This month, I moved into a single-family home in my new city of Erie, Pennsylvania. That may not sound like much, but it’s a change of course in what I’ve been doing for the past seven years. When I returned to the US in 2018, I decided to go with an apartment living situation. I had successfully downsized, in more ways than one, and was looking for a ‘crash pad’ where I could have my stuff while spending most of my time out and about. My first landing stop, in Deerfield, Illinois was a non-descript newly built, modern unit that faced East to get the morning sun. This one had indoor parking for Ava, a full gym and all the convenience of a professionally managed building with a full-time maintenance crew.
When I later decided to head into Chicago, after fulfilling the original lease and recognizing that, yes, I did indeed always want to live in the actual city; not in some northern suburb where it was a train ride of a long drive to go do what I always wanted to do. This time, the place was an older condominium building. I wanted to see the water – either Lake Michigan or the Chicago River. I found the perfect unit, another indoor garage for my baby and a full gym. It also had full-time security, and it was the kind where you got to know their names. While having a landlord who did his own thing, aka no professional maintenance crew, was annoying, it was a beautiful condo with sweeping windows that looked out over the city. While my stay there was briefer than I wanted, it was beautiful and I thoroughly enjoyed being so close to the theaters, the arts, and amazing restaurants in my favorite US city.
Making my way West, I selected an apartment within walking distance to the cute downtown area of Walnut Creek. Of course, COVID shut down the whole idea of spending very little time at home, and either working or socializing. The exceedingly small apartment suddenly became very ‘close.’ When fire season cropped up in 2020, and the COVID lockdown lingered, it felt like solitary confinement. Rather than getting a break from being home twenty-four, seven, so that I could go out and run, hike or cycle around, I was stuck at home as the air quality index hit upwards of 300 and maxed out at 500. The ideal small apartment became not so ideal. After the first year of COVID confinement ended, I found a two-story apartment right next to a rail trail for walking, running and cycling. It even had a small room that could be used as a home office, and physical separation between the office area, bedroom, and the rest of the living spaces. However, a key learning in that complex is that when you’re living in a building that is used by tech firms bringing new college graduates to the area, you are going to end up with not just noise, but also people who treat it like a dorm and dump garbage in the corridors. They also don’t understand that no smoking means, no smoking of any type of material, including marijuana. The fact that the HVAC systems were linked meant that I could get the distinctive fumes of pot wafting into my apartment on a regular basis.
Moving back to the East Coast, and Media, PA, I decided that apartments were no longer an attractive option. Learning from the COVID experience, I discovered that I really wanted to be more fully separated from my neighbors. So, this time, I chose a newer development of townhomes in a small city just 25 minutes north of Philadelphia. Convenient to both Philly’s city center for theater and restaurants, as well as the airport for travel, it was ideal. Beyond the fact that housing in this area is either new and enormous, or old and small, the only major drawback was the development’s position on a very busy road about a mile outside of Media’s cute little downtown area. Naturally, as most American suburbs are designed, there were no sidewalks. While the church I initially attended was only a mile from my house, I could not walk to it. Not only were there no sidewalks, but the road just outside my development, where cars would sometimes reach 50 mph, had extremely limited shoulders. Even cycling on that road was dangerous as car drivers seemed to see bikers as being fair game as they rushed to wherever they happened to be going.
Drawing on the town-house experience, I decided that it was my new model. Structured like an apartment building, these homes are clustered together to create a community and still separate enough that you aren’t breathing your neighbor’s pot smoke or listening to their parties. Upon arrival in Erie, there wasn’t much rental housing on the market. I found one that fit the bill but was warned about the neighborhood not being safe for me. I mentioned to one of my colleagues that I wanted a place where I could step out the door and run, and the place I was looking at wasn’t in a nice part of the city. In Media, unless I wanted to run around in circles, I had to drive to go for a run. That’s not what I wanted in my new place. The only other option at the time, was a brand-new development in a small neighboring community. I was encouraged to go ahead and rent a unit, sight unseen since they were still under construction. I had to concede a gas oven and tried to convince myself that it would be ‘fine’ not to cook with gas. Colleagues said this area was ideal, with lots of land and a great school district. So as not to be in temporary housing for several months, I decided to go ahead and put down the deposit on the new development. I spent the first few months in a condominium as I waited for construction on my new place to be completed.
As I settled into my new place, I discovered that not only had they not bothered to get occupancy permits (leading to my county not recognizing my address when registering to vote), but construction was ongoing. The vehicles, noise, debris, and things like being blocked from my garage while they paved, then repaved was annoying. These homes were built as rental units, and it showed. The finishes were extremely cheap, and in the year I lived there, I had several issues with the dishwasher. Given that I live alone and maybe run it once a week, having it breakdown says something about the quality of the machine. When I checked online, this particular machine costs between $300 and $400; demonstrating that you get what you pay for. Over the summer, we had a few torrential rainstorms. It was after a fairly large one that I noticed water and mud in the finished basement where I had my home gym and TV. While there was a small trench on the edge of my backyard, the grading by the construction company was so poorly done that it funneled any excess water directly into my back deck, and through the sliding glass doors. The management company promised to have it re-graded, after I called and asked WTF? Naturally, I received no compensation, and I was the one who had to clean the floors and deal with a wet area rug. Thankfully, it didn’t go as far as my Peloton. I warned them that when they found mold in the basement, they needed to remember it was not my fault. The woman in the management office asked if I wanted the trim repainted, and I suggested that they wait until we were certain that it wouldn’t flood again. No sense repainting the molding if it was just going to keep on getting wet.
A few weeks later, another heavy rainstorm hit, and sure enough, the basement flooded again. This time, they responded with sandbags surrounding my back slab, locking in the mud from the previous storm and effectively sealing in the fact I wouldn’t be able to use the back patio at all. I expressed my frustration, and they offered an industrial sized dehumidifier, which I had to empty at least twice a day all summer (can you say, “Wet basement”?). I demanded to know whether they were just waiting to see if it flooded a second time after the first disaster and they dodged the question. I’m certain the answer is that it was going to cost a lot of money, so they waited in case the first time was a fluke. They finally regraded and put in a drainpipe on the hill above my unit, and it seemed to fix the problem. The sandbags never moved, though they did finally clean the back slab so that it was usable, though by this point, it was late fall and too cold to be sitting outside.
As my lease came to its end, I sat myself down and asked the serious question, “Do you seriously want to move, again??” I started to list all the problems with the house, avoiding those tied to construction. There was the fact that the only internet option was some no-name company out of Buffalo that had an arrangement where I had to supply my username and passport to the ISP. When I pushed back, I was told that it was ‘safe.’ Being the mother of a tech security guru, I decided to invest in a VPN. I wasn’t interested in some random person at the ISP deciding to check out my devices, my internet history or anything else. Then, there was the lack of communication whenever I put through a maintenance request, the lack of response when I asked questions, the fact that the rent was significantly higher than average rentals in Erie; all this and more drove real doubts in my mind. While they finally finished construction on the community center and gym, the lease concession was around $350 per month. No way a gym is worth that much, so hiking my rent by $350 for no real value-added features put salt in the wound of paying premium rent. I thought about the fact that the friends I met here all live in Erie itself, about a twenty-minute drive away. Oddly, that twenty minutes was a real deterrent to people wanting to come to my house. I volunteered to hold a church related small group at my home, and the rest of my group said they’d rather meet at church than drive to my house. On top of that, the small community has no real center, no shops, no restaurants, and no culture (theater, the arts, etc.). It’s truly a classic American suburb where houses are widely spaced, no one even knows their neighbors, and if you need anything at all, you’re going to have to drive. With all of this in mind, I started scrolling Zillow.
I returned from my big vacation at the end of September and noticed that the basement deck door wasn’t locked. At first, I blamed the management company; maybe someone came to check the basement during the heavy storm that took place while I was away. After a few times of dumping the dehumidifier, I finally realized that the latch on the door does not work. So, it wasn’t the management company, it was another piece of shoddy construction. I grabbed a metal pole and wedged the door shut. That same week, I came across a nice little house on the west side of the city with both a gas stove and cheaper rent. The pictures were intriguing, so I sent in an inquiry about whether it was available. To my surprise, I got an immediate response.
This house was built in 1905 and completely renovated in 2020. The owner renovated it as his own, so the finishes are reflective of his desire to make it a home for him and his wife. The kitchen signaled the fact his wife enjoys cooking; it’s open plan with a gas stove and plenty of counters and storage space. He connected the standalone garage and the house with a laundry/mud room which means you don’t have to go outside to get between the two spaces, and there’s even more storage space in that added room. While the windows are all new and updated, there are elements of the original structure. The old fireplace is gone, but the exposed brick of the original chimney runs through the middle of the house. A rod-iron handrail adorns the stairs going up to the second floor. The house feels old but looks new and I fell in love with it the first time I looked at it. There are some odd design features, like the bedroom closets he built, due to the original house not having closets, have no doors. The open plan on the main floor results in very little wall space for artwork (lots of half walls and windows make finding space for hanging art challenging). Original structural elements, like the basement ceiling being so low that I must watch my head (not to mention the poor moving crew made up of normal sized men who had to put storage stuff down there). The partially finished attic is where I planned to put my home gym since I don’t need fancy finishes to work out had to be dropped when I realized that having very small stairs meant getting the Peloton up there would be virtually impossible. When my gym ended up in my bedroom, it reminded me of the overall age of the house.
My new neighborhood has only added five minutes to my commute (fifteen minutes versus the original ten) and is about a mile from church. I have a little local bakery half a mile away, a pizza shop across the street (with delicious pizza) and a tiny beer shop (with a not too shabby selection) on the other corner. A friend asked if its noisy, and I said, “No noisier than I would expect a neighborhood in a city to be.” With my car charger installed in the garage, and Ava’s aversion to cold weather, I don’t deal with on-street parking or plow trucks. The first significant snowfall, I gleefully went to shovel. I enjoy shoveling since it’s a great way to get outside in winter and is a fantastic upper body workout. However, as I completed the full length and width of the sidewalk along the house, I reflected on the fact it took an hour since the house is on a corner. After the first major shoveling effort, I decided to invest in a cordless shovel. These shovels are effectively mini snowblowers and designed for sidewalks and decks. With a supply of rechargeable batteries, I’m now waiting for the next major snowstorm. Naturally, once I got the shovel, batteries, and charger (long story on how that went), we haven’t had enough snow to shovel. I told my friends that if there’s no significant snowfall for the rest of the winter, they’ll know why.
As I finished unpacking, hanging my artwork and decorating inside and out for Christmas, I thought about this house and whether the me of eight years ago would have picked it. The answer is likely no, though in some ways, it is quite similar to my last house in the UK. That one was newer, though built on the estate of a closed Victorian mental hospital in a design that mimics the original architecture of the hospital. Before you think I’m crazy for liking the design of a hospital, remember this one was Victorian, so it was a grand structure that was repurposed as an apartment building as a part of developing the area. The smaller homes that were built to surround it compliment the architecture and were made to look as though they were of similar age. So, maybe that is the attraction of my new house. It’s small, has character and all the updated features of things like insulation, windows that don’t allow drafts, updated appliances and so on. And, so, I’ve gone full circle and am back in a ‘regular’ house, in a city with a bustling neighborhood and lots to do within walking distance, or a short drive.
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