The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 122, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 19, 2012 Page: 2 of 28
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hemphill County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hemphill County Library.
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RECORD
ESTABLISHED 1893
INCORPORATED FEBRUARY 1998
PO Bax 898, Canadian, TX 79014
Phone: 806.S2S.64EI
Fax: 806.S2S.57S8
BEN EZZELL Edit nr/Publisher
1348-1333
NANCY EZZELL Editnr/Publisher
IG48-20I0
LAURIE EZZELL BROWN
EditorS Publisher
editar@canadianrecard.cem
Business Manager Mary Smithes
mary@canadianrecord.com
Advertising
Ray Weeks, Jaquita Adcock
advertising@canadianrecard.cem
News Editor Cathy Ricketts
news@canadianrecerd.cem
Sports Editor Tyler Bean
sparts@canadianrecard.com
DESIGNS PRODUCTION
Laurie Brewn, Cathy Ricketts,
Ray Weeks, Tyler Bean
PHOTOGRAPHY
Laurie Brewn, Cathy Ricketts,
Alan Hale, Tyler Bean
CONTRIBUTORS: Mary Jane McKinney,
Bob Rogers, Jenny Klein Brown,
Chari Smith
USPS 087-9G0
Periodicals postage paid at the Post
□ffice in Canadian (Hemphill County),
TX. Published weekly in Canadian
by Laurie Ezzell Brown
PBSTMASTER: Send address changes
to The Canadian Record, PC Box BBS,
211 Main St.. Canadian, TX7BDI4
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
S3G/S4Z/S55 Annually
BDG.323.G4GI
Dnline Subscriptions $25/Aooually
www.canadianrecerd.cem
RECORD
and the Ezzell Family
WINNERS DFTHE
2DD7 Gish Award
FDR CDURAGE, TENACITY G INTEGRITY
IN COMMUNITY JOURNALISM
9 J U LY 2 □ 1 2
THE CANADIAN RECDRD
A different model for housing
By Doug Pibel, Managing Editor, YES! Magazine
RECENTLY, THE STORY BROKE that
foreclosures were at the lowest level since
2007. That sounds like great news—we’re
finally cleaning up the mess from the real es-
tate bubble. Except for one thing: RealtyTrac.
com, a marketer of information on foreclosed
real estate, noted in April that the number
of short sales (where a bank allows an owner
to sell for less than is owed on the mortgage)
were up by 33 percent from last year. In other
words, there’s still plenty of distressed real es-
tate; the banks are just using a different meth-
od to get rid of them.
The fallout from the bubble and the asso-
ciated financial meltdown continues to cause
pain for a lot of people. The standard question
among economists is, “What can we do to get
things back to the way they were?” But it’s
not clear why we’d want to do that. There’s
no point in trying to return to inflated prices
that have everything to do with speculation
and nothing to do with real value. There’s
nothing to be gained by recreating a market
where everyone buys the biggest house they
can afford—and maybe a bit more.
Why not ask, instead, what we can do to
create a different model for housing—one that
embraces the best of tradition and the best of
new thinking. Since 1950, the average size of
a new house in the United States has more
than doubled, even as average household size
has decreased by nearly a quarter. The aver-
age American now has living space just shy
of 1,000 square feet—nearly the size of the
average house in 1950. Have our needs really
changed that much in six decades? Or have we
been sold something we don’t really need?
While not a scientific survey, here’s an in-
teresting data point: One of the perennially
popular articles on the YES! Magazine web-
site is the story of Dee Williams’ tiny house.
Williams moved from a 1,500-square-foot
house to an 84-square-foot house she built
herself for $9,000. That’s extreme, for sure,
and no one expects the majority of Americans
to go that far. But the continued interest in
the concept says that people are realizing that
smaller is better.
A return to smaller houses has many ad-
vantages. They’re less expensive to build, so
you don’t have to get the biggest mortgage you
can afford to own one—and your chances of
ending up as a foreclosure statistic are lower.
They’re easier to heat and cool, saving both
dollars and resources.
Not everyone is going to build a new house,
and there’s a huge stock of existing larger
houses. But those, too, offer the opportunity
for living smaller. An increasing number of
people are “doubling up,” living with friends
or family—whether out of economic necessity
or desire to downsize both living space and
expenses. The nearly 18 percent of existing
housing stock that’s larger than 3,000 square
feet could be divided into multiple dwelling
units.
The Census Bureau estimates that more
than 18 million houses stood empty during
2011, even as hundreds of thousands of people
were homeless. Millions more are insecure in
their housing because they’re burdened with
underwater mortgages or because they’re
renting.
The real solution to the wrecked state of
U.S. real estate is not to try to get things back
to where they were. It’s to find creative ways
to match supply with demand, to change the
way we finance housing, and to recognize that
owning the biggest house on the block could
be the American nightmare rather than the
American dream.
Letters
THOUGH THE ART of writing letters appears to be a dying
one, The Record’s letters to the editor offer compelling testi-
mony to the enduring power of the written word to provoke
thought and stimulate what is often emotional response.
I keep those letters—all of them—in file boxes. I regard
them as among this newspaper’s most treasured resources,
representing as they do one of the most accurate gauges of the
community’s pulse. As such, they offer a finely-tuned guide to
the stories that struck the most sensitive nerves and the issues
that inspired even the most reluctant correspondent to make
his opinions known.
I speak with some authority when I say it is not the easiest
thing to do. I know the inner struggle that must take place be-
fore one engages in the act of going public. Though the choice
of whether to voice my opinion seems to have been made for me
in the womb, I understand the personal cost of doing so and the
considerable jeopardy one faces—particularly when the views
expressed are at odds with the prevailing public opinion.
I’ve paid that price and gladly done so. I am better for it, and
certainly this country, which was founded on the principles of
free speech, is better for it. But for those who live less public
lives, whose businesses depend on the community’s support,
whose relationships with friends and coworkers and employers
and teachers and others are vulnerable to differing and some-
times unpopular opinions, it can be a treacherous and difficult
path. Such acts of personal ethics and honesty are rarely com-
mitted lightly.
The real rewards, though, are immeasurable. When we cast
off the fear of rejection or repudiation, embracing the knowl-
edge that we have a right to our opinions and that the public
dialogue is advanced by our expression of those opinions, we ac-
cept personal responsibility for protecting and defending those
freedoms. In doing so, we make the path less treacherous for
others and often inspire similar acts of courage. My purpose in
stating what may to some seem obvious truths is two-fold.
First. These pages have served lately as the cauldron for a
simmering debate over homosexuality and the legalization of
gay marriage. It is a debate worthy of our thought and atten-
tion, and certainly one that extends far beyond Canadian and
Hemphill County. It is also a discussion that I believe has run
its course.
I decided that after receiving a letter that I chose not to pub-
lish—one which exposed the potential words have to become a
destructive and malevolent force. It will remain unpublished.
And while this newspaper will continue to honor its commit-
ment to the free exchange of ideas, we will also exercise our
right not to be the vehicle for such hate-filled rhetoric whose
only purpose is to inflict injury.
Nothing in my early Christian education and upbringing re-
ally prepared me for the possibility that the Bible’s wise and
timeless lessons would be wielded like weapons. My faith fal-
ters now in the face of religious bullying and Biblical bludgeon-
ing.
Whether in the name of God or Allah, those who espouse
vengeance and anger and who judge and condemn others do
not serve the God I know, whose wisdom and love surpasses all
understanding. Many of those who have been judged so harshly
are also the children we have raised, whose care we have been
entrusted with, whose victories we have celebrated and whose
trials and tribulations we have shared and often mourned.
They are all the blessed children of God—the God I know
and before whom I am fully prepared to stand and be judged.
Benjamin Franklin was one of this nation’s founding fathers
and a man of the ink—a printer and publisher who knew and
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Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 122, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 19, 2012, newspaper, July 19, 2012; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth649439/m1/2/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hemphill County Library.