Summer fun starts for CityWalk kids

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

The Rainbow Days Kids' University camp started yesterday and several of our kids at CityWalk were able to attend. The camp will be held at the University of Texas at Dallas through this Thursday and our kids and their parents are super-excited about it.

The purpose of Kids’ University is "to promote literacy, higher education, develop social competency and build self-esteem." Some of the activities include courses in science and computers, as well as cooking, painting, arts and crafts and more. There will also be a graduation ceremony on the last day of camp where kids will walk across a stage and receive diplomas.

We're so happy that our kids at CityWalk are getting this opportunity to go to a free camp, where meals are provided at no cost to the parents.

Thanks so much to Rainbow Days and for all this organization is doing in the community.


Getting ready to go to camp

Donations are always appreciated at CityWalk

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

I received an unexpected call this week from Ann Yindrick who works in Lincoln Plaza, which is located across the street from CityWalk at Akard. Ann and her office team compiled a heap of toiletry donations to be given to our residents. I dashed over to her office the next morning with our resident assistant Marcus Harris and a dolly to find loads of soap, shampoo, shower gel and other items.

These essentials will be put into our welcome bags that we give to new residents when they move in. A “welcome bag” also includes paper goods, a CityWalk t-shirt, coffee, a can opener and a list of things to do in Dallas.

You, too, can donate goods or even sponsor one or more of our activities at CityWalk by providing refreshments, lunch or dinner for our residents. Contact me at 214.573.2570 ext. 2133 with donations or for more information on how you can help.

To Ann Yindrick and her team – thanks so much!

Ann Yindrick

How Much Does Permanent Supportive Housing Save?

I received some Dallas-specific numbers today on the savings that come from permanent supportive housing. The total ranges between $27,000 and $37,000 per year for each person moved from the street to permanent supportive housing.

Dallas has, according to the official count, about 650 chronically homeless persons (that’s someone who has been on the street at least one year or four times during the last three years). Let’s do some simple math:

$32,000 (the midpoint of the range of estimates) times 650 = $20,800,000

If it costs $100,000 to build a unit of permanent supportive housing, then that cost will pay for itself in slightly over three years.

Think about the return over thirty years! The savings come to $602,400,000 in savings—or an average of over 92% per year. Try to make that return in the stock market!

Think about the people! A total of 650 people would no longer sleep on the street, or in camps or in shelters but in their own safe and secure home.

Think about our city! How much safer and cleaner and more beautiful would Dallas be without long-term homeless people? How much better would the world think of us if we solved the problem of homelessness? How many corporations would move their headquarters to Dallas? How much more investment would pour into our downtown?

Permanent supportive housing is probably the most effective investment we can make in our city.

Lunch at Burger King

Sometimes you have to experience something in order to begin to understand it. On my recent road trip to visit my Dad in Traverse City, Michigan that happened when my wife and I stopped at Burger King for lunch. We ordered a Whopper, onion rings and a soft drink. When I went and looked at the nutritional chart posted on the wall, I was horrified at what I had just eaten. The meal totaled 1330 calories and included copious amounts of fat, sugar and salt.

How bad was the meal nutritionally? Well, here’s a comparison of eating that meal as opposed to drinking your dinner:

Burger King Meal
Calories - 1330
Sugars(grams) - 73
Sodium(mg) - 1730
Saturated Fat - 15 grams
Carbs (grams) - 159
Protein (grams)- 35

Bottle of Red Wine
Calories - 711
Sugars(grams) - 0
Sodium(mg) - 0
Saturated Fat - 0
Carbs(grams) - 31
Protein(grams) - 1

6-pack of beer
Calories - 918
Sugars(grams) - 0
Sodium(mg) - 84
Saturated Fat - 0
Carbs(grams)- 76
Protein(grams)- 10

12-pack of light beer
Calories - 1224
Sugars(grams) - 0
Sodium(mg)- 156
Saturated Fat - 0
Carbs(grams)- 60
Protein(grams)- 8

I’m not trying to suggest that you ought to start drinking your meals—especially if you are going to be driving—but just to provide some kind of context of just how unhealthy fast food meals are.

First, look at calories. The generally accepted standard for weight maintenance is 13 calories per day for each pound that you weigh. So, if you weigh 102 lbs., then this one meal has used up all the calories you need for a day. It’s half the daily calorie allowance for a 200 lbs person. It also uses up more than 75% of your daily sodium (salt) intake and 75% of your intake of saturated fat.

In short, except for its protein content, the fast food meal is much less healthy, from a nutritional standpoint, than drinking a bottle of red wine, drinking a six-pack of beer, or even drinking an entire twelve-pack of light beer. Taking everything into consideration, the healthiest of these four meals is probably the six-pack of beer because it has a more appropriate carbohydrate and protein content for its number of calories than the wine or light beer and avoids the excessive fat and sodium of the fast food meal.

I suppose my surprise mainly shows how seldom I eat fast food. I know many people eat regularly at fast food places and I also know that it’s easy to put on weight and eat poorly even if you never eat out. But when fast food meals compare poorly in nutritional value even as opposed to the least healthy alternative I could think of—then it gives me pause.

And makes me want to sit down to a big plate of vegetables. It would take more than thirteen pounds of asparagus or eighteen heads of lettuce or 684 servings to make up as many calories—and you wouldn’t need to worry about the fat or sodium.

I don’t know about you, but if I ate 684 servings of salad, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else in a day.

A long, restful weekend

by Nick Sowell

The long weekend was nice to have. I hope everyone did something fun and enjoyed themselves. I just watched movies with my little sister all weekend before she left for camp to be a counselor for the summer. Other than that, it was a very restful weekend.

CityWalk Community Spotlight - YMCA

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

We started our Community Spotlight series with a visit from Paul Conklin, associate executive director of the T. Boone Pickens YMCA in downtown Dallas. The YMCA is offering membership discounts to CityWalk residents (the YMCA is located right next door to our building) so that they will be able to access all of the great resources at the Y.

Johnice Woods, our director of projects, made smoothies for attendees and gave away a blender.

Paul Conklin talks about the benefits of joining the YMCA.

Johnice Woods presents resident Synithia Page with a blender.

Healthy Eating Basics a hit

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

Jason's Deli hosted our first Healthy Eating Basics class for our residents at CityWalk. Renay Grubaugh of Jason's Deli talked to residents about the importance of eating "real" food and reading product labels.

The class also included an amazing buffet lunch by Jason's Deli that our residents are still talking about!

Thanks so much to Jason's Deli!

Renay Grubaugh of Jason's Deli

Resident Annie Brumfield

The food was so good, Miss Wanda broke out in a dance!

This Day in History

May 27, 1937:
Golden Gate Bridge opens

Source: history.com

San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, a stunning technological and artistic achievement, opens to the public after five years of construction. On opening day--"Pedestrian Day"--some 200,000 bridge walkers marveled at the 4,200-foot-long suspension bridge, which spans the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay and connects San Francisco and Marin County. On May 28, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicular traffic.

The concept of bridging the nearly mile-wide Golden Gate Strait was proposed as early as 1872, but it was not until the early 1920s that public opinion in San Francisco began to favor such an undertaking. In 1921, Cincinnati-born bridge engineer Joseph Strauss submitted a preliminary proposal: a combination suspension-cantilever that could be built for $27 million. Although unsightly compared with the final result, his design was affordable, and Strauss became the recognized leader of the effort to bridge the Golden Gate Strait.

During the next few years, Strauss' design evolved rapidly, thanks to the contributions of consulting engineer Leon S. Moisseiff, architect Irving F. Morrow, and others. Moisseiff's concept of a simple suspension bridge was accepted by Strauss, and Morrow, along with his wife, Gertrude, developed the Golden Gate Bridge's elegant Art Deco design. Morrow would later help choose the bridge's trademark color: "international orange," a brilliant vermilion color that resists rust and fading and suits the natural beauty of San Francisco and its picturesque sunsets. In 1929, Strauss was selected as chief engineer.

To finance the bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District was formed in 1928, consisting of San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, Del Norte, and parts of Mendocino and Napa counties. These counties agreed to collectively take out a large bond, which would then be paid back through bridge tolls. In November 1930, residents of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District voted 3-1 to put their homes, farms, and businesses up as collateral to support a $35 million bond to build Strauss' Golden Gate Bridge.

Construction began on January 5, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. Strauss and his workers overcame many difficulties: strong tides, frequent storms and fogs, and the problem of blasting rock 65 feet below the water to plant earthquake-proof foundations. Eleven men died during construction. On May 27, 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to great acclaim, a symbol of progress in the Bay Area during a time of economic crisis. At 4,200 feet, it was the longest bridge in the world until the completion of New York City's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964. Today, the Golden Gate Bridge remains one of the world's most recognizable architectural structures.

Greener Pastures

BY NICK SOWELL

If the grass is greener on the other side, then water your own.

This quote can be interpreted in many different ways according to your perspective. To me, this quote means work on yourself to better your life, which will make you happy with who you are and what you do. Once you are happy with your position in life then that will reflect onto others and in turn will make others happy and content. This may sound superficial, but you are only able to help others if you have first helped yourself.

Madame Butterfly

The Dallas Opera performed one of the most beloved operas of all, Madame Butterfly, this May. The performances (with one exception) were exemplary, the singing glorious, and the sets and costumes very well done. I was impressed and enjoyed the opera.


I hope never to see it again.

The problem with Madame Butterfly is the story. An American naval officer named Pinkerton marries Madame Butterfly while he is stationed in Japan. To him, the marriage is a meaningless sham; it means no more to him than the house he rents. To her, it is everything. She changes her religion and is estranged from her family. When his ship goes to sea, Pinkerton largely forgets her and marries an American wife.

Madame Butterfly waits loyally for him with his son (born after he leaves for sea). Pinkerton returns to claim his son and, after much beautiful singing, she kills herself.

I think the problem is not only that Pinkerton acts so horribly but also that he is the character with whom it is easiest for us to identify. He is the American. I don’t know if Italian (the opera is by Puccini) or other audiences would face the same problem, but for me I can hardly stand to watch this dashing American naval officer act in so despicable a fashion.

I don’t know how the opera could be saved for me. I don’t see the opera as melodrama, where we know who the villain is and expect no more from him than evil. Melodrama makes the moral choices easy. Perhaps a different staging, where Pinkerton is less attractive—or more so—either simpler or more complex could make the opera appealing again to me.

For now, however, like The Merchant of Venice I think Madame Butterfly is a work that is now culturally inappropriate. Until someone works out a way of treating the characters differently, I really would rather not see it again. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it is presented.

Moby Dick at the Dallas Opera

Earlier this month I saw the future of opera. It is Moby Dick at Dallas’s Winspear Opera House.

Moby Dick, which was commissioned by a group of opera houses that included Dallas, Calgary, San Francisco, and South Australia, was dramatic, compelling and, best of all, new.


If opera is to remain a living art form, then it needs to be dragged into the 21st century. Even opera buffs can’t be happy seeing the same operas like Don Giovanni (which I’ll see for the third time next year) or Madame Butterfly (which I’ll review soon). Audiences unfamiliar with opera are going to be even less excited about classic works in foreign languages. In its heyday, opera was contemporary art told in the vernacular. New operas were in great demand and the genre didn’t shy away from contemporary technology.

Moby Dick is the first 21st century opera. It is American and dares to turn one of the most heroic novels in American literature into a story for our time. The opera also embraces technology. The whaling ship is projected onto the stage as are the figures of the whaling boats and the sea.

Everything worked to stunning effect. It’s too late to see Moby Dick in Dallas now. It’s run is done. But if you happen to have a chance to see it during its tour, I couldn’t more strongly recommend it.

I’ll be looking forward to reviews from other venues to see if the technological advances used are dependent on the Winspear Opera House or work in other places as well. Maybe at some point one of you can let me know.

The Man in the Arena

BY NICK SOWELL

It has always had a deep profound meaning for me.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

A Visit Home

Next week I will be off to visit home—the Traverse City, Michigan area. I don’t get back very often. That is partly because I rarely take time off and partly because it’s a long way to drive from Dallas. It takes either three days or two very long days to drive. You can fly into Traverse City, but the airport is small and the flights are expensive.

Here’s an aerial picture of Traverse City:


The city nestles at the bottom of a long bay off of Lake Michigan. The Traverse Bay is divided into two parts (creatively called East Bay and West Bay) that are separated by a narrow band of land known as Old Mission. The views from the surrounding hills are tough to beat.

Old Mission has become a favorite location to establish vineyards over the past few decades. I don’t know if it is especially good for growing grapes, but the narrow band of land between the waters is certainly a great location to establish picturesque wineries.


This will be a pretty low key vacation. My wife and I are just going to drive there and spend time with my father and his wife and my brother and sister-in-law. We will do some sightseeing, maybe a little walking, at the most maybe we’ll find time to paddle a canoe.

I hope to decompress from an extremely busy winter and spring. There are some books that I’ve been wanting to read and I have some material for blogs that I just haven’t had time to write. I hope I’ll have time next week to do those simple things.

The 1970s Come Back Again

On the way to work, I often listen to KERA and today I heard an opinion piece that made me wonder whether I’d fallen through a time warp and back to 1970. The topic was whether it was permissible for a woman to keep her original surname after she married. You can read or listen to the commentary here:
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kera/news.newsmain/article/0/1/1651504/North.Texas/Commentary.Surnames

When I get home, I guess I’ll check the date on today’s newspaper to make sure I didn’t misplace forty years, because I thought the right of a woman to keep her birth name if she wanted to was decided about that long ago—and if it is 1970, then I want to know why I’m not twenty-five years old again.

There comes a time when we need to put an issue behind ourselves as decided. We can’t keep fighting the same wars over and over again—not that I’ve run into anyone in years who says it’s wrong for a woman to keep her original surname after she marries. I don’t doubt that there are some people who believe that still around. There are people who believe the moon landing was faked; that they’ve been abducted by aliens; that the world is run by a secret society of Jewish Bankers, but not all opinions are equal and we don’t need to respond to everything.

Sometimes we just need to go forward and ignore some people’s opinions. We still have a lot of racist people, but I can’t see wasting time to argue with them whether racism is wrong or not. When you act as though an outdated opinion is worth arguing against, then you give it credence.

Not every issue has two sides. Not every question is open to argument.

This Day in History

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans
Source: history.com

On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.

Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush.

In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family's firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.

Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points--at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly--to make them stronger. As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings"--the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them--was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.

Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for "waist overalls," as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean--known until 1890 as "XX"--was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls were the top-selling men's work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.

Volunteer Appreciation Potluck

BY NAQUANNA COMEAUX

CityWalk residents Leslie and her six-year-old daughter hosted an appreciation potluck this past Sunday for the volunteers of Dwell with Dignity, the nonprofit organization that designed their new apartment. http://citywalktalk.blogspot.com/2010/04/labor-of-love.html




It's wonderful to have a place like our beautiful 3rd floor community room and patio to offer to our residents for events. Just another reason why CityWalk is a great place to live.

Back to Nimbyism, Part II

Another commentator in the Unfair Park discussion offered up this piece of satire:

As the owner of a luxury home here you can imagine how appalled I was when I saw a old Honda parked on the street, someone who clearly could not afford to live here was spending time in my neighborhood, likely getting intoxicated and using restroom facilities that were not their own. . . . Just the thought of sharing the street with people that have so little money compared to me makes me sick, who knows what kind of diseases and pests they are bringing with them. Many of them can't even afford a Lexus, even an used entry level model and instead assault my eyes with junk like 15 year old Hondas and Chevys. . . . . I want to be very clear, I don't "hate" poor people, I just wish they wouldn't be so, poor, it's so distasteful.

This is funny stuff, but it would be even funnier if it weren’t absolutely true.

One of my favorite recent issues was a dispute over whether a Frisco resident could park his new Ford 150 in his driveway. The homeowner’s association (“HOA”) said no:

Earlier this year, [Jim Greenwood] the Concentra Inc. CEO began getting notices from the Stonebriar HOA threatening to fine him for parking his truck in his driveway. They say pickup trucks are not allowed in the driveway – although other luxury vehicles, including the Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Mark LT, pass muster.

Bill Osborn, a board member with the association, had explained that those vehicles are “fancier,” “plush with amenities” and do not look like pickups. Most domestic pickups are banned.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081908dnmetfriscotrucks.ecbc1d7.html.

What could be worse than having to look out at your neighbor’s home and see a domestic pickup?

Seriously, though, if people are concerned enough to worry about the type of car your neighbor drives, I have to think that it will be a long uphill battle to convince a neighborhood to let us build homes for homeless people in their neighborhood. This isn’t work for the faint at heart or the easily discouraged.

It seems to bring out a primal fear in people. Perhaps it’s the fear that you won’t be able to keep your separate status. If people can see that your neighbor drives a domestic pickup, then maybe they will assume that you drive a domestic pickup as well.

The next thing you know everyone will be driving a 15 year old Honda or Chevy instead of a Cadillac Escalade or a Lincoln Mark LT.

Can you imagine anything more distasteful?

Back to Nimbyism, Part I

Once again I’ve been thinking about Nimbyism (Not In My Backyard). Take the opposition to EVERgreen Residences, a proposed project to be located at 3800 Willow, near Exposition Park in Dallas. The neighborhood spoke out against this particular project:

This type of residential housing, we don't oppose," said Ken Maxwell of Exposition Park Association to the near-capacity crowd of approximately 175 people gathered in the Central Library auditorium. "We actually want this kind of housing, and think it should be a part of Dallas.

"However, this is not the neighborhood for that kind of housing," he continued. "Across the street from a gallery? Next door to 500X? Adjacent to the Santa Fe Trail? This is not where you put this type of housing."

Quoted in Unfair Park: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2010/04/strong_expo_park_showing_oppos.php.

There is a long discussion (69 Comments!) about this project at the link above that I got somewhat involved in. Here’s part of my comment:

If I hear one more person say I support this kind of project but it doesn't belong in my neighborhood because (we're too rich; we're too poor; we don't have any homeless people; we already have too many homeless people; etc.) I will vomit.

Man up and just say you don't care what happens to these people so long as they aren't allowed in your neighborhood. I can respect honesty.

I thought about this discussion recently when I read the following statement by a former resident of the Robert Taylor Homes, a massive former housing project in Chicago:

“They didn’t care about these people when they were in the buildings,” he said. “They don’t care about ‘em now.”

http://trueslant.com/megancottrell/2009/10/16/nimby-if-not-your-backyard-then-whose/.

I think we need to start with what is true and try to work out a solution from there. It sounds a lot nicer to say that you support permanent supportive housing in principal and then offer some rationalizations as to why your particular neighborhood just happens to be the wrong one in which to build it, but I don’t believe it. Most of us just don’t care very much about the down and out. That’s especially true when it might inconvenience us in any small way.

Almost Perfect Biscuits

I’m still making biscuits and still trying for that elusive perfect biscuit recipe. I want a recipe that will make a fluffy, flakey, high-rising biscuit with a perfect “biscuit” taste every time. I’m getting pretty close, but I’m not there yet. Let me talk about what I’ve learned, and then I’ll offer my current best recipe.

First, you’ve got a trade off. The more baking powder that you use (within reason), the higher your biscuits will rise. There is a penalty. Too much baking powder will affect the taste of your biscuits—I found that out early on (http://citywalktalk.blogspot.com/2010/03/biscuits.html). But this trade off is different for every person. It depends on your taste buds. If I use more than two teaspoons of baking powder, then I can taste it in the biscuits. Some people can’t taste the baking powder if you use twice that amount. So a recipe might be perfect for you—and I won’t like it.

Second, even small variations in the ingredients make a big difference. I find that using pastry (cake) flour helps the biscuits rise. I also find that I get a better biscuit, flakier and more flavorful if I use lard as the fat. Lard is, after all, a southern tradition.

Third, if you want high biscuits, then it’s best to roll out the dough as thick as an inch, or even more. The biscuits only rise so much, but if they are bigger to begin with, then they will be taller when you are done.

Finally, you can’t get away from measuring. I love to cook by eye, but when I try to bake by approximating the quantities, the results are uneven at best. So here is my current recipe:

2 cups white pastry (cake) flour
1/3 cup lard
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Either sift the dry ingredients together or do what lazy people like me do: Pour all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and use a whisk to stir them together. Add the lard (if you insist on using butter or another fat, then you’ll need ½ cup rather than 1/3 cup). You need to mix the lard with the dry ingredients until they are thoroughly incorporated and the biscuit dough looks like pea gravel or large grains of sand. The only way to do that is with your fingers—don’t believe anyone that tells you a pastry cutter works as well.


But if you put the lard in the center of the bowl and toss some of the flour over it before you start squeezing then you won’t get as much lard stuck to your fingers. After you are done mixing the lard with the dry ingredients, pour the buttermilk in all at once. Use a wooden spoon to mix the buttermilk in until you get a dough that barely sticks together (if it won’t stick, then use a little more buttermilk—but only as a last resort). Put the dough on a floured board and knead it a couple of times before flatting it out so you can cut the biscuits.

Real experts use a biscuit cutter, but I don’t have one so I just use a glass.


Cut out as many biscuits as possible and put them on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Take the leftovers and gently form them together, either to cut out more biscuits or just sort of form them by hand. The less you work the dough, the more tender your biscuits will be.

Place the biscuits in the oven and bake for twenty minutes. Then eat them with butter, jam, honey, slivers of ham or whatever you like.

In Praise of Renting

Homeownership has long been central to the American dream. At the very founding of our country, ownership of land and civic virtue were seen as intertwined:

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural."- Thomas Jefferson

Homeownership is often seen as the key to individual financial stability and strong communities.

I think it may be time to start thinking differently (of course Central Dallas CDC is mostly a developer of multifamily properties—a landlord—so you may want to take that into account in considering what I say). In the United States today, less than 3% of us work in agriculture. For most of us, our home is only a place to live, not to grow our food. In 1930, when we had less than half as many people as we do now, we had more than six times as many farmers.

The recent housing crisis has brought home the risks of homeownership. JPMorgan Chase issued a warning just yesterday that 29% of homeowners in the United States may owe more on their home than it is worth. (See here, for example, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/jpmorgan-chase-warns-inve_n_571103.html). There are a lot of cool calculators on the Internet that purport to show whether it’s better to buy or to rent a home. Here is one from The New York Times, with great graphics: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html.

The problem with all these calculators is that in order for them to work you have to tell them how much home prices and rents will increase or decrease over the number of years for which you want information. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a clue what will happen to the economy tomorrow, let alone in thirty years. In general home prices have risen over the long term—but not for the last couple of years. Government tax policy also generally supports homeownership, if you are in the right tax bracket, but government policy can always change.

There is something to be said for renting, however. Renting allows us to be mobile. We Americans tend to move a lot. One in six of us move every year, and as a group we average almost twelve moves in a lifetime. My wife and I have lived in the same house for twenty-three years now (but we are moving this year) and almost everybody else I know has moved once or more during that time.

Each move makes homeownership less financially attractive. We may be at the end of a time period in which housing prices always rose at more than the inflation rate. That doesn’t mean that people still won’t want to buy homes and live in them and, hopefully, pay them off. It might mean, however, that it won’t make sense to buy a house until you are done moving. Too many people now would like to move for a new opportunity and can’t because they can’t sell their house.

Two great American loves, owning our own place and the freedom to pick up and start again somewhere else, have always been in conflict. That conflict may be getting worse.