A house sits empty on a street, alone and forsaken by the voices that used to fill it’s walls with laughter, shouts, and conversation.  My friend No More Empty Fortune Cookies wrote about that house on her street and her words are almost haunting,

There’s another empty house on our street. For such a small cul-de-sack, the occupied home to empty home ratio is precariously teetering in unfavorable ways these days.  I would just shrug my shoulders and say meh, but I want our house to sell.

We live in a town with a very high foreclosure and distressed sale rate - it wavers between 30 and 40 percent.  People in our community have talked about how to stop what had been a slow spiral down into a ghetto-like area, but we are starting to feel like we’re spinning out of control.  And our officials won’t raise our property taxes or place a moratorium to stop the continued building of inexpensive, not always sturdy homes.

I fear that one day, our only choice will be to leave this town.