How to Build a Ghetto

So you decide to buy a house. You walk back along Cedar Place and into the air-conditioned sales office of Richmond American Homes, where you're greeted by the bubbly saleswoman.

After you announce your plans to buy, she tells you with immediacy and with a hush in her voice, "I only have three units left."

Alert! Dummy Copy!!

John Johnston

Shely Lowe and her kids aren’t homeless, and they don’t live in a ghetto — even if their neighbors say they do.

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More About

• Shely Lowe
• Montgomery Force
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You listen as she pitches Lowry: Home values on the base and around it are through the roof; the place is great for kids; it's the hottest property in urban Colorado. She has the Richard model available at $394,995, a two-story, four-bedroom home with a two-car garage. There's also the Arthur -- which, she adds, "I just love" -- another two-story, four-bedroom unit starting at $374,995. The Andrew, the Francis and the Maria are all gone.

You look beneath the glass-enclosed case with oak trim and study the map of the neighborhood. You search for Aspen Terrace and its $20,000 homes. Shely Lowe's home is not represented on the map. In fact, East Maple Street, the street her family lives on, doesn't exist. You ask, "Where are those homes on your map?"

"Where all that construction is going on?" she asks. You watch her pull out yet another map, one that now includes East Maple Street -- Lowe's street -- but still no homes. The area is a blank. Across the blankness, it reads, in calligraphy, "Westerly Park." You listen to the saleswoman explain how this new neighborhood is "filling in really quickly."

You ask her once more about the brown homes that are already out there.

"The ones behind the fences?"

"And the other ones next to them."

"Oh," she sighs, circling her fingernails over the empty space on the map. "That's where Lowry Elementary is going to go."