Independent American Communities

By Deborah Goonan

Once upon a time, there was the “American Dream. ” A home was a place where people lived for a long time. Young newlyweds would purchase a modest home, furnish it, and then spend the next two decades raising children there. Grandparents might live in a house nearby, or move in with their adult children later in life. Nearly all the other houses on the block were also occupied by families, most of them homeowners, with the occasional tenant. Most families owned one home, perhaps a duplex with one half reserved for extended family. People owned the same house for decades, paid off the mortgages before retirement, and often had a tidy equity nest egg to show for it.

Multi-family buildings were owned by investors, and were divided into apartments for rent before condos arrived on the scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Then someone had the bright…