Charles lives in a house? Next you're going to tell me you own a SUV. Why are you not practicing what you preach?
Also only in the winter paradise of Seattle would an old house be green. Heating is ~20% of CO2 emissions in middle america, see: http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/01… or http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps for the national data set.

I feel like I just found out that the president of the UAW drives a Nissan built in Alabama.

I would have agreed with you totally until we moved into our current condo home. The biggest advantage to a Single Family home is that they are generally lacking in Home Owner Associations that can literally decide everything about your home whether you like it or not.

@3 - Yeah, that's not going to get you any sympathy from Charles. I'm sure those rules are in the collective best interest, in which case force is justifiable to him.

Chuck,

Marxist Atheists forfeit the privilege of opining on spirituality and/or ghosts, much less the use of their presence, or lack thereof, to justify or decry housing choices.

Kindly STFU.

PS: Using a cheap blue filter on your cellphone snap shots does not make them deep, artsy or “haunted”.

Old houses are horribly inefficient. Heating and cooling costs are one thing, but even the original construction was so wasteful and unsustainable that you couldn't even build it like that today if you wanted to.

Charles admits what many of the density-at-all-cost proponents don't: they live in single family homes.

Tiny apartments are for other people.

Indefensible, after so, so many posts trumpeting the virtues of communal housing, that you yourself have been living--and still live!--in a single-family house. Truly. I don't care how fucking old it is. You no longer have any credibility on the subject; indeed, it seems you never had any to begin with.

He claims it's not his fault; his family insists upon living in the house. Such a good excuse, which of course wouldn't be possible without the family, so he's still saintly for disapproving of single people who live in houses.

@6, he probably rents the house, so he isn't responsible for all the repairs. However, renters usually have to pay utilities, so consuming a lot of electrical energy, etc. to live in a leaky house is kind of reprehensible.

However, family.

I'm not sure when my house was built, but it was renovated extensively in the 70s so is well older than 40 years. The surrounding community was settled in the 1860s. I understand Seattle is the primary population center, but is it really unethical to live in a community which has existed as long as our hallowed city? I've never been sure if "suburb" is quite the right term for those of us who live in villages that are still hanging on as population condenses.

There's nothing spiritual about some jackass's Iron Maiden booming through a shared wall at 3 a.m. The second I can afford to buy a decent mid-century modern, architecturally interesting house, I am moving into it.

It's not a problem for all of us to live in 1904 housing. We would just have to deport all of the immigrants to the country since then and limit families to two children each. Hey, I hear Mugabe calling!

Absolutely zero of this makes any fucking sense.

This is bad even for you: 0/10

Can the stranger start filing slog posts under "do what I say, not what I do"?

Oh, the average age of homes is falling, all right. Many thousands of foreclosed homes are, and will be, bulldozed by banks to a) avoid paying upkeep and taxes, b) prop up prices and rents for the homes that remain, and c) prop up the construction industry. And, I suppose, to support the bulldozer industry.

We are a deeply disturbed and twisted nation.

Oh, and:

Blue on blue, heartache on heartache
Blue on blue, now that we are through—
Blue on blue, heartache on heartache
And I find I can't get over losing you

I walk along the street we used to walk—
Two by two, lovers pass
And as they're passing by, I could die
'Cause you're not here with me!
Now the trees are bare,
There's sadness in the air
And I'm as blue as I can be

—Bobby Vinton

Many old houses can be dated, if the toilet is original, by the stamp in the porcelain under the lid. Mine said, before it sadly gave up the ghost, April 26, 1954. That's the date the toilet was made, not the house, of course, but it's usually pretty close. My ultramodern dual-flush toilet now has no date.

@18 you can just go look it up the year your house was built in the assessor records. It's public information and most counties have searchable databases. Here is King County http://info.kingcounty.gov/Assessor/eRea…

@12 Luckily Seattle's suburbs were heavily built out in the booms of the 50's and 60's (assuming you live here, with Slog that's never a sure guess). So they're infested with tons of affordable mid-century homes around here, as long as you aren't lusting for the signature homes in, say, Surrey Downs in Bellevue or similar.

It's an utterly stupid choice though- shallow-pitch roofs that collect leaves, skimpy insulation, aluminum-framed windows that suck heat, asbestos and janky wiring, and more. However, I love my mid-century house and its Eichler-style exposed beams even though it is an energy pig.

As others noted, apartment and condo living sucks because Noisy neighbors! Covenants! No parking! Not to mention the UTTER GODDAMN LACK OF STYLE OF ANYTHING called a Condo or House built since, oh, 1982.

Can someone at The Stranger please punch Charles in the dick? He's making you all look bad.

I don't care about Charles's individual choices. I only follow Berlusconi hot celebrities with fat, fat booties

it's basically wrong to say that the suburbs are dying. I'd not be surprised to learn that they're growing faster than our big cities even today given supply constraints inside

@6, Prewar houses tend to be more efficient than postwar houses up until about the 70s. And there was hardly anything wasteful about the original construction. My 1904 home in Bellingham was most likely timber and shingles from the local mill, chimney bricks from local clay, windows from the local glazer. Modern construction is a nightmare of embodied energy, to say nothing if shipping lumber, parts and hardware from all over the world.

There is nothing green about old houses.

@4 having lived for several years next to a community's resident hoarder, I'm all for rules as long as they are public, sensible and applied consistently.

Good Morning Charles,
I do enjoy residing in my rented apartment. Although I wouldn't call it "the highest spiritual form of human housing". The three reasons I stay are location, location and location. I live very close to public transit. I discovered that charm with my first apartment in Oak Park, IL a close suburb of Chicago. I had a place right next to a rapid transit/subway stop. It works well.

There is a good argument for renting one's dwelling. Especially if one is single as I am. While somewhat appealing (for equity?), I wouldn't want to own a house or condo by myself. I would definitely consider it with a partner. I believe especially since the end of WWII, America in general has pushed for "private ownership" of human habitats. By and large until roughly the aughts, it benefitted the country. After 2008, I am not so sure. The housing crisis (paying for) remains. Owning housing in America is extremely expensive. Just take a peek at the foreclosure crisis. A year or so ago, I recall reading (I can't remember the source) that the city of Las Vegas has 40% of its mortgages underwater! That's shocking by any standard.

@20 - I'm OK with stupid and, yeah...Surrey Downs. SWOON :)

http://www.estately.com/sold/115-110th-a…

i'm kind of astounded at how bad this post was.

arrogance, faux-artiness, and even a misspelling.

You're going to have to move into an apartment once your son is grown, just to save face. You'll enjoy the toddler upstairs who has no concept of bedtime, and the bros downstairs who blast dubstep all day long. And the new guy nextdoor, who left a bag of discarded ammo shells on your doorstep to "send a message". And the hardworking building manager who has all the time in the world for your issues once he gets home from his REAL job.
Apartment living is so spiritual and peaceful and kumbaya! You yourself can offer to babysit ALL THE KIDS so the parents have time to ride their bicycles to work and farm on the rooftop when they get home!

LOLOLOLOL.

I know I might be the only positive note in this comment thread, but I feel I have been spiritualized by the experience of living in my current apartment, insofar as I've become more of a person than just a homo economicus by virtue of having to tangle (positively and negatively), with my neighbors. There is a worryingly negative potential in the standalone home -- the ours pros of home to car to work to car to home. That's possible with an apartment in an urban space, but at least impractical, and certainly costly.

I feel invigorated by finding myself uninterested in the burdens of home ownership. The thought of having to clean gutters or spend money on a water heater is anathema when I would so much rather spend my time reading, working on projects with social import, or just staring at the sky.

@33 - for centuries, Americans managed to build vital, successful and gratifying communities in which not only did they live in stand-alone homes, but in homes rather more distant from those in today's cities and suburbs. The means by which they did so involved social interactivity which remains readily available today (though, in the case of church-based functions, less popular). It's a joy to live in such a neighborhood and they are not a figment of nostalgia. It's also entirely (too) easy to live a life of apartment to car to work to car to apartment if you keep your head down and look a bit of a menace.

I get what you're saying, though. Not to paint too broad a stripe with my brush of tar, but perhaps some of the people who socialize largely online would benefit more from having to talk on the elevator to the nosy lady in 3G versus bathing in the bitterly solitary flourescent glow of mom and dad's basement hovel.

So read where you like, work on projects that take you to your passions and by all means stare at the sky. Just realize that you can be spiritualized by community from the common entry to your apartment, or upon the front porch of your own home. It's entirely up to you.