Unreal Estate

The centerpiece of our national dream is home ownership, the plumage we display, like peacocks, to signify our ascension up the economic ladder. How and where we live is so significant a measure of who we are, that residential downsizing is considered as stigmatizing as leprosy.It is that most American of aspirations, the concept of socioeconomic advancement made manifest through real estate. However, for many of us pride of place and affordable housing appear to be mutually exclusive. If you want one, you are obligated to give up the other.Figures compiled by the construction industry and the U.S. Census Bureau would suggest that over the past decade, Americans are living larger, and at lower cost. But there is a startling disconnect between the booming economic indicators and the real lives of most Americans. The tremendous accumulation of wealth by the top 5 percent has created a skew which distorts all measureable medians. Nowhere is this more apparent than in housing, where for every homeowner of an expansive 30,000 plus square feet, a hundred people are each squeezed into 300 square feet or less.Dimensions of new residential construction are on the rise, but statistics show that overall, square footages of living space are virtually stagnant over the past eight years. According to the most recent figures from the American Housing Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American lives in 710 square feet, 742 square feet for homeowners, 495 square feet for renters.Slightly less luxurious are mobile homes, the prefabricated rolling tunafish cans hailed by Richard Nixon as the panacea which would make every American a homeowner. HUD standards for manufactured homes are 320 square feet minimum, with at least one 70 square foot bedroom. Grass, trees, and a view of the night sky not included.Despite the recent trumpetings in Newsweek and New York Magazine of the rise of the new class of barely pubescent billionaires, I have not been able to turn up a single human whose home size has increased, or whose total monthly outlay for housing has decreased over the past decade. Housing costs for most Americans have gone up, from 25 percent of income to 30 percent, and in the most desirable urban centers, considerably more.The dismal nugget of truth, hidden within the statistics, is that the larger the space you live in, the lower the proportionate cost. 2500 square feet of living space costs less than twice as much as 500 square feet. Which makes affordable housing an oxymoron.In inner cities, where new residential construction requires demolition of pre-existing structures, and the overall number of housing units remains relatively static, the housing market ressembles a pack of starving wolves fighting over a bone. Modest two bedroom apartments which sold for $65,000, 15 years ago, are now a steal at $650,000. Industrial lofts in the meat packing district that couldn't be given away for a hundred and a quarter a month, are fetching up millions. And if you subtract what passes for a kitchen and a bathroom these days, plus measurements that include the exterior walls, $1500 a month in New York, Boston, D.C., or San Francisco, will get you a fourth floor walkup the size of a refrigerator carton.Just like "Slaves of New York", many urban dwellers have been forced to choose between becoming the indentured servants of their landlords, or commuting to work from the suburbs. A fair number of those well past dormitory age are trapped in house-share hell with ex-friends, formerly significant others, and total strangers, or in the worst case scenario, moving back home with Mom. The studio apartment alternative, a coy euphemism for Tokyo style living, is the human equivalent of tinned sardines.With the exception of the upper 5 percent of the economic pyramid, the rest of us are piling up like lemmings, running out of habitat. The bad news is that an unconscionable number of us would be better off being declared an endangered species.Primatologists and planners at the new Bronx Zoo Congo Gorilla Forest have calculated that two Western Lowland gorilla families require a 6.5 acres of living space. The newly opened primate exhibit at the Philadelphia Zoo has 4000 square feet of indoor space and 43,000 square feet of outdoor habitat for a total of 40 animals, including our close relatives the ring-tailed lemurs, orangutans, gibbons, gorillas, and squirrel monkeys.Most humans on the planet would be grateful for the same consideration. I know I would.