White People And Fences

I recently drove through my childhood neighborhood on the outskirts of Carmel, California. Mission Fields was built in 1947-48 in the housing boom after WWI and was tract housing that was a mix of five or six floor-plans in a subdivision of maybe 70 homes. The homes were small but sensible, usually with 3 bedrooms and 1&1/2 baths. They all had a good sized back yards which were perfect for little kids and big dogs. It was a great place to grow up. When we sold the house in 1988 we got $165,000 for it and we felt bad for the price because it needed a new roof and new plumbing. Today the house, because of it's location, is worth $889,000.

If the home were located in Muncie, Indiana it would sell for $35,000, San Antonio, TX, $250,000, and in Minneapolis, MN, the home would sell for around $169,000 based on January, 2009 surveys.

The idea that a county tax assessor or a home appraiser with half a brain would list my old house for more than $300,000 is a sick joke. Since we left our home in 1988, the Carmel River has left it's banks twice to flood our old house up to about 14 inches inside of the house. It sits in a flood plain for God's sake, how can it be valued so high when you'd have to replace the floor and walls every 7 to 10 years? It's just another sign of how out of control the banks and mortgage companies and the state are as far as housing prices go.

The Downside of Sky High Prices

The problem when you have people spending that kind of money for tract housing is that you have people who don't really belong in the neighborhood. They will never be happy in those kinds of homes for what they've paid for them. So the first thing many of them do is add a second story, which is ridiculous because the updated home looks tacky. The next thing that they do is add a fence around the front yard. These fences have been added in about one third of the homes that face Rio Road and they have destroyed the character of the neighborhood. When I was a kid, a few of the homes had tall hedges that separated the home on one or both sides of the home. Usually a fence denoted a home where the wife has emotional issues. Most of old Mission Fields only saw fences in the back areas and most of those were white picket fences. Part of the charm of Mission Fields was that it was a neighborhood full of neighbors. Today it is marred by ugly fences that stand out like an ugly pox.

Driving up into Carmel, along Junipreo I found that the fence problem was even more profound in the million dollar homes that populate this region. I understand that the root of the word "Exclusive" is "Exclude", and this is what walls and fences do. It is sad that a town that once was home to great and talented people is now polluted by people who's only status is money. It is pollution. It is as unwelcome as a broken sewer pipe. I don't know when the breakdown occurred but it is total, there simply are too few wealthy people who have class or good taste in America today.