Bill Dalton: The Small House

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about America’s housing “crisis.”

The lack of affordability. Not enough houses on the market. Rising mortgage interest rates. The growing number of homeless on the streets.

It makes me think about my childhood home. By today’s standards, it wouldn’t even be called a house. Perhaps a cottage. Certainly not a pied-a-terre, given it sat on a dead-end gravel road in the middle of the woods.

It was small, under 900 square feet. Two bedrooms, one bath. Built around 1940 on the foundation of an old farmhouse that burned down on 160 acres granted by President Martin Van Buren in 1839 to someone with the unfortunate name of Ambrose Cock. (Who'd want to be named Ambrose, right?)

It has a “Michigan basement” which resembles a medieval dungeon. I lived there in the 1950s with my fruit farmer father and mother and a great-grandfather (until he died), then a grandfather (until he died), and at least one dog.

There always was a dog. The house was so small that if someone broke wind in one room you instantly knew it in the other room and you needed someone to blame.

The dog.

It helped that I was an only child. I always wondered if there had been more children where everyone would have slept. As it was, I always shared a bedroom with grandpa until I left for college.

Growing up in a small house taught me valuable lessons besides learning to blame the dog for everything. There were no private conversations. No such thing as a long, luxurious bath. No need to ask what’s for dinner. Or who’s snoring.

Today’s suburban home resembles the Hearst Castle from the movie "Citizen Kane." Many have four or more bedrooms and four-stall garages. Celebrities and some 1 percenters enjoy mansions rivaling the size of football fields.

I often wonder why Americans need such huge homes.

My Kansas City house is about 2,500 square feet. We never use one of our three bathrooms. We never use the finished basement. Now that our daughters are grown, two of the three bedrooms are empty. So, I again live in a small house, but now it’s inside a bigger house.

It all seems so unnecessary. Which brings me to the point of this column, in case you were wondering.

It troubles me that my hometown of Kansas City is among the worst for homelessness. Many live under the Kit Bond Bridge, named after a senator who, when alive, helped a lot of rich people but didn’t do much for the homeless other than build a bridge they could sleep under.

A couple of weeks ago, when Kansas City hosted World Cup soccer games with visitors from the Netherlands, city leaders were so embarrassed that they rounded up and “relocated” the homeless before the FIFA festivities.

Instead of embarrassed, they should be ashamed. Hundreds of vacant lots scar our nation's inner cities, where old rundown houses were demolished, but nothing was built in their place.

Our political leaders either don’t care or think government shouldn’t be in the “business” of helping provide housing for the economically disadvantaged.

It isn’t that we don’t have the resources, judging from the wasteful spending in Washington on stately ballrooms, stagnant reflecting pools, triumphal arches and other unneeded monuments to presidential egos.

It’s simply a lack of political will.

But one solution for the housing crisis might be the small house. In Kansas City, for example, there is a thriving community of “tiny houses,” some only 300-400 square feet. People who live in them seem happy.

If silly zoning laws were relaxed, along with government purse strings, thousands of tiny houses could fill the vacant lots of urban America. Homeless people, even those suffering from mental health issues or alcoholism, might be persuaded to live in them.

Instead of spending billions on fighter jets, missiles and drones, Congress also could spend a few billion dollars on less expensive government-built manufactured or modular houses and offer low-interest loans to buy them. Maybe they could throw in a stray dog, too.

There probably are many other solutions to our housing crisis if we really care about those without affordable housing.

In some ways I feel guilty that I’m fortunate enough to own a house in Kansas City, where I spend winters, and the small house in Michigan, where I spend summers.

But I’ve convinced myself there’s nothing wrong with being fortunate. What’s wrong is not sharing your good fortune with others.

Our country can afford to share with those less fortunate, especially wealthier folks barricaded behind gated communities.

America doesn’t just need more housing.

It needs more homeowners with hearts.

— Bill Dalton is a former reporter and editor for The Kansas City Star and worked for several Michigan newspapers. He spends summers on the family farm near Fennville. His novel “The Bank Game” — a crime thriller — is available from Amazon along with “Dalton’s Bend.”

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