When I look around this old house I see the results of decades of poor investments.

Windowpanes that were literally falling out of the windows, years of ignored water damage, and so many neglected gardens. Since we’ve managed the house it was necessary to:

• repair the foundation
• replace the windows, siding, and roof
• tear out and replacement of the entire electrical system
• gutting and replacement of one of the bathrooms

Plus many smaller projects that we haven’t gotten to like A/C, water heater, dishwasher, laundry facilities, etc.

To me the biggest issue is that of insulation. There was zero insulation in this house when I moved in. Insulation can be difficult to install, and can do long-term damage if installed incorrectly, but it makes a huge difference in electrical bills and quality of life for the people who live here. It cost $3K for me (a middle-aged software engineer) to install insulation in the attic of this house, and the result was a lowering of our electric bill by over $1K/yr. For a family that included an actual carpenter, it remains unbelievable to me that this simple improvement wasn’t made. This one investment would have made the entire family more comfortable and saved them tens of thousands of dollars over the decades.

Instead of investing money and time into their property the family spent money on cheap consumer goods. The yard was full of rusty patio furniture, broken lawn and garden tools, and halfway-completed craft projects. There is a full-sized riding lawnmower sitting unused in the garage where I insisted it be moved to get it out of the rain. That was two years ago, and it hasn’t moved since. Meanwhile the garage is at risk of collapse because the cheap furniture that was left there years ago was constructed from MDF (i.e. glued sawdust) which rotted in the moist environment and collapsed into the wall, compromising the entire structure of the garage.

Ah, the joys of inheriting a house.

This house had deteriorated because money and time were not invested in maintenance projects or improvement projects with high ROI, but were instead spent on poor quality consumer goods with short replacement cycles and a very low ROI. The family here worked incredibly hard, but their wealth was not invested back into the property and their lives were poorer for it.

The United States has continued to make bad investments in automobiles for decades now. In order to pay for cars and roads, we’ve allowed more and more of our public wealth to deteriorate. Our railroads, electric, water, and wastewater systems are either in awful shape or were sold to corporations (and often both). All of this has deterioration is because we spent our wealth on cars that rusted away decades ago. The wealth of multiple generations was spent on automobiles and we are poorer for it.

Better Investments

When we began managing this house, we began to invest time and money into projects that will last longer and have a higher ROI. Making larger investments in the short term can have massive returns in the long term, and someday that will pay off for my child and her family.

This has meant making some sacrifices when it comes to quality of life – less restaurants, less vacations, fewer shopping binges. This is what comes of short-term spending – eventually the maintenance bill comes due.

We could have walked away. Eventually the degradation would have been too much, and the house would have literally collapsed under the weight of deferred maintenance. It would have been so much easier.

The truth is that I love this house and all of its quirks, and Taylor is an amazing and fun little town. When I get tired of fixing up the house, I ride my bicycle down to the local pub, get myself a cider, and say hi to an old friend or meet a new one. Fixing up this house is the most fun I’ve had in decades – it forces me to be present, engage with my environment, and solve complex problems using limited resources. This is what I always loved about software engineering, and now I get to do it in the real world.

The USA is a great place, filled with great people. We’ve been working incredibly hard for decades, and seeing very little return, and I believe that’s pretty obvious when you see what we’ve been spending all of our money on. The United States can change its investment priorities tomorrow. We can take back our infrastructure and begin investing in projects with long-term value. Not only will we save money and make our country better but it will result in more comfortable and equitable places to live.

That’s what urbanism is all about.