House Hunting...

8:30 Thursday morning I got into a car with two of my peers to scope out houses in a small suburban area of Kalamazoo. The area looked fine enough, manicured similarly built houses with relatively large gardens, typical and exactly what I expected to see. As I walked off in my designated direction (we split up so to cover the most area) I started to notice some oddities. While walking along the side of the road I noticed a section of grass that was higher then the others, so I looked up and examined the house it belonged to. Instead of a white fence leading to the backyard there was a peeling one with a broken gate... the garage was cracked with broken windows, the gutters were filled with broken tiles... but more then just neglected the house was empty, not a sign of life or ownership... surprisingly this wasn't the worst or only house that I came across that showed signs of abandonment... I've seen pictures of foreclosed houses before, I've seen how houses have rotted away... but standing in front of them, seeing the reality of the situation to be too real made it hit home. It was a horrible feeling to walk through the neighborhood and keep seeing these spoiling houses, many of them so obvious... I could only imagine how the people living there feel about it.