Although if oil prices keep plunging Midland and Odessa will be FULL of abandoned homes. Some of Lubbock's most ritzy and exclusive neighborhoods, where the houses are more like castles, will probably be vacant and decaying. Oil money comes and oil money goes. And I can't say that I have any sympathy whatsoever for oil business types.
My wife and I looked yesterday at a house for lease that was in such awful shape, only crackheads or fratrats would consider living there. Somebody actually expected to make money out of that derelict! Where there is greed, there is hope. You've got to admire the ambitious dreams of aspiring slumlords. Probably, his daddy and his daddy before him were all slumlords. Tradition!
I'm getting too negative! So let's look at more abandoned homes, and remember that one person's horrible personal loss is always another person's investment opportunity!
No surprise, these are all in East Lubbock. No development there. No investment there. Lubbock is a white city, and the money is all white, and the bankers and the developers are all white, and as you go east in Lubbock the color changes from white to darker shades. Wrong color, wrong race, no money, no investment.
These houses are near this nice park. The park is nice enough but it's on the "wrong" side of University Ave.
The houses I'm about to present are small, in dismal states of disrepair, and in some cases they have been severely vandalized. They are candidates for demolition. In their neighborhoods they are blemishes. Some of them might be in occasional use as crack houses. The city does NOTHING. These are poorer neighborhoods, and whoever "represents" these parts of town on the Lubbock city council (that laughable body) could not care less.
There is much, much, more of this to come...
We visited some junked out old cars, out on South University and I took their pictures. I could not even identify some of these hulks. They need to be taken in and sandblasted and given a coat of primer before they are too rusty to have any value. I think these parts ought to be of value, to someone, someone restoring a particular old vehicle, or a hot-rodder, at least.
These things sat in a showroom, once, all bright and shiny and new, and somebody paid good money for them, and drove them, and felt proud of themselves. Now look at them. For that matter, what happened to their former owners? Do they, or whatever is left of them, look even as good as the cars they once drove?
