Tag Archives: maintenance

Repairing aging American housing

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Many older American homes need repairs but making those repairs is a challenge:

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Across the nation, and especially here in Philadelphia, homeowners are increasingly struggling to maintain and repair aging homes that are withering, crumbling, and forcing homeowners to exist in near-unlivable conditions.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average age of the U.S. home is 40 years old, up from 31 years old 15 years ago. Homes tend to be the oldest in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic states and along the Appalachian Mountains. Repair costs are rising, and homeowners face $100 billion in needed maintenance, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Analysts say the problems associated with deferred maintenance and dilapidated properties span both rural and urban properties, resulting in structure collapses of occupied properties in Pittsburgh; Reading, Pennsylvania; Syracuse, New York; and elsewhere…

Schapira said Philadelphia has at least 60,000 houses that are “in a pretty difficult situation” and need immediate repairs. Nationwide, about 6.7 million households are living in “inadequate” properties, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Both cities and suburbs have a lot of houses that are more than 50 years old: the growing urban populations of the late 1800s and early 1900s in Northeast and Midwest cities mean there are a number of aging units there and suburban sprawl added many homes to the edges of big cities and growing suburbs. Maintaining and repairing homes requires maintenance, knowledge, and resources.

This story highlights the issue when these aging homes are in poorer neighborhoods and communities. How are residents who are struggling to make ends meet supposed to do the substantial work necessary to keep their homes in decent condition, let alone have any features that the HGTV watching crowd might expect as normal these days?

For those with resources, this might be less of an issue. Larger older homes can be fixed up with some preserved in historic districts. Others are torn down and replaced with larger, modern homes. Those with means can avoid having to purchase homes with significant repair issues and if they do take them on, they made that choice and can address the issues.

The bigger question is this: what do Americans want to do with aging housing? Metropolitan regions need housing. Repairs can be costly. What are funding options? Can this be addressed by boosting incomes and economic opportunities? Are there ways to pay people to repair these homes and keep needed housing units in the community? What happens when housing does crumble and the properties are not desirable for developers or investors?

A burst suburban water main can cause a lot of damage

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Infrastructure might not be a popular topic but when something that works every day suddenly does not work, numerous lives can be disrupted. See this example from suburban Skokie:

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Skokie residents are trying to recover from the huge water main break Feb. 14 that sent icy floodwater into nearby basements, blocked streets, prompted a boil water order for the population of 65,000 lasting nearly three days, shut down Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center, forced Skokie Hospital to transfer trauma surgery patients and surgeons, closed most businesses, shut schools and barred restaurants’ doors on Valentine’s Day…

Though flooding problems were contained in a residential area of northeastern Skokie, locally known as Skevanston, and the northwestern portion of Evanston, a lack of clean water impacted businesses, homes, and institutions throughout Skokie. Village officials said they are preparing, at their Feb. 18 Village Board meeting, to declare a state of emergency, a necessary step before applying for federal and state disaster funds…

According to a news release from the village, the water main break was caused by a failed fitting cap installed in 1963. The part has an expected lifespan of between 80 and 100 years.

Neighbors in the vicinity of Prairie and Emerson told Pioneer Press that the village conducted emergency repairs in the same area the night before the main burst, which made some skeptical of the cause of the break.

Water is basic for everyday life. And not just any water; clean water that flows continuously. Suburbanites might not think much of these water flow on a daily basis but this broken water main disrupted residential, business, medical, and school activity. Streets and buildings were flooded. Regular suburban life was put on hold.

Skokie could be one of many suburbs across the United States that face similar issues. Skokie boomed in population after World War Two, going from just over 7,000 residents in 1940 to over 59,000 in 1960. All of this growth required infrastructure. The particular water main in question had a cap from 1963. Even with an expected life of 80 to 100 years, that cap is over 60 years old. At some point, those pipes will need to be replaced. What will that cost and how easily will it be accomplished? Regular maintenance can help address these issues but bigger replacement projects are sometimes necessary.

If all goes well, suburbs like Skokie will not experience events like these that lead to declaring a state of emergency and the infrastructure that supports suburban life will be regularly maintained so that suburban life can go on.

The number of vehicles required to maintain a suburban county’s roads

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The suburbs are known for driving and therefore have a lot of roads. How many vehicles does it take to maintain the county’s share of roads? Here is the number from DuPage County, Illinois:

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She noted the county’s division of transportation takes care of 220 miles of county highways and 92 miles of multiuse trails. It also maintains 650 vehicles in the countywide fleet and is responsible for snow removal on county roads.

This sounds like a lot of vehicles and I do not know if it is a lot or a little compared to similar-sized counties. At least in this story, the county is looking for a bigger transportation facility to meet all its need for space.

So in one suburban county, there are multiple actors responsible for the roads: the state for interstates and other highways, townships for some roads, municipalities for some roads, and the county for some roads. Is this the best way to approach things? Does each government body have similar vehicles? How close are each other’s roads to each other? If starting suburbia from scratch from this point on, would it be better to have one body address all the roads?

Roads are near sacred in the United States so I understand the attention paid to them. Yet the resources and energy required to maintain them, let alone expand them, is large.

When renovating a home might be more expensive than tearing it down and building a bigger new home

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In response to concerns from Portsmouth, New Hampshire residents that teardown McMansions were going to be constructed, the developer said:

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“By the time we renovated them, it would have been more expensive to do that than building a brand new energy-efficient home. That’s how we made the decision,” Chinburg said…

The company comes up with homes prices, he said, by “basically adding up what it costs to buy the property and build the homes,” and then adding “a fair margin.”

“Unfortunately that’s the market now … we’re not gouging people,” Chinburg said.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the different costs. Older homes may not be a great state of repair, they may need to be brought up to code, and they may not have the current features property owners expect. All of this requires money.

This reminds me of what can happen with big box stores. Vacant ones may not be very attractive given maintenance costs and the need to reconfigure the space for another user. Why not just build another one?

And while teardowns tend to occur in places where land is desirable, I wonder if this points to a tough future for many older homes and the aging American housing stock: will the costs of maintaining or updating the home be perceived as worth it?

Maintaining the undersea cables that keep today’s world humming

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The Internet-enabled world of today might not be possible without having and repairing thousands of undersea cables:

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The world’s emails, TikToks, classified memos, bank transfers, satellite surveillance, and FaceTime calls travel on cables that are about as thin as a garden hose. There are about 800,000 miles of these skinny tubes crisscrossing the Earth’s oceans, representing nearly 600 different systems, according to the industry tracking organization TeleGeography. The cables are buried near shore, but for the vast majority of their length, they just sit amid the gray ooze and alien creatures of the ocean floor, the hair-thin strands of glass at their center glowing with lasers encoding the world’s data…

Fortunately, there is enough redundancy in the world’s cables to make it nearly impossible for a well-connected country to be cut off, but cable breaks do happen. On average, they happen every other day, about 200 times a year. The reason websites continue to load, bank transfers go through, and civilization persists is because of the thousand or so people living aboard 20-some ships stationed around the world, who race to fix each cable as soon as it breaks…

The world is in the midst of a cable boom, with multiple new transoceanic lines announced every year. But there is growing concern that the industry responsible for maintaining these cables is running perilously lean. There are 77 cable ships in the world, according to data supplied by SubTel Forum, but most are focused on the more profitable work of laying new systems. Only 22 are designated for repair, and it’s an aging and eclectic fleet. Often, maintenance is their second act. Some, like Alcatel’s Ile de Molene, are converted tugs. Others, like Global Marine’s Wave Sentinel, were once ferries. Global Marine recently told Data Centre Dynamics that it’s trying to extend the life of its ships to 40 years, citing a lack of money. One out of 4 repair ships have already passed that milestone. The design life for bulk carriers and oil tankers, by contrast, is 20 years…

“One of the biggest problems we have in this industry is attracting new people to it,” said Constable. He recalled another panel he was on in Singapore meant to introduce university students to the industry. “The audience was probably about 10 university kids and 60 old gray people from the industry just filling out their day,” he said. When he speaks with students looking to get into tech, he tries to convince them that subsea cables are also part — a foundational part — of the tech industry. “They all want to be data scientists and that sort of stuff,” he said. “But for me, I find this industry fascinating. You’re dealing with the most hostile environment on the planet, eight kilometers deep in the oceans, working with some pretty high technology, traveling all over the world. You’re on the forefront of geopolitics, and it’s critical for the whole way the world operates now.”

This is a great example of invisible infrastructure. How many Internet users each day think about the cables that support the system? I am guessing very few.

The article suggests the methods of repairing undersea cables resembles that of the first repairers of cables in the second half of the nineteenth century. Given our technological advances, are there quicker ways to do this? I imagine one reason these systems are still used is because they are considered economical. At what point do the cables go away in favor of a different system?

The fate of religious buildings after COVID-19: building maintenance

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As religious groups and congregations ponder attendance post-COVID-19, the condition of their buildings is also important to consider:

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In San Francisco, the historic Old St. Mary’s Cathedral survived when members rebuilt after a fire following the 1906 earthquake but it has struggled mightily during the pandemic to stay open.

The 160-year-old Roman Catholic church, which is heavily dependent on older worshippers and tourists, lost most of its revenue after parishes closed during the pandemic. During those “dark hours,” the Rev. John Ardis had to dismiss most of the lay staff, cut the salary of a priest and close the parish preschool.

The plaster is crumbling, the paint is peeling off the walls and dozens of its stained-glass windows need to be replaced.

Any building requires regular maintenance in order for it to best meet the needs of its users. Churches and religious buildings are no exception. Roofs, heaters and air conditioners, floors, walls, paint, exteriors, and more need checking, repairs, and replacing on a cycle.

The example above hints at two problems COVID-19 brings for the maintenance of religious buildings. First, many congregations depend on tithes or gifts from people in order to keep their building in order. If attendance is down or people are not in the building, they may not give as much in order to take care of the structure. With less money, there are needs to prioritize and basics of the building might fall outside of this as the congregation tries to get by. Second, building maintenance might be tied to the regular presence of people within the building. If a congregation does not meet in the structure for months at a time and/or the group meets online, the building is out of sight and out of mind. It does not need to be maintained in the same way as a structure that regularly has people in and out throughout the week.

Those who do return to services and gatherings post-COVID-19 might find the building needs some work. As my colleague Robert Brenneman and I argue in Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures, religious buildings play an important role in shaping worship and community. Depending on the age of the structure, the funding during COVID-19, and maintenance over the year-plus, the building may need attention or at least to return to its regular maintenance cycle.