This week, I’m returning to the practice of law and the land use process, settling in at a firm out on Long Island. I’ve never really left, but being back “in it” every day reminds me of the dynamic way our landscape morphs to the changing needs of metropolitan areas. Even from my office window, high atop the flatness of Long Island, I’ll be able to watch the evolution of the local built environment. As I look forward, it makes me think a lot about time, and its supreme power. My mood takes me to the time gone by, and how it can, for some, cause cruel fates to unfold. Despite its preciousness, it can also be a curse for those who let it get the better of them. Take the current, horrific trend towards foreclosures, particularly for those unfortunate souls who found themselves in the fast-crumbling subprime mortgage market. Sure, these borrowers signed the paperwork that got them in their respective messes, but news continues to trickle out about the predatory nature of some of these loans.
In Shaker Heights, Ohio, where my mother grew up, there is growing trend of vacant houses resulting from foreclosure actions. Once one of the more affluent addresses in the country, it has become tarnished by the proliferation of vacancies. But Shaker Heights, like Euclid, another nearby inner ring suburb of Cleveland, is fighting the trend by keeping up these properties, down to fixing windows and mowing lawns, until the entanglement of the foreclosures can be resolved. Cleveland proper has been fighting this trend of mass vacancies for quite some time. Scavengers and squatters take the place of homeowners. But now the problem has jumped over the city lines to the suburbs, particularly those directly on the other side of those lines. Cuyahoga County, within which lies Cleveland, has seen a huge climb in foreclosures, from 2,500 in 1995 to 15,000 last year. The appalling numbers portend increases to continue. Mayor Judith Rawson of Shaker Heights warns, “It’s a tragedy and it’s just beginning.” The trend not only proves the depths of the subprime mortgage industry’s woes, it also speaks to the larger concern over America’s treatment of its built-up environment, and the difficulty in holding on to the stability of affluence. Affluent Americans are a mobile sort, and continue to seek out the “new.” But what about the “old”? Is there any place for it in our eternal search for the next thing?
The answer of course is yes, if those same affluent types find a reason to get behind the place at risk. One such locale is the Van Dyke farm in South Brunswick, New Jersey, near the New Jersey Turnpike. Threatened by the sprouting of sprawling warehouse complexes along the nearby transportation corridor, the farm and its house, built in 1713, faces extinction. A group called the Eastern Villages Association has embraced the fight for the farm. The threatened tract includes historically significant markers such as a preserved slave quarters, Revolutionary-era gravesites and other artifacts. As one member of the Association explains, “The Van Dyke farm is the proverbial line in the sand, and the state and local government must make sure that no one crosses it.” Of course this is a worthwhile cause – we need to preserve our history. But what of the history of our own lives, and the places where they were lived? Where does the “line in the sand” exist for the suburban ghost towns in between our central cities and the newer, glossier outer suburbs?
Ohio, facing the foreclosure phenomenon, has committed $100 million in bonds to fight the trend of people losing their homes. But as lawmakers note, it is only a “dent” in the problem. Without true commitment from people to just stay put, or actually consider reusing a community or two, it will be a steep hill to climb to hold onto the past. Oddly enough, my mother's childhood home has emerged on the market. Whether it is one of those vacant, foreclosed homes is unclear. But it does stand as an opportunity to hold off the relentless forces of the land use process, if only a buyer will give it chance.
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