“We are so antiquated, here in America, in the way we look at energy efficiency…”
— Small house builder Eddy Dunn, September 2018 interview
Like Pagosa homebuilder Eddy Dunn, I’ve become interested in the way we view housing… and buildings, in general. We invest a huge amount of our personal resources — financial, temporal, emotional — into our homes. And our nation, as a whole, spends a huge portion of its natural resources and financial resources on buildings and infrastructure.
We know that the social landscape of America has undergone a shift, and the programs and strategies that once seemed effective no longer appear to be working.
But we humans have a hard time changing our habits. We have a hard time ‘unlearning’ the strategies we adopted as children and as young adults — the things we came to believe, during a different era.
While our local governments plan their multi-million-dollar facilities, working class individuals and families think about leaving Pagosa.
According to last summer’s survey of community residents by the Pagosa Housing Partners, about 30 percent of the working class respondents said they were considering moving away from Archuleta County. Another 8 percent “weren’t sure.” So maybe 2 out of 5 employees are thinking about leaving?
About 80 percent of the employed persons who are considering a move away from Archuleta County — across all types of industries — gave as one of their primary reasons: “Lack of housing I can afford.”
This situation is not unique to Pagosa Springs. All across America, communities are seeing increased homelessness, and watching families struggle to pay their rent or their mortgage. We know the reasons, and they are many. Wages have been basically stagnant in many communities since the 1980s, but the cost of living — especially, the cost of housing — has been steadily climbing and is now beyond the reach of some working class families.
And then we have the problem of consumer debt. (To say nothing about government debt.)
You can view an interesting interactive story about household debt in America, on a New York Times web page, here. The interactive graph shows the growth of average household debt between 1920 and 2008 — just as the Great Depression was kicking in.
Below is a screenshot of that graphic, for the year 1921 — the year my father was born, and pretty much at the beginning of American’s slow, sad descent into lifetime debt. In 1921, families were still building their own homes — perhaps from “kit homes” sold through the Sears Roebuck catalog. Sometimes, the family had to take out a mortgage to finance their home, but often those mortgages were paid off within 5 years or so.
In 1921 — according to the researchers at the New York Times — the average American family carried about $5,000 in debts, and was socking away savings of about $576 a year.
Next: the year I was born, 1952.
Average savings stashed away per year, about $4,000. Average debt, about $15,000. The Diner’s Club credit card had just been released, and could be used at a limited number of stores and restaurants. Half of American homeowners had no mortgage debt.
This was the environment in which I learned about household finances — what little I learned. My parents rarely talked about finances in front of the kids, and never talked about money (as fas as I know) in front of other adults. So what little I learned about savings and debt and paychecks and spending, I guess I figured out on my own. In this environment, I formulated my beliefs about the ideal family home.
A separate bedroom for each child, preferably. A kitchen separated from the dining room. A den for Dad. A sewing room for Mom. A basement and attic for storage of things we really didn’t need but couldn’t bear to part with. A garage for the car. At least two bathrooms.
And this was the environment in which I formulated my beliefs about credit cards, and mortgages, and automobile loans.
When my son was born in 1977, Clarissa and I were not living in the ideal American home. Our 800 square foot house had no dining room at all. Two of the bedrooms were in the basement and were dark and dingy, with mold growing on the walls. One bathroom. A tiny living room. But we had some money in savings, and zero debt. (All of that would soon change.)
Here’s how the average family was faring. Average debt was now about $41,000.
But we Americans were still saving money each year. About $6,000 per year, in retirement accounts and college funds and maybe an account for a future down payment on a nicer home.
By the year 2008, the average American family had gone much more deeply into debt, with a dozen or more credit cards, a mortgage, two car loans, a home equity loan, and they were probably still paying off student loans from their college days.
Average household debt: $117,951.
Average savings per year: Less than in 1921?
This is basically the same situation our society finds itself mired in, in 2018. The world in which my generation formulated our beliefs about money and finances no longer exists. We, as an American country, have become debt slaves, yoked to loans and credit cards and with little hope of leaving anything to our children except more debts.
Time to “think smaller”? I mean, really “smaller”?
With that question in mind, Cynda Green and I scheduled an interview with home builder Eddy Dunn.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.