Saturday, June 20, 2009Deconstruct McMansions
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How’s about a stimulus-started plan to buy up the nation’s foreclosed and empty McMansions and hire out-of-work construction workers to deconstruct them? It’s an idea that could keep giving and giving. Aside from the obvious benefits of employment as the deconstruction took place, de-developers could offset costs by selling used housing materials (recycle!) or donating us able building materials to low-income- housing renovation projects (help the poor!).
De-developers could then restore the housing lot to the area’s original native-growth environment (employ out- of- work landscapers, help the native critters!), have it designated as a conservation easement, and donate it to, say, the Nature Conservancy. Or perhaps the local community could take the lot over for the construction of playgrounds or the planting of victory gardens.
Sure, this is unlikely to be a money-making venture, but benefits would be reaped in multiple other ways: people would be employed; de-developers would get tax breaks (available through 2009, thanks to provisions in the 2008 Farm Bill); neighborhood property values would increase; and, because McMansions constitute one of the most energy-inefficient housing designs, energy usage and greenhouse-gas emissions would decrease.
According to a U.S. Census report, homes with seven or more rooms had the most vacancies between 2004 and 2008, as well as the greatest increase in vacancy rates. And newer homes had the highest vacancy rate of all housing – a rate that has been steadily increasing as the years pass. (As for foreclosure rates, in Virginia, for example, 8.1 percent of foreclosed homes were priced at more than $300,000.) Isn’t it time to erase the blight of abandoned homeownership dreams?
Imagine sitting on your porch to watch the sun set across the wide, impossibly green field that abuts your home, instead of through the plaster-cast Corinthian columns of the empty McMansion next door.
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This is a GREAT idea. The whole idea of the too-many-square-feet-per-person McMansions is one I believe will be deeply reexamined in the economy that grows from our current crisis. I have always wondered how they would divide up into apts like the old Victorians in student ghettos in every college town! There is also the critical issue of each of us using our fair share of materials and energy for our housing needs. Being able to afford being wasteful is, perhaps, a thing of the past. We will all be better off for it.
Beyond all your very sensible points is the undeniable anti-aesthetic of the Monster Box (I have avoided the McM term since its inception as it implies an only slightly unhealthy cuteness). Its hideous presence in older neighborhoods, generally built with a house to land square footage ratio of 40%, has ripped through these spaces and their acquired grace-with-age like the huge lizard monsters over '60s Tokyo. Death to all monsters, for there is no warm and fuzzy brown Gargantua (or was it the green?) hiding behind the repulsive facade of the McMansion and its spectacle of American greed, waste and cultural bankruptcy.
I disagree.
One of the problems with McMansions is that they have low quality building materials. Maybe if you knocked down 3 of them you'd have enough materials for a decent house... its better than nothing, but there might be more economic solutions.
This kind of idea is probably best evaluated on a case-by-case basis.