11/03/2023
We are here for your built environment! Contact us to see what we can do to help!
The cost of neglect is considerable and while it applies to every facet of our life, I tend to think of it in context of our built environment. The health care industry treats people one at a time, but the built environment affects everyone simultaneously, all the time. The condition of our surroundings is one of the largest factors of public health, but it remains largely ignored.
Consider our cities- they have been neglected for decades. The places we call home exist outside of our living rooms. The space between houses is also our home. Downtown is our home as well. When these areas become neglected, we are forced to watch our collective home fall into disrepair. We are forced to deal with the stress of decline and the adverse of affects of neglect.
The condition of a community affects everyone that calls it home. The renter, the worker, the student. The hospital, the university, the manufacturer, the tech start-up- they are all impacted by the place they are located. Neglect effects everyone and every institution. Neglect brings about a level of stress for all. Each and every citizen is forced to confront the decline that surrounds them. They are all suffering from the anxiety of watching something beautiful or ordered descend into ugliness and chaos. Each resident experiences a decline in self-esteem as their place makes them feel ashamed.
Because our surroundings affect how we feel, how we behave and who we are, we begin to realize neglect is the furthest thing from cheap. Penny wise and pound foolish, as the saying goes. Saving money on maintenance today just means spending twice as much tomorrow and suffering the adverse affects of delay in the meantime. Neglect doesn’t mean less work, it means more work later.
We can’t afford to let things go, because neglect is expensive. It is stressful and in the end, it’s hard work. It costs a fortune to let one downtown building descend into blight. Maybe not for the deadbeat owner, but for all the surrounding owners, for the municipality, for the county, for business owners, for home owners, for the chamber, for tourism, for the economic development office, for locals’ sense of civic pride and civic self-esteem. If municipal governments ever considered the long term costs of neglect, they would realize code enforcement would be their most profitable department.
Neglect is simply delaying cost and effort and multiplying its effects. It doesn’t go away, it just waits- compounding interest, not in the shadows, but in broad daylight where everyone is forced to confront it. When neglect occurs downtown, every resident has to watch the collective cracks grow larger, where everyone shudders at the broken windows and feels the shame of falling bricks, sagging rooflines and heaving sidewalks. The physical costs of vacancy and blight are quantifiable and substantial, the emotional cost are exponentially higher.
Neglect ain’t easy and it sure ain’t cheap
