I live in military housing, old military housing. Our house is small and hasn't been maintained much during the last few years as the privatized housing company makes their master plan for renovating or replacing the houses on this base. This weekend, as I was trying to scrub years worth of little fingerprints off of my kitchen cabinets, I realized that our house is probably being torn down after we move in June. Obviously, I stopped scrubbing, but then I got thinking.
Despite its unreliable heat, lack of storage and inadequate kitchen , this house has been my family's home for nearly a year. Doing the math, I bet somewhere near 50 families have probably lived in this house. And this time next year, it will gone. That is a lot of memories to get run over by a bulldozer.
I don't have a problem with our actual house. Nothing that a little modernization (hello, dishwasher?) and TLC wouldn't fix. I've seen the replacement housing...it is a lot bigger and looks spiffier, but it has no character. No wood floors, no funny floor plans. It looks like any generic subdivision in any generic suburb in America. And from the speed at which their being built, I can't imagine how they are going to hold up.
I have very mixed feelings about the replacement of these houses. I understand that they are expensive to maintain and that today's military families want something a little more modern and with more space. However, it seems so wasteful and sad to destroy a house just to build another one. I'm sure that someone has crunched the numbers and this seems like the best plan. My heart just wishes that the best plan didn't involve a bulldozer.
