The cost of poverty

This weekend my husband and I spent a few hours helping a friend renovate a house for his new tenants. The house is in good shape, even though it is located in a housing project. As we worked, we talked about the problems in our society about the accumulation of wealth through housing. In poor African American neighborhoods, owning a home has benefits, but the benefit of building wealth is not present. Houses purchased 40 years ago in these neighborhoods may have cost between $10,000 and $15000 and are now only worth $50,000 or $60,000 - and this is only true sometimes - you can purchase these house for $25000 or $35000 now. In downtown areas, similar houses go for $350000 to $1 million.

But on the other hand, we also talked about the problems of having houses in high crime areas. As we worked, we had drug dealers walking through the yard of the house. How much money do you put into these house, knowing that the tenants may or may not keep it up? In the end, we did what we could - putting up new blinds, cleaning rugs, fixing fences.

we even put up curtains -



- okay, these really aren't curtains. They were left over shower curtains that we cut up to cover the edges of the windows because the blinds in the middle (which are the stick on kind) really didn't fit and left a 4 inch gap on the sides. I did the best I could to make them look as nice as I could.

The cost of poverty.....