Rotten to the Core

The sorry state of so many old buildings in downtown probably helps keep locals dysfunctional because mold is psychoactive.

I had this thought in passing while writing that piece but didn't wish to go on some tangent, but this is another reason the Main Street America program is fundamentally broken: It emphasizes historic preservation as the single most important piece of the puzzle and this is both literally and metaphorically poison.

This love of old things is in part rooted in our faith in our incompetence. We just accept that it's not possible to update zoning laws well or get good projects approved currently, so we throw in the towel and go with what's already been built, defects and all, as our least worst answer for having something, anything that kind of, sort of works at human scale.

I wrote Project SRO in hopes of trying to update the concept of a Single Room Occupancy building and explicitly set out to find ways to make peace between the existing fabric of a historic walkable downtown and our current car-centric culture where that's how most people get around. 

Why? Because I was living in the "historic" (mostly rotting) downtown of Aberdeen, Washington and trying to imagine how you actually fix it while the local Main Street program strung me along and suggested they might eventually hire me.

The historic downtowns that Main Street tries to preserve and also breathe a little new life into are dead, rotting husks from a bygone era that no longer really suit our needs and the buildings in them are frequently full of mold, asbestos and other serious environmental problems that are seriously damaging to human health. 

Many of them could not be built today for reasons that go far beyond "Zoning laws have changed and are now typically hostile to walkable city design." They still stand because they are grandfathered in and because it costs money to demolish them but simply demolishing this garbage doesn't, per se, lead to new income. 

Grandfathered in is a phrase from the ugly post Civil War "Jim Crow" era in the Deep South that refers to efforts to legally protect the rights of White people while denying newly freed Black slaves voting rights. 

They passed a law saying illiterate people couldn't vote knowing most newly freed slaves were illiterate because it had been illegal for slaves to learn to read. They then added a clause saying "You can still vote even if you are illiterate if your grandfather could vote."

This meant dirt poor illiterate White people were likely to qualify for the right to vote but no newly freed slaves would pass this test granting an exception for illiterate Whites. Their grandfathers were likely slaves (or rapey White slave owners not admitting to being the father, but that detail is something newly freed slaves were unlikely to argue in a court of law at that time).

The term is most frequently used these days in the real estate industry to mean that something illegal in violation of zoning laws or health and safety codes or whatever that some previous owner installed, probably without a permit and it was probably illegal back then too, will be allowed to stay so as to not unduly punish the poor fool buying the damn thing today. 

So its original meaning and its current usage both refer to corruption and a means to get away with it. It doesn't actually mean the nice innocent "It's been there a long time, so long that things have changed and laws are more restrictive but that's how they did it back in the day when our grandparents were building stuff without benefit of college degrees and modern knowledge of engineering and blah blah blah." that probably a lot of people imagine. 

Real estate with features that are grandfathered in tends to be viewed as a wonderful magical space with special features some brilliant genius dreamed up back in the day that you are so extremely LUCKY to be able to keep in spite of our current idiotic and overly restrictive modern building codes written by overly conservative engineers who don't appreciate creativity. 

Sometimes that's true. More often, it's a piece of junk in violation of health and safety codes that some jackass installed without a permit which wouldn't have been approved at the time they did this SHIT. 

It's a little like people moving off grid and celebrating how wonderful it is they get to live in a SHACK without electricity. Reality: Most people who live off grid typically don't REALLY want to live in a SHACK without electricity and will eventually add big city amenities -- like electricity -- as funds permit. 

What people living off grid are usually jazzed about is owning something at all when they couldn't afford it in the city and having the freedom to create what they want on a schedule they can afford. 

If you KNOW that, theoretically you could update laws to allow people freedom to live in a SHACK without electricity in city limits and gradually add things as funds permit.

Which would make a great deal more sense than acting like hundred-year-old buildings full of mold and asbestos and a zillion other horrifying defects are somehow sacred and should get tons of money poured into their rotting corpses when in reality many of them will continue to molder and never be redeveloped because it's so bad, no amount of lipstick makes this pig the slightest bit more appealing. 

Make a "homestead exception" for something someone wants to live in. Come up with some minimum viable requirements before you get to move in but let them sort out details like how to provide electricity or cooking facilities instead of making basic requirements so stringent the current average age of first time home buyers in the US is forty one.

People buying garbage real estate with grandfathered in features are sometimes doing the big city version of being thrilled they can buy it at all because our laws and customs overlook this SHIT in the name of not shafting the latest owner who didn't create this illegal, unsafe pile of junk.

Main Street America likely also strongly emphasizes historic preservation because you can get funds for that and possibly tax breaks and such. Like anything corrupt or broken, if you want to know WHY: Follow the Money.

Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap at all.

Maybe someday humans will get that.

That observation is likely true of our attempts to preserve and redevelop most old buildings in historic downtowns in small town America as well. 

If it hasn't been continuously occupied, ask yourself why? Odds are good the answer boils down to "It's not fit for human habitation."

And every single day it remains empty and unused, the worse it gets as mold grows and vermin move in. At some point, demolishing it is the only sensible thing to do.

Maybe someday humans will get that.