What kind of people have we become?

I show lots and lots of foreclosed houses and ay of them have been trashed or damaged or stripped by their previous owners. I get the question a lot, "What kind of people would do this to a house?" I guess our kind of people, us, what we've become as a nation.

These are not all homes that were owned by scofflaws or druggies or lazy louts. Most were owned by regular people just like your and me and our neighbors. Most are people who fell on hard times through no real fault of their own. Some may have reached too far for a better home than they could afford and some may have over extended themselves with lots of credit; but, by-and-large they were just plain folks who got caught up in the economy of excesses that led up to the crash and then got caught in the tidal wave of the economic tsunami that washed over us all.

How they reacted to what happened to them and what they did to the houses in that reaction may be a reflection of the mores of our society, as they exist today. Pride of ownership was replaced by just pure pride in owning lots of things. Houses became things to be possessed, not homes; so it was easy to take out frustrations on those symbols of lost wealth. And after all, it felt like they were somehow “getting back at” those distant and impersonal bankers who had repossessed their house.

Then there was the perverted logic that led some to believe that the bank somehow only owned the structure itself and that everything in the structure somehow belonged to the owner, such as the light fixtures, the kitchen cabinets and the like. I don’t know how that line of reasoning extended to the furnaces and the water heaters, but apparently many ex-owners considered those to be personal property, too. They weren’t stripping the house, the logic went, just taking their personal property with them.

So, have we become a nation of vandals and thieves? I don’t think so. Even faced with all of the terrible things that I see that have been done to foreclosed homes, I still also see many more homes in which there is still a pride of ownership and a strong sense of doing what is right, rather than what is wrong. I do believe that more of the people who intentionally damage houses or vandalize them, should be brought to justice and prosecuted, if for no other reason than to continue to show our children that we as a people believe in and uphold the laws. I’ve only seen a few cases make the news and they were egregious. AS a society we have to draw lines and there needs to be a clear line on this issue. What do your think? Should we prosecute foreclosed homeowners who intentionally damage or strip their homes?