It is unfortunate but it is true. A cruise down College Drive or a pass of 341 North as well as some Lamar extension, planned communities sit empty, sewage and power lines sticking up from the ground with the haunting allure of a headstone at Greenwood Cemetery. As with much of the United States tile-roofed versions of a 21st century ghost town remind us of the gambling losses that took place not on the blackjack tables of Vegas but the board tables of America’s financial institutions. Dirty little, green and white flags advertise rock-bottom discounts on empty starter mansions. On the ground, foreclosure signs act more as mud level markers than anything else. Empty lots are untended, cratered with mud puddles from the winter storms that have saturated our county. Nobody is home in the bedroom community of the future. In places surrounding urban worlds like Atlanta and Savannah, population nearly doubled in 10 years, and home prices tripled. After inhaling all this real estate helium, some developers and their apologists in urban planning circles hailed the boom as the new America at the far exurban fringe. Every citizen a homeowner! Half-acre lots for all! No credit, no problem! But in the dawn of the era of CHANGE and with congressional bills sitting dormant as the 3br/2ba on the corner of Anywhere and Nowhere median home prices have fallen from $500,000 to $150,000 ‘” among the most precipitous drops in the nation ‘” and still the houses sit empty, spooky and see-through, waiting on demography and psychology to catch up. So what do we do? How can we bring about change? What is it going to take to turn our small towns and suburban communities into havens of quality life again? GO! ————– Some content courtesy of http://la.curbed.com
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