美国国家公共电台 NPR--A rural community in New York aims to turn vacant homes into affordable living spaces

A rural community in New York aims to turn vacant homes into affordable¹ living spaces

Transcript²

The country's got a severe shortage of housing. Yet in many parts of the rural United States, houses sit abandoned and in need of repair.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Here's a contradiction in the U.S. housing market. Home prices are high in many places. It can be hard even to find a place for sale. But there are also millions of vacant homes and apartments across this country, especially in rural America. North Country Public Radio's Emily Russell reports on one county that wants to unlock the housing stock that could be available.

EMILY RUSSELL, BYLINE³: A lot of the houses in Saranac Lake, N.Y., were built more than a century ago. Back then, tuberculosis⁴ patients came to the village for fresh mountain air. Some of those big, grand homes have been really well-maintained, while others have not.

SHAWN DUHEME: Come on in.

RUSSELL: I should just duck under?

DUHEME: Yeah.

RUSSELL: I duck under the scaffolding outside a home just a few blocks up from the lake.

Hi. I'm Emily.

DUHEME: Hi. Hi, Emily. I'm Shawn.

RUSSELL: Shawn Duheme is wearing a thick, blue hoodie covered in a thin layer of sawdust. We step inside what is essentially⁵ a construction zone. This house had been vacant for years when it went up for sale at a tax foreclosure auction⁶ back in 2019.

DUHEME: All the properties I was looking at, I had physically⁷ gone and seen, were going way too high. And this one popped up, and nobody bid on it. And I said, I can bid on that. How bad can it be?

RUSSELL: Turns out it was pretty bad. Duheme posted a tour of the place on his YouTube channel last spring.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DUHEME: You know, paneling, ceiling tiles falling down, falling down - a real mess.

RUSSELL: There were holes in the ceiling, rot in the wood, trash everywhere. Duheme is a local contractor⁸. His plan is to renovate⁹ this place and sell it as a single-family home. There's a big demand here for housing. But there are also a lot of places like this, rundown and abandoned homes. Duheme says, he gets it.

DUHEME: If you don't know how to maintain that Tudor or that cedar¹⁰ or whatever, it's just going to degrade, right? And then it gets to the point where it's so expensive to maintain your home that you just let it go.

RUSSELL: According to the Saranac Lake Housing Task Force, about 19% of units here are vacant. That's nearly twice the national average. Housing expert Allan Mallach says the problem can start with just one vacant home in a neighborhood.

ALLAN MALLACH: People start to say, if this property is being neglected, why should I bother? And it sort of creates a chain reaction.

RUSSELL: Mallach is a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress. It's a national nonprofit focused specifically on vacant housing. The issue is unfolding in Appalachia, in the Great Plains, in the Deep South. Mallach says it's a sign of a broader economic problem.

MALLACH: The American economy, to an extraordinary extent, has kind of walked away from rural areas.

RUSSELL: There is no national strategy to deal specifically with vacant housing. But there is one tool that's become more popular on a more regional level, land banks. When someone stops paying their taxes and their home goes into foreclosure, a land bank can step in to decide what's best. Franklin County, which includes Saranac Lake, is applying to create its own land bank. Jeremy Evans is the county's CEO of economic development.

JEREMY EVANS: When a town or village comes and asks the land bank for help with a problem property, the land bank has the resources, the technical expertise¹¹, the financial resources to say, yes, we can help with that.

RUSSELL: The land bank can then decide whether to invest in the property and eventually put it back on the market or demolish¹² it. Cities like Greenville, S.C., and states like Michigan have their own land banks. There's even a bill in front of Congress to create a national network of them. For now, though, people like Shawn Duheme in Saranac Lake are largely on their own. He's scrimping and saving. He's actually hoping to monetize the YouTube channel where he's documenting his renovations.

DUHEME: And if that happens, then I can start buying these properties up and putting this level of work and higher into them.

RUSSELL: At the end of our interview, Duheme takes me on a quick tour. He pulls back the plastic on one of the windows in the master bedroom.

DUHEME: So when the leaves are down, you can see the mountain range in the back there. And over here, you can see the lake.

RUSSELL: Today, the lake is shimmering¹³ in the sun. It's Duheme's hope that maybe a year from now, it'll be a local family who will get to live with this view.

INSKEEP: North Country Public Radio's Emily Russell.

1 affordable   

adj.支付得起的，不太昂贵的

参考例句：

• The rent for the four-roomed house is affordable.四居室房屋的房租付得起。
• There are few affordable apartments in big cities.在大城市中没有几所公寓是便宜的。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 tuberculosis   

n.结核病，肺结核

参考例句：

• People used to go to special health spring to recover from tuberculosis.人们常去温泉疗养胜地治疗肺结核。
• Tuberculosis is a curable disease.肺结核是一种可治愈的病。

5 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

6 auction   

n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖

参考例句：

• They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
• They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。

7 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

8 contractor   

n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌

参考例句：

• The Tokyo contractor was asked to kick $ 6000 back as commission.那个东京的承包商被要求退还6000美元作为佣金。
• The style of house the contractor builds depends partly on the lay of the land.承包商所建房屋的式样，有几分要看地势而定。

9 renovate   

vt.更新，革新，刷新

参考例句：

• The couple spent thousands renovating the house.这对夫妇花了几千元来翻新房子。
• They are going to renovate the old furniture.他们准备将旧家具整修一番。

10 cedar   

n.雪松，香柏(木)

参考例句：

• The cedar was about five feet high and very shapely.那棵雪松约有五尺高,风姿优美。
• She struck the snow from the branches of an old cedar with gray lichen.她把长有灰色地衣的老雪松树枝上的雪打了下来。

11 expertise   

n.专门知识(或技能等)，专长

参考例句：

• We were amazed at his expertise on the ski slopes.他斜坡滑雪的技能使我们赞叹不已。
• You really have the technical expertise in a new breakthrough.让你真正在专业技术上有一个全新的突破。

12 demolish   

v.拆毁(建筑物等)，推翻(计划、制度等)

参考例句：

• They're going to demolish that old building.他们将拆毁那座旧建筑物。
• He was helping to demolish an underground garage when part of the roof collapsed.他当时正在帮忙拆除一个地下汽车库，屋顶的一部份突然倒塌。

13 shimmering   

v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The sea was shimmering in the sunlight. 阳光下海水波光闪烁。
• The colours are delicate and shimmering. 这些颜色柔和且闪烁微光。 来自辞典例句