The Lonely House

When I looked out our front window last week, I saw a large handwritten sign nailed to the tree in front of the vacant house across the street. Its words scrawled this message: House for Sale. Cash. $30K (or thereabouts). Call 555-1234. I’ve seen plenty of those signs in undesirable neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Cleveland, but not usually in my neighborhood, on my street. The sign was gone within days, victim to a quick sale, a windy day, or perhaps an energetic city code enforcer, but sign or no sign, the lonely house continues to sit vacant.

The house at the other end of our alley has been empty ever since we’ve owned our house. Quite a few of their lonely siblings are scattered throughout our neighborhood and Ashland County, forlorn houses with a story to tell if only we could hear their voices. Family illness or death, a drop in the real estate market, a foreclosure that couldn’t be dodged, or investments gone sour, all contribute to the seemingly high number of vacant homes that dot Ashland streets and the streets of our nation.

A quick internet search estimated there are anywhere from six to eighteen empty housing units for every homeless family in America. Yet ask those who work daily in search of housing for low-income families, and they’ll concur that the rental market in our area is tight. Affordable, adequate housing is hard to find for those with limited resources, and while the idealist that still has a claim to my heart wonders how we as a community might be able to bridge that gap, I’m not even sure what the first step would look like.

There’s much to be said about families without homes, but I’ll save that discussion for another day. But after taking a walk around my neighborhood this week, I’m feeling sad for the homes without families. Now before you suggest a psych evaluation, I understand that houses are inanimate objects that don’t have emotions, that don’t live or love. But still, the purpose for a house is to be lived in by humans, and its walls are happiest when they enclose a human unit of relationship – a family (whatever that looks like in this day and age).

Speaking of family, the lovely Madelyn Simone came for an overnight visit this week, and we read Audrey and Don Wood’s charming book, “The Napping House, . . . where everyone is sleeping.” Somehow, “the Vacant House, where everyone is gone” doesn’t have the same ring to it.  Houses are meant to be homes, a homestead for generations of the same family, places where babies are greeted by welcoming arms and elders gently come to the end of their earthly days, where relationships are forged and sometimes break down.

My writing to-do list includes a historical novel centered around our home, and when I brave the creaky steps that lead up to our attic, it is with the hope that I’ll discover a diary or a stash of love letters hidden in the eaves of our home. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to read of the secrets of life and love from years gone by – of fortunes lost, of telegrams received, of hearts broken? While I know the title has already been claimed by the PBS show, I’d love to “Ask This Old House” to tell me its story, for houses preserve the continuity and character of a community.  

In his poem, “Homesick in Heaven,” Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke of home: “For there we loved, and where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” Feet of all types and sizes have paced the floors and scampered through the yards of the dwellings that now stand vacant in our community, and while the feet have departed, the memories remain. I’m hoping that sooner rather than later, new feet will walk up the steps of the lonely houses in my neighborhood, prepared to once again christen the dwelling as ‘home” rather than house, birthing a new chapter: “There is a house, a happy house, where everyone is laughing.”