"Just lookin' for a home..."

"Let me tell ya a story about a boll weevil
Now, some of you may not know,
But a boll weevil is an insect.
And he's found mostly where cotton grows.

"The farmer said to the boll weevil
I see you're on the square
Boll weevil said to the farmer
Say yep! My whole darn family's here
We gotta have a home, gotta have a home..."

(from The Boll Weevil Song, traditional)

Every morning, I walk the half-mile from my studio apartment in the basement of an Arlington home, toward the Metrorail station. Where once was a Seven-Eleven and a few run down commercial buildings, a luxury high-rise condominium complex is being built, joining a host of other new buildings in Arlington's up-and-coming "Orange Line" corridor. A one-bedroom unit will cost about $200,000 -- equal to the current value of the three-bedroom townhouse I once owned a few miles west of the Beltway. I console myself with the knowledge, that the same small unit would cost roughly three times as much in midtown Manhattan.

In a recent issue of Newsweek, columnist Anna Quindlen reports from that same locality, where we hear from one Julia Erickson, executive director of City Harvest, which delivers food to the needy: "Look at the Rescue Mission on Lafayette Street. They used to feed single men, often substance abusers, homeless. Now you go in and there are bike messengers, clerks, deli workers, dishwashers, people who work on cleaning crews. Soup kitchens have been buying booster seats and highchairs. You never used to see young kids at soup kitchens."

This is the relatively new phenomenon, those who are out on the street for want of one paycheck. Despite the growing population of Northern Virginia in need of low- to moderate-income housing, much of it is being torn down in favor of the high-priced variety.

Quindlen goes on: "Even if you’ve never been to the Rescue Mission, all the evidence for this is in a damning new book called The Betrayal of Work by Beth Shulman, a book that should be required reading for every presidential candidate and member of Congress. According to Shulman, even in the go-go '90s one out of every four American workers made less than $8.70 an hour, an income equal to the government's poverty level for a family of four. Many, if not most, of these workers have no health care, sick pay or retirement provisions."

I recently confronted a candidate for the County Board of Supervisors on this very subject, asking him: "Where are our maids going to live?" We cannot blame it entirely on "market forces" and all that. From 1950 to 2000, the average American home doubled in square footage, and had half as many occupants. It is the fruit of consumerist excess. The flower-power generation that was going to "give peace a chance" wants as big a piece of the chance as they can get.

How many of us need both a living room and a family room? Can any parent bear the thought of their children sharing a bedroom, at the risk of learning to get along? Does anyone remember how families would gather in the kitchen, once the place of the hearth, the center of the home? Why not choose to eat there as well? Speaking for myself, if I had an eat-in kitchen and a formal dining room, I would convert the latter to a library for all my books. I'd have the best overhead lighting already available, and I'd gain an extra bedroom. I'd have a wooden floor in the living room, where I would pull back the furniture for house concerts and dances. That's what a living room is for -- you know, LIVING!

In his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor), Pope Leo XIII reminded us that work was created for man, not man for work. Those few at the helm of industry and commerce (to say nothing of the political arena) need to be reminded at every turn, that theirs is a temporary fortune, one that they cannot take with them.

Until then, where will their maids live?