House Hunting Discoveries

When you look at houses for sale in our price range, which is low, you can see how people live in poverty.  Most of the houses are rental properties being sold by the landlords.  The descriptions include phrases like, "Investor's Dream!" and "Money Maker!"  Often they tout how much the tenants are paying, how much they would love to stay, and how much more you could charge them for the privilege.  My "low price range", by the way is less than $50,000, and usually much less.  If it goes under $20,000, however, tenants are usually no longer in the pictures, and you rather get description phrases like, "Ideal Fixer-Upper!" and "Choose Your Own Walls!" and still, "Investor's Dream!"

Looking at the pictures of these houses, aside from the trickery and outright lies realtors and homeowners are trying to push, you see the lives of the poor who are living in a house that may soon be yanked out from under them.  You see chairs surrounded a space heater whose vent has blackened the wall.  You see kitchens and bathrooms crammed under the eaves of the attic because there's another apartment crammed into a space that should have been for storage.  You see stoves in front of doors and windows.  You see futons or just plain mattresses for beds.  You see cheap metal and plastic clothing racks tilting with hangers.  You see fourteen toothbrushes in mugs in the bathroom.  You see four loaves of bread, ten boxes of cereal, and six bags of various cookies on the refrigerator, the microwave, and the counter.  You see cheap, hollow-metal tube furniture.  You see a 50" television covering the front window, and the TVs are always on Maury.  You see painted paneling.  You see grey indoor/outdoor carpeting in every room.  You see sloppily painted tan walls with grease marks at head and hand level.  You see gap-riddled, cheap, plastic flooring made to look like wood.  You nearly always see words on the walls: "Family", "Love", "Dream".  The toilets are open.  There are tubes and jars and jugs of personal products on the dressers.  There is laundry in every room.  Plates with food in the kitchen, on the coffee table, and in the bedrooms.  A slightly surprised child staring into the camera, wondering what it means that this person has been photographing their home.