The problem with owning
We think of home ownership in terms of its upside benefits — such security of tenure, controllable occupancy cost, and appreciation — but of course it has downsides too. Who owns the downside?
From where I sit, it’s all downside
That’s the implicit subject of a curiously mixed-message article from The Boston Globe:
In just 17 days, an army of 10,000 volunteers, including former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, built 85 low-cost houses, one of the nonprofit group’s biggest “blitz build” projects.
Assuming each volunteer worked only one day, that represents over $1,250,000 worth (10,000 x 17 x $7.50) of donated labor (at the minimum wage) — probably a lot more.
“I could have something to call mine,” recalled Zeigler, now 63, sitting in the coolness of her house’s central air conditioning. In a lifetime of work, she had never been able to afford her own home.
Seven years!
I get itchy after seven years … don’t you?
Zeigler is one of more than 50 Fairway Oaks homeowners who have problems with their houses and say they fear that the blitz construction was shoddy and that their land, adjacent to two former town dumps, is unstable or contaminated.
At work here is an interesting mind-set. When problems arise, whose responsibility is it?
The Fairway Oaks owners brought their complaints to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid –
When your house has a problem is your first thought to go get a lawyer? Why not a structural engineer?
– and of 56 who answered a survey for Legal Aid, 41 reported cracked concrete slabs, 22 had cracked walls …
That’s what slab does … it cracks (not from Fairway Oaks)
Anyone who’s ever worked with concrete slab knows that, unless beautifully laid down on the most stable ground, it can crack. There are cracks and there are cracks.
and 48 said their houses were infested with insects or rodents, presumably because of the cracks.
Correlation, as we are always reminded, is not causation. Are we to presume that cracks in the concrete are the only avenue by which insects and rodents could invade the home?
Chew on this warrant of habitability, you invaders you!
Or that once inside, concrete cracks are where they would choose to reside?
Others reported mold or mildew, nails popping out of plasterboard, and other problems.
Houses settle, as anyone knows who has lain awake at night hearing odd cracks and groans. Humidity is wood’s mortal enemy; in my limited experience, houses age faster in the Southeast than in any other part of the nation.
The Habitat for Humanity local affiliate, HabiJax, maintains that the land at Fairway Oaks is stable and that most problems in the development are housekeeping issues, not structural.
Unfortunately for Habitat, he-said-she-said is a fight it cannot win.
City inspectors this month examined six houses and found no violations.
Ordinarily one would think that finding conclusive.
Or is that a horse of a different color?
In the early 1990s the land held a blighted public housing complex [Golfbrook Terrace — Ed.], built on what had been used, in isolated pockets, as a dump.
As I’ve previously posted, the out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality that all too often affects policy thinking about affordable houisng tends to result in its location near the workhouse, the jail, the insane asylum or the dump. After all, ‘those people’ should be grateful they have a good home at all, shouldn’t they?
After complaints by residents, the Environmental Protection Agency tested the soil for contamination. The EPA concluded that the land was safe –
Now we have the city inspector saying the homes are fine, and the EPA saying the land is safe. Whose responsibility is it to fix this?
– but noted that two buildings had been demolished because of soil settling, possibly caused by debris decomposing under the soil. A later soil test found elevated levels of arsenic, but the Florida Department of Health determined there was no significant health risk.
Ronnie A. Ferguson, president of the Jacksonville Housing Authority, said the two buildings had been damaged by water runoff, not because of soil instability associated with buried debris.
In any site, especially one susceptible to humidity or rain (like
As the public housing complex deteriorated, the housing authority offered the land to HabiJax for one dollar. For HabiJax, the land fit their mission, said Mary Kay O’Rourke, the HabiJax president. The project would remove a public blight and replace tax-subsidized housing with homes for people who could not otherwise afford them.
Mary Kay O’Rourke, with the symbol of her office
The first residents, mostly single women who had never owned homes, bought in for $500 down, 300 hours of sweat equity, and no-interest mortgages of around $45,000 to $61,000.
Monthly payments, including insurance, are generally less than $300.
In
As a renter, of course, when a problem arises you call the landlord. As an owner, when problems arise, whose responsibility is it?
When homeowners started having problems, several of them said the organization [Habitat] was aloof and unresponsive.
In 2005, the cracks in one foundation became so severe that the house had to be lifted and settled on piers, homeowners said.
Whose responsibility is it?
None of us is the homeowner!
Engineers hired by HabiJax found six feet of debris buried under the soil.
If hiring engineers to relocate a building is aloof and unresponsive, I wonder what the residents were expecting.
April Charney, a Legal Aid lawyer representing the homeowners, said HabiJax had an obligation to tell residents that part of the development’s land had previously been used as a garbage dump.
Perhaps so (and perhaps HabiJax did make such a disclosure), but even if not, to press a claim in tort litigation, one generally has to show ‘detrimental reliance’ (that is, I did something that worked out badly because I relied on something you said or did) and damages (I was harmed in so doing). When I buy a market home, and plunk down my hard-earned deposit, it’s clear what I risked (or worst, lost). The dynamics are different here — would the current residents not have bought? (I suspect there were many more applicants than homes for them.) With an occupancy cost lower than the rental alternative, what have they lost?
Before October 2005, few knew how widely their complaints were shared. Then, Shirley Dempsey, president of the homeowners association, said she began having a series of dreams that she said were religious visions, leading her to discover problems in her house and others.
Most residents had the same complaints: cracks in the slabs and walls, rotting door frames, leaky plumbing.
The foregoing aside, there are two issues not necessarily resolved: whether something in the site itself is hazardous (although the presence of ‘mysterious rashes’ is far from conclusive), and the structural issues of settling. Land does settle, and concrete slab is the least flexible material anyone can use. My walk to work crosses sidewalks of both concrete and brick; the brick ripples irregularly, making snow shoveling an adventure in frustration, but the concrete tilts and heaves, and splits.
We’re irregular but we’re not cracked
On a recent afternoon, Dempsey, 52, sat in her living room amid artwork commemorating the accomplishments of African-Americans. Her bare concrete floor had a crack running the width of the house, wide enough to insert quarters at three places.
Remove a quarter from your pocket. Turn it edge on. Examine its width. That’s the scale of the largest crack.
Slide one in sideways?
Those of you with unfinished basements, head down there and take a look at your floor. Find such a crack? Many folks do. That’s why anyone who has an unfinished basement either accepts the cracks, or covers them.
“These homeowners have been pulling up carpeting and noticing cracks” in their concrete slabs, [HabiJax present Mary Kay] O’Rourke said, taking care to praise many for their work maintaining their homes. “There’s been attention recently because of the scares, people telling them, if you have a crack, it’s a problem.”
To Ms. Dempsey of the homeowners association, it’s more than cracks:
She pointed to poorly hung doors, cracked walls, nails popping through plasterboard, and spots that she said were mold.
“They let us down,” said Dempsey, who earns $10.50 an hour at a nearby mall and pays $295 a month for her mortgage and homeowner’s insurance.
They let us down implies that HabiJax owed Ms. Dempsey something.
The home? You can’t handle the home!
Why don’t you just accept the housing that I provide, and say thank you.
Something more, I should add, than building her a home, donating the labor to build it, and lending her the money (at zero percent).
She speculated that HabiJax was going to let residents continue living at the properties without informing them of potential problems.
Is HabiJax a builder? Does it have a warranty obligation? Does that warranty last seven years?
O’Rourke disputes this. In April, HabiJax officials asked residents to report problems. Of 36 responses, she said, workers have resolved 25 and are working on the others.
I mentioned that Habitat cannot win a we-said-they-said argument; evidently HabiJax does want to help.
Even on the blitz construction schedule, she said, all work was supervised by licensed builders and then fully inspected.
Professionals — not volunteers — handled the wiring, plumbing, heating, air conditioning and structural work, she said.
In a normal home — we have certificates of occupancy, and a builder’s release, closing off construction risk except for latent defects. So it seems difficult to sustain a claim that the homes were improperly built.
Well, whose responsibility is it to fix these problems?
“There’s an innocence when you go into home ownership for the first time,” [said Ms. O’Rourke].
Whose responsibility is it to fix a home?
Some residents dismiss their neighbors’ complaints, attributing them to poor maintenance by first-time homeowners. “Lots of problems, people can take care of themselves,” said Dinelle Fields, 51. “Get a bleach bottle,” she said, referring to complaints about mildew.
The low-tech solution
“I’m not speaking bad about HabiJax,” said Deanna Norris, 42, who complained about cracks and bugs in her house, and worried that mold, mildew or soil contamination was contributing to her 5-year-old daughter’s chronic health problems. “It’s a good program for poor single people like me. But when things go bad, I just want them to do something about it.”
Don’t we all.
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