Longing for one's rural roots

The New York Times published a fascinating piece this week on the challenges facing baby boomers and Gen X'ers as they age, while living alone.  One of the folks featured was Mary Felder, who owns a home in the Strawberry Mansion area of Philadelphia.  Her very urban present implicates a rural past that she's started to long for:

Mary Felder, 65, raised her children, now grown, in her rowhouse in Philadelphia. Her home has plenty of space for one person, but upkeep is expensive on the century-old house.

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The constraints are especially severe for many older Black Americans, for whom the legacy of redlining and segregation has meant that homeownership has not generated as much wealth. The percentage of people living alone in large houses is highest in many low-income, historically Black neighborhoods. In those areas, many homes are owned by single, older women.

One of them is Ms. Felder of Strawberry Mansion, a neighborhood in Philadelphia. She and her ex-husband bought their two-story brick rowhouse in the mid-1990s for a song, after it was damaged in a fire.

While raising three children, Ms. Felder worked a series of jobs, including retail, hotel housekeeping and airport security. She retired in 2008 and has lived by herself for more than a decade, though her sisters, children and grandchildren live nearby.

Maintaining her home is a challenge. In rainstorms, she sometimes had to use every piece of fabric in the house to sop up water pouring down a kitchen wall. And she worries about her safety.

At times, she dreams about relocating to small-town South Carolina, where she was born and raised.

She imagines a small home there, perhaps even a trailer.

But the median value of a home in her neighborhood was $59,000, according to recent census data. Ms. Felder thinks she could sell her house and net about $40,000.

“That’s not enough” to retire down south, she said, sighing, sitting in her living room filled with plants.

Ms. Felder is a fixture in her neighborhood, keeping watch over it, and has received help from Habitat for Humanity to repair her roof.

But in September, living alone became harder.

While she was cleaning the trash out of a nearby alley with neighbors, a masked gunman looked her in the eyes and shot her twice in the legs.

Ms. Felder had no clue who shot her, and there has been no arrest. She recovered at her daughter’s home across town, where the ground floor has a bedroom and bathroom, unlike in her own house.

Felder still has not spent a night in her house in Strawberry Mansion because she is afraid.