WORD OF THE DAY: "Domicide," The Death Of Homes

Photo By "Kevin"

My map-obsessed buddy from the Humphrey Institute, Dave Arbit, told me about a term one of his professors throws around in class...

Which is "domicide," and it means "the death of homes." I don't think the professor in question, Jeff Krump of the College of Design, coined the term. In fact, there is a book with that title, click here, and also the word can be found at Urban Dictionary, to which I am both an editor and a contributor.

Or maybe Professor Jeff Krump DID coin it. Who knows? Anybody who KNOWS can chime in on the comments section.

I'm glad to have learned of the word (and the book) from Jeff Krump, via Dave Arbit.

OK, technically I looked the book up on my own, but all the same Dave Arbit has contributed substantially to my current reading list. Right now I'm reading two books about public housing projects and "the making of the second ghetto." Now, soon enough, I'll have to read up on "Domicide."

How Tearing Down Homes Makes A Certain Twisted Sense

But I was thinking about it and I realized, huh, some of this might make a certain twisted logical sense. Say, for example, Poor And Troubled Family X lives in a house in North Minneapolis. Maybe they rent the house, maybe they own it, for purposes of my hypothetical, it doesn't matter. But every year, the house generates a certain amount of revenue in the form of taxes and utility payments, less the ACTUAL cost to the City of Minneapolis of, say, the water and garbage pickup.

OK, now let us say Poor And Troubled Family X costs the City of Minneapolis money every year, in the form of numerous 911 calls to the house--each of which is surprisingly costly--and social services for the children, and bogging down the justice system, and damaging the property of their neighbors, and so forth. EVERY YEAR, troubled family X manages to cost the City of Minneapolis more money than the City captures in taxes, fines, fees and utility revenue.

Then one day...oh, my word. The house becomes vacant! And it's a run down house, so either it will fall into the hands of a slumlord--the most likely scenario, who will find a Troubled Family Y and Z to put in the house--after converting it to a duplex--or some yuppied family will lavish attention and money on the house, and make it their dream Victorian. NOT AS LIKELY AS THE FIRST ONE.

At this point, what is the City of Minneapolis going to be thinking? They're going to think: TEAR THE HOUSE DOWN!!! In the long run, a vacant lot will decrease housing density, and raise the value of the houses around it, and--most important--no more Troubled Family X racking up a zillion 911 calls and costing the City of Minneapolis more money than it takes in.

I'm sure these ideas must be somewhere in that book about domicide. I will have to read the book, I guess, to see if my presumption is correct.

Until You Realize It's Just STUPID

But I don't see tearing down homes as a solution to ANYTHING, not unless the houses are truly ready to fall down on their own or somebody is ready--ready at THAT MOMENT--to build something bigger and better on that spot of ground.

Destruction of homes for the sake of some fiscal bottom line in a bean counter's argument is a ridiculous proposition which is out of sync with the earth, rather like the idea of "spending your way to prosperity," which allegedly works fine...except when you start to factor THE ENVIRONMENT into the equation.

There are only so many resources on earth--including nice old houses--and lavishly bulldozing those resources because of some twisted Bureaucratic Bean Counter Math From Hell is just STUPID.