Big House, Little House

The American dream: home ownership. Yesterday on television I heard an economist say that this dream was wrong. He came out and said that low-income people should not be home owners.

Doubtless this man has a comfortable income and a lovely home!

Doubtless, also, in recent years low-income people signed up for bigger and more expensive houses than they could pay for. The result: foreclosures and the recent melt-down in the economy.

(How dare the Republicans say Obama caused this recession!)

I understand why people want nice houses. As a child our family of five lived in a little two-bedroom frame house, cramped and ugly, with tiny closets and lack of privacy compared to the house where my grandmother lived. I always dreamed of living in a big, beautiful house like my grandmother’s. Now I find myself content in a four-room apartment! I am alone, and my children live in big, beautiful houses of their own.

Last week I sat across the breakfast table from a soft-spoken, gray-haired woman, about ten years younger than I am, who, in telling about the pet pig she and her brothers had, described her childhood home in Oklahoma. It was a one-room log cabin with no inside water or plumbing, no windows, and a dirt floor. It made my childhood home sound like a manor.

That very evening my son called from California to tell me about a “play date” his son had with a fourth grade classmate. When he took Adam to play with his friend, they were stopped at the gated community by a guard, who phoned to verify that they were permitted entry. As David drove through, every house inside this outer gate also fenced and guarded by iron gates across each driveway. At the top of the hill, they found Adam’s classmate waiting to play in his own playroom in an enormous mansion.

During the visit, David learned from the little boy’s mother that the four children had a wing in the house, separate from the parents. At night Mom, Dad, and children did not want to be so far from each other, so the master bedroom was filled with beds. All six family members slept in one room.

So: in this family living in a mansion was not much different from a log cabin, except the floor was carpeted!

The American dream is still the same: Every family deserves a home of its own. The question is: What size? What is too small? What is too big?

What Americans need now is a sense of proportion. In all things.