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Crack-House Diaries: What are we doing here?
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4404 Reads
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 Susan, my wife is a public school teacher at Jefferson High, one of the most notorious schools in a district known for failing schools.
At my local YMCA an older member of the gym heard that I was an architect and asked, “What the hell are you doing here, hanging with thugs and hoodlums?” I said, “Our house is right between my wife’s work up at Jefferson, and my work over near the marina.” The man’s eyes lit up at the mention of Jefferson. “Jefferson HIGH SCHOOL?” He looked over at another gray chinned man who added, “Shit, Jeff was bad back in my day. I can’t imagine what it must be like today.” “Now I know what you are doing here,” laughed the first man. “You are running defensive tackle for your lady!”
What are we doing here?
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Six months into teaching at Jeff we learned about the federally funded Officer/Teacher Next Door program, which takes foreclosed HUD insured houses in HUD designated revitalization areas and makes them available to police officers and public school teachers for half the appraised value. There is one catch – the buyer must agree to make the house his or her primary residence for at least three years. At first it reminded me of one of those ghost stories, where an heir must spend a night in a haunted mansion before she can receive the family fortune. In our case the haunted mansion turned out to be a former crack house, and the ghosts that would show up from time to time would be the subjects of some of these posts. But, as Toni Morrison wrote in Beloved, not all ghosts are terrifying. Some can be beautiful.
In the Teacher Next Door program, the buyer doesn’t pick the house; the house picks the buyer. Hundreds of applicants enter a weekly lottery for one or two available properties. The average teacher spends more than a year entering the lottery before her number comes up. We got lucky. After only six months we won the right to buy an 850 sqft stucco bungalow near the interchange of the 110 and 105. Our realtor, an oily grifter who worked hard to funnel his clients into Faustian deals with his boss’s predatory lending company, arranged to meet us at the house on Saturday.
We arrived to find the realtor hammering away at the lock on the front security door with a two-dollar hammer and bent screw driver. With his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and beads of sweat running rivulets down his temples, he looked up from his work and grunted, “HUD changed the ***** lock!” Asa played in the weed-choked front yard as I wondered if it should concern me that my realtor had spent the better part of an hour hammering loudly on a steel door without getting any strange or concerned looks from any of the neighbors.
*BAM*
*CLINK*
The lock finally gave, spilling its mechanism onto the porch. “I TOLD you I could do it. You’re in good hands with me on your side,” he said, holding open the rusty door.
The house was in trouble. It had no front or back doors – only security screen doors that allowed the wind to blow. The carpeting had all been pulled up, leaving a mine field of projecting carpet tacks and rusty nails on a splintery sub-floor. There were water problems, as we could see from a three by three foot sagging portion of the ceiling haloed by a ring of black mold. Every interior door in the house was broken, which made no sense until we found out that the police had raided the home with guns drawn, kicking in each door as they gathered the occupants for arrest. Some of the lights worked. Most of them didn’t. We flipped one switch and two of the working lights popped off, filling the room with the smell of electric burning. The back yard lay a fallow patchwork of broken concrete, asphalt chunks and overgrown weeds. A thin layer of white paint over the stucco failed to cover an aging patina of gang graffiti.
We would like to think we moved into the house for altruistic reasons. My architecture school subscribed to the idea that neighborhoods with mixed socioeconomic classes benefit everyone more than the de facto segregation that blankets most of the country. Rich kids playing with poor kids helps reduce the stigmas of poverty and wealth that fuel many of our urban problems. Poor kids growing up seeing a variety of adult role models might help to open doors of opportunity and education of which they may not even be aware. Our property taxes could benefit the schools that needed the most help, and our dollars could benefit the struggling local economy. We felt, and continue to feel that the deepening polarization of wealth and poverty in the world accompanied by the myriad of dehumanizing cottage industries that gain by hiding the suffering of the poor from the eyes of the privileged is, like slavery was before, this generation’s great moral problem. We wanted to become better people by developing a more intimate awareness of the struggle going on in our human family. At the very least, our presence would guarantee the neighborhood one less crack house.
I have to admit, to some audiences this must sound like a pile of horseshit. Suffice it to say, our hearts were in the right place…
…or were they?
The math complicates things. The property appraised at $120k, with $90k for the dirt and $30K for the shingles. With closing costs, a little extra for improvements, and our teacher discount, we financed $75k with a thirty-year fixed rate at 5.68%. Our monthly payments are less than $700. Our rent in Marina Del Rey was almost double that. We went from living paycheck to paycheck as renters to having premium cable and high speed internet. Now we watch the Sopranos. We’re rich!
Yes, for our neighborhood we are rolling in money, and that is why I can’t help but question our own motives. A Mexican construction worker recently moved into the house next door. He shares a two bedroom house with his wife, his brother, his son, two dogs, and three chickens. He financed $160k for a piece of the American Dream, and works crazy hours to keep that dream alive. I can’t help but feel like part of the problem – I’m just another white guy leveraging a lifetime of privilege to game the system and get ahead, while my hard-working immigrant neighbor pays full price.
No matter how we choose to look at it, the crack house dividend, the difference between our former rent and our future mortgage, would mean a world of opportunity. The crack house dividend would allow us to choose a good private school for Asa, and save for his higher education. The crack house dividend would give us the hope of crawling out from under the oppressive weight of my Ivy League student debt before I became an old man. The crack house dividend would build equity, and save money for retirement. The crack house dividend guaranteed that we would be able to afford to live in L.A. for as long as we wanted to. The crack house dividend made our choice for us.
While our realtor was away, buying a new lock to replace the one he destroyed, Susan, Asa and I walked through the tiny house, looking at all the work we would have to do to make it a home. “This will be your bedroom,” I pointed out to Asa. “I get my own room?” he asked in amazement. “What are we doing here?” Susan sighed, eyeing suspiciously the patch of mold. Somewhere between our altruistic hopes and our financial needs lay the true answer to that question. “I don’t know Sue. Time will tell.”
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Crack-House Diaries - 911 is a joke in yo town, part I
South Central Living: Introduction
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| Posted by: RoganFerguson on Sunday, October 10, 2004 - 08:37 PM
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