Want Not - Waste It

Talk about the furniture industry doing things the old fashioned way! When it comes to drawing down our inventories, we should have taken a note from some of our friends in the housing industry and made a big bonfire and burned it all.

A bonfire would be similar in spirit to what the good folks over at the Guaranty Bank of Austin, Texas have done with a 16-unit housing development they took over last year in Victorville, Calif., according to a story in the Los Angeles Times.

The homes were in various stages of construction and looting had become a problem. Obviously they weren’t selling. The Los Angeles Times story reports that home prices for San Bernardino County are down 43% since last year, down to a miniscule $160,000.

(Note: $160,000 is still no paltry sum to the writer of this blog, even if the home is in California.)

According to the story, Guaranty Bank of Austin had enough and decided not to “throw good money after bad.” The cost of finishing the homes would have been more than the price for which they could have been sold.

I get that, yes. The developer didn’t take a note from the declining home market in September 2007 when it received building permits. As home prices fell, the developer - who it doesn’t sound like was Guaranty - continued to hope to sell the homes for more than $300,000.

I’m a capitalist and believe that if you buy it, it’s yours. But symbolically, I think destroying excess inventory sends a terrible message. Isn’t excess and unsellable inventory the reason we have vulture investors? The message is that there’s no use for these homes - shown here in a You Tube video as they are torn down.

I guess I’m used to the old fashioned furniture industry, where there seems to be a buyer for excess inventory at every level and where unwanted furniture is often donated to places like homeless or women’s shelters, consignment or some other use.

We’ve got organizations like SWIFT, the Sample Waste Initiative for the Furniture and Textiles Industries, gathering discarded fabric samples to make blankets. Heck, someone from our industry could get in there and reclaim the lumber and start a new line.

And from the standpoint of a writer who covers sustainability issues, do we as a country get a good rap from demolishing unfinished, model and spec homes?

What a waste.

Little positive effect on our psyche can be gained from seeing a big brick in the American dream - homeownership - being gutted by a bunch of bulldozers.

I had a yard sale a couple weeks ago to get rid of my junk. What I couldn’t sell - but had hoped to sell - I donated to Goodwill - for free.