Why we renovate

Greek Revival farmhouse in the Finger Lakes

Many Finger Lakes families live in ongoing renovation projects, as does Greg Sullivan in rural Maine.  If you've ever spent a frantic winter evening trying to find out where that damn water is coming from, you'll enjoy Greg's reports from Rumsford.  In his current piece at Right Network, Greg gets deep into why we do it.

Those who don’t care for civilization much don’t like single-family housing. They instinctively know it’s a counterweight to collectivism, and attack it on every front. Every home is a potential citadel of individualism. The sooner they can round up those bitter clingers, using anti-sprawl legislation and carbon-footprint arithmetic, and get them relying on the sanitation department to shovel their collectivized driveway and the mayor to salt their food, the faster we’ll all be happy, they think.

In our academic/trustafarian dominated corner of Central New York, every day seems to bring a proposal for more taxpayer-subsided "affordable" "worker" apartments.  One such project recently completed nearby appears to be having trouble renting all its units.  It could be that the developers need to read Greg's piece.  We suspect that many locals whose incomes are low enough to qualify for brand new, subsidized one-bedroom apartments might prefer to stay in their single-family Greek Revival, with the bad roof, the shallow well and the laid stone foundation that's been shifting since World War One.