{"id":81162,"date":"2015-01-02T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T17:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81162"},"modified":"2014-12-25T15:05:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-25T20:05:09","slug":"unhousing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Unhousing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p><em>Foreclosed homes as haunted houses.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_68323\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-68323\" class=\" wp-image-68323\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign-1024x717.jpeg\" alt=\"MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA\" width=\"600\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign-1024x717.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign-300x210.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign.jpeg 1462w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-68323\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Casey Serin<\/p><\/div>\n<p>My wife and I began searching for a house in 2008, just as the market was crashing, just as those first waves of foreclosed homes and short sales were hitting the market. Priced out of Los Angeles real estate for so long, we were finally able to afford houses whose prices had been ridiculously inflated only six months earlier. Occasionally we went to those open houses with smiling realtors and bowls of candy set out, where owners had recently landscaped or repainted to enhance value, but we could never seriously consider any of these. The homes that mattered had lock boxes, were abandoned or in the process of being abandoned\u2014the ones that reeked of disrepair and despair.<\/p>\n<p>We spent the summer touring nearly every distressed property in the neighborhoods East of Hollywood: Los Feliz, Silverlake, Echo Park, and Atwater Village\u2014every abandoned or half-abandoned monstrosity and beloved ruin, looking for a home. I still have a hard time articulating the sense of dread and fascination those houses stirred in me. The feeling of moving through these spaces\u2014particularly as we were visiting seven or eight of them in an afternoon\u2014was indescribable. A sense of <i>wrongness<\/i> pervaded so many of these homes. I\u2019m not superstitious\u2014I don\u2019t believe in spirits or forces or haunted houses\u2014but much of our lexicon in these cases depends on notions of the supernatural; in the end, the only word that seems useful for talking about the houses is <i>unheimlich\u2014<\/i>a German word, literally \u201cunhomely\u201d or \u201cnot of the home,\u201d \u201cunfamiliar.\u201d It\u2019s more idiomatically translated as \u201cuncanny\u201d: a word that Freud plucked and repurposed from the realm of the supernatural. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/19\/unhousing\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! * Foreclosed homes as haunted houses. My wife and I began searching for a house in 2008, just as the market was crashing, just as those first waves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":666,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[13242,207,7883,9486,7947,217,1148,13243],"class_list":["post-81162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-foreclosures","tag-freud","tag-haunted-houses","tag-homes","tag-houses","tag-los-angeles","tag-shirley-jackson","tag-the-haunting-of-hill-house"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are Foreclosed Homes the New Haunted Houses?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 2, 2015 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! *\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unhousing by Colin Dickey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 2, 2015 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! *\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-01-02T17:00:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1462\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Colin Dickey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Colin Dickey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Colin Dickey\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/11ef427040dc4b9776dbce355c5c77b5\"},\"headline\":\"Unhousing\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-01-02T17:00:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":327,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign-1024x717.jpeg\",\"keywords\":[\"foreclosures\",\"Freud\",\"haunted houses\",\"homes\",\"houses\",\"Los Angeles\",\"Shirley Jackson\",\"the Haunting of Hill House\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Best of 2014\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/\",\"name\":\"Are Foreclosed Homes the New Haunted Houses?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/02\/unhousing-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Foreclosure_sign-1024x717.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-01-02T17:00:04+00:00\",\"description\":\"January 2, 2015 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. 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