Affordable Housing Institute : US

Traditionally, homeownership is the ladder to personal wealth because it:

 

• Offers security of tenure (and hence incubates healthy and growing families)
• Rewards initial asset accumulation (the down payment)
• Enforces savings (equity buildup through amortization)
• Motivates property upgrades (through home improvement and its developing-nation analog, incremental housing)
• Creates a tappable source of equity for personal needs (children’s education, new business formation).

 

Inherent in the idea of homeownership as a ladder, therefore, is the starter home — the modest dwelling which gets a younger couple or family into the game.  Even if everyone aspires to more, everyone fondly remembers that first purchase, such as the humble Chicago bungalow:

 

The Chicago bungalow, unpretentious but comfortable, home to generations of working-class immigrants, has become one of the hottest houses here for young, hip couples and families looking for a manageable slice of city life.

 

[Washington Post]  Chicago bungalows, built over a period of about 30 years up to 1940, at first provided housing for immigrants. Now they are in demand by young couples, families and newer immigrants.

 

From its original conception, the bungalow was always designed as a modest urban (or streetcar suburban) single-family dwelling on a compact lot:

 

One-and-a-half-story brick buildings with peaked roofs, covered porches and lots of windows, bungalows were never seen as flashy markers of wealth. But they were pleasant, spacious places to raise a family.

 

Though there are bungalows in other cities, the ones in Chicago are distinctive for a number of characteristics, including their roof peaks, which are perpendicular to the street rather than parallel, their narrow lots and the fact that they are made of brick.

 

Bungalows were never intended to be per se esthetic:

 

Bungalows didn’t receive much fanfare for their architecture and artistry when they were built from 1910 to 1940.  But now they are being heralded as prime examples of the Arts and Crafts and Prairie schools of architecture, directly influenced by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

 

Indeed, Lloyd Wright himself was keenly interested in the challenges of affordable housing.  Midway through the Depression, he designed, and sold plans for, the Usonian house (Usonian was Wright’s neologism combining useful and USA), which could be built for only $5,000.  Despite Wright’s energetic self-promotion of his concept, even to the point of peppering policymakers with missives, they never caught on. 

 

 

(My wife Nancy and I have toured a couple of Usonian homes; they are functional but so economical as to be positively ascetic, monastic in their mandate to renounce worldly goods — to say nothing of their oppressively low ceilings, vengeful expression of the 5′ 7″ (or less!) Wright’s antipathy toward the more vertically gifted than he.)

 

Though homely (in many senses), bungalows were cheap, functional, and good value, like their contemporary the Ford Model T …

 

 

… and as such they were extremely popular:

 

About 80,000 were built, creating a “bungalow belt” around the northwest and south sides of the city and accounting for about a third of the city’s housing stock.

 

Over time, people embellished and improved them:

 

Chicago also has houses reminiscent of bungalows but with extra levels and flourishes, such as turrets; people like to call them “bungaloids.”  Bungalows are generally considered affordable housing, though prices range from about $120,000 to $900,000 depending on location, condition and extra features.

 

For many people, the bungalow was the childhood home, and through the warm haze of adult memory they glow with nostalgic charm:

 

[Chicago Mayor Richard M.] Daley himself grew up in a bungalow in the South Side neighborhood of Bridgeport with seven siblings, his parents and his grandfather, and he lived there until he got married.]

 

“A bungalow is so unique to Chicago history,” Daley said in an interview. “My father [the famous former mayor] built ours in 1937 or 1938. Bungalows were built by great tradesmen and architects. They were well constructed by people who put a lot of thought into it, not like some of the things you see now that will be down in 25 years.”

 

“Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores, all get respectable if they last long enough.”

– John Huston as Noah Cross, Chinatown

 

Aside from their affordability, bungalows have now become historic (note to Europeans, in most of America, any building over fifty years old has a shot at being historic):

 

The city has officially noted the historical significance of the homes. Mayor Richard M. Daley five years ago launched a city initiative offering grants, loans and technical assistance [soft debt! — Ed.] to help owners restore their bungalows and outfit them with energy-efficient technology.

 

In order to take advantage of city incentives, owners must certify their bungalows as historic structures through the nonprofit Historic Chicago Bungalow Association. More than 7,000 have been registered. Some neighborhoods are also being designated as historic bungalow districts.

 

Even today, bungalows, like other forms of modest ownership, are serving as the financial entry point into the American system:

 

While the original residents were mainly European immigrants, over the past 20 years or so bungalows have become housing of choice for some Latino immigrant families. O’Reilly notes that his neighbors are from Guatemala and Mexico. On the Southwest Side, expansive bungalow-filled neighborhoods are dotted with taquerias and Mexican grocery stores. Betty Gutierrez, a 23-year bungalow owner and deputy director of housing services at a Southwest Side economic development corporation, said her neighborhood includes many Latino families as well as descendants of the original European residents.

 

“It’s a very diverse and stable population,” she said. “Some of our neighbors have been here over 40 years.”

 

Shanabruch said, “If you were to go around the bungalow belt, you’d find neighborhoods that are predominantly African American, that are predominantly Hispanic and that are mixed Caucasian, African American and Hispanic. It’s the whole range, in terms of ethnicity, age and income. In that way, it really represents the city of Chicago.”

 

We laud the Citroen Deux Chevaux. 

 

Could be dredged out of Amsterdam canals and keep on ticking!

 

Vespa scooters are chic:

 

Even more chic with Audrey Hepburn aboard

 

So let us also give due credit to uniquely American forms of ownership such as the humble bungalow.

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