive use of cropland and has a greater environmental impact than the hunting and gathering of ephemeral dwellers.
Periodic Dwellings
Periodic dwellings are also defined as regular temporary dwellings used by nomadic tribal societies living in a pastoral economy. […] These groups’ dwellings essentially demonstrate the next step in the evolution of housing, which is linked to societal development. Pastoral nomads are distinguished from people living in episodic dwellings by their homogenous cultures and the beginnings of political organization.Seasonal Dwellings
Schoenauer [1] describes seasonal dwellings as reflective of societies that are tribal in nature, seminomadic, and based on agricultural pursuits that are both pastoral and marginal. Housing used by seminomads for several months or for a season can be considered semisedentary and reflective of the advancement of the concept of property, which is lacking in the preceding societies. This concept of property is primarily of communal property, as opposed to individual or personal property. […]Permanent Dwellings
The homes of sedentary agricultural societies, whose political and social organizations are defined as nations and who possess surplus agricultural products, exemplify this type of dwelling. Surplus agricultural products allowed the division of labor and the introduction of other pursuits aside from food production; however, agriculture is still the primary occupation for a significant portion of the population
2.
The running themes of “sheltering” is the generation of increased specificity of imperative pursuits. Notably in regard to tacit environmental conditions. Here’s a section from Katz’ paper on Originary Mistakeness on tacit idioms:
All idioms are built upon the cornerstone of mistakenness. I should note that I am using mistakenness conceptually and heuristically here—one could note, of course, that creative writers generate idioms all the time and know exactly what they are doing. But there is much that they don’t know about what they are doing, and their highly conscious activity implies more, not less, tacit knowledge and unconscious mental activity.
It is no surprise that with the increased grammaticalization of society, i.e.: increased tacit awareness of idiom usage, that we see a parallel birth of political (warring, differing interests) within home valuation. This trend appears within any surplus in society, here’s an example from the Urbanization section of Healthy Housing on the Industrial Revolution:
When the power source for factories changed from water to coal, steam became the driver and the construction materials became brick and cast iron, which later evolved into steel. Increasing populations in cities and towns increased social problems in overcrowded slums. The lack of inexpensive, rapid public transportation forced many workers to live close to their work. These factory areas were not the pastoral areas with which many were familiar, but were bleak with smoke and other pollutants.
[…] His document expressed once again the argument for housing reform and sanitation. Griscom is credited with being the first to use the phrase “how the other half lives.” During this time, the poor were not only subjected to the physical problems of poor housing, but also were victimized by corrupt landlords and builders.
3.
Economic Classes:
Slum, on the other hand, initially was used at the beginning of the 19th century as a slang term for a room. By the middle of the century, slum had evolved into a term for a back dwelling occupied by the lowest members of society. Von Hoffman [6] states that this term had, by the end of the century, begun to be used interchangeably with the term tenement.
[…] [The apartment] was originally built for the upper group of the working class. The tenement house emerged in the 1830s when landlords converted warehouses into inexpensive housing designed to accommodate Irish and black workers. Additionally, existing large homes were subdivided and new structures were added, creating rear houses and, in the process, eliminating the traditional gardens and yards behind them. These rear houses, although new, were no healthier than the front house, often housing up to 10 families. When this strategy became inadequate to satisfy demand, the epoch period of the tenements began.
Wartime:
Schoenauer [1] notes that, during the postwar years, the improved mobility of the public led to an increase in the growth of suburban areas, exemplified by the detached and sumptuous communities outside New York, such as Oyster Bay.
[…]
Immediately after World War I and during the 1920s, city population growth was outpaced by population growth in the suburbs by a factor of two. The focus at the time was on the single-family suburban dwelling. The 1920s were a time of growth, but the decade following the Great Depression, beginning in 1929, was one of deflation, cessation of building, loss of mortgage financing, and the plunge into unemployment of large numbers of building trade workers. Additionally, 1.5 million home loans were foreclosed during this period. In 1936, the housing market began to make a comeback; however, the 1930s would come to be known as the beginning of public housing, with increased public involvement in housing construction, as demonstrated by the many laws passed during the era
[…]
During World War II, the focus of home building was on housing for workers who were involved in the war effort. Homes were being built through federal agencies such as the newly formed Federal Housing Administration, formed in 1934 and transferred to HUD in 1965. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (USCB) [7], in the years since World War II, the types of homes Americans live in have changed dramatically. In 1940, most homes were considered attached houses (row houses, townhouses, and duplexes). Small apartment houses with two to four apartments had their zenith in the 1950s. In the 1960 census, two-thirds of the housing inventory was made up of one-family detached houses, which declined to less than 60% in the 1990 census.
The postwar years saw the expansion of suburban housing led by William J. Levitt’s Levittown, on Long Island, which had a strong influence on postwar building and initiated the subdivisions and tract houses of the following decades Figure 1.2. The 1950s and 1960s saw continued suburban development, with the growing ease of transportation marked by the expansion of the interstate highway system. As the cost of housing began to increase as a result of increased demand, a grassroots movement to provide adequate housing for the poor began to emerge. According to Wright [5], in the 1970s only about 25% of the population could afford a $35,000 home.
Conclusion
From post war efforts, the troubles of city expansion and deflation, apartment development directed from a managerial class to a working class (further emulated to a governmental to soldier campaign), and finally to the suburban development of housing for the middle class … the lesson to be learned here is that centralization of ostensives reduces the gap between imperatives. This is further exemplified in the availability of familiarity (e.g.: the switch between hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies towards sedentary agricultural societies) which generates more complex differentiation between societal roles. While a prevalent fact of the earlier human epochs this nexus is even more heightened in our current era. We can see clearly how being forced to be “the other half” drives people to some very dark places.
Looking beyond superfluous language, what’s the best practical investment for new homebuyers?
Builders also began promoting one-floor mini homes and no-frills homes of approximately 900 to 1,200 square feet. Manufactured housing began to increase in popularity, with mobile home manufacturers becoming some of the most profitable corporations in the United States in the early 1970s. In the 1940 census, manufactured housing were lumped into the “other” category with boats and tourist cabins: by the 1990 census, manufactured housing made up 7% of the total housing inventory. Many communities ban manufactured housing from residential neighborhoods.
The rise of mobile and manufactured homes has only continued to increase and has taken the place of the original intent for apartment dwellings (a commodity and equitable opportunity for the upper middle-class worker). If you are a first-time homeowner on a near-poor to lower middle-class tax bracket, I highly recommend you look into affordable communities near you. In fact, if you find the right community it’s astonishing how well put together they are for the price being a good 60k-100k under what a beginner house is valuated at.
A personal remark:
One might dredge up this image along the likes of The Trailer Park Boys, but we really shouldn’t pay mind to these vapid valuations of genuine equity. It’s fairly noble to pursue opportunity costs and to “take what you can get”. Never has it been the case that where you’re born in society is where you shall stay, forever. If that were the case, we surely never would’ve ascended from semi-primitive dwellings to our aestheticized rooms.
A note on imperative gaps:
An extension of this idea of “reducing the imperative gap” (which originates from Bouvard’s blog) could be then translated into a particular inversion of its traditional form. Rather than availability of ostensives dictating the generation of new roles in society, one could take it upon themselves to embody a role continually on the periphery of the sedentary.
A statement on the next article:
Before we gear up any higher, this line of reasoning begets us to understand the current political mechanisms available to members in our society. Only from there we can look at real actors and the degrees of influence they have. So, I’m thinking for the next article we’ll analyze traditional political movements from early America to present day, notating what institutions they efface with, and such and so forth. This will be close to month end; I haven’t decided exactly when yet.
A confession:
I had fun writing this but didn’t do as much as I was hoping. We’ve got some reigns to hold onto now, so we’ll just have to see where the bull takes us next.
Look, I don’t have infinite time on my hands, but I’m trying to fix that. I promise.