I feel that the value of HOME is thinning

Home is often a place of harbor and safety, central to one’s life. The environment at home must be able to offer warmth and protection to whomever live in it more to the point of the four walls that surround a family.

I was born in a carpenter’s family; my father was a carpenter and a construction labour. During 60s’ and 70s’, the construction and building businesses were not as hostile as they were today. My father was the breadwinner of the family; his daily wages could not support the whole family. We were terribly much depend on my mother’s tailoring and cooking skills, and my eldest sister worked as a house helper for the local landowner to live.

Those days, to me, house builder was a prestige occupation. They built a house for those who needed a shelter for a family, provided a sense of security for those who live in that structure, earned their living with bloods and sweats. Their meagre income though not consistent, at least their little ones at home were not starving. Before 80s’, not every family could afford to own a house, most families rented a room and shared kitchen and bath with other tenants in a large house.

In late 70s, a new housing estate, part of the government housing project, was built on the land next to our village, to be precise, just across the street from our rented house. It was exciting news to my family when my father got the offer to the construction site. A lot of families were on the lower end of the financial spectrum, this new housing project created employment opportunities to those who lived in the surrounding areas.

Many families had benefited from the new housing project, and they had finally found a shelter for their entire family. My kind-hearted neighbor, a teacher who rented a house just opposite ours, too, had found her new home for her family of seven people.

We certainly reaped advantages; we grew up in a more comfortable household during the construction period. The construction supervisor, the “Kepala”- the villagers called him, was the greatest man I had ever met; he had stealthily offered some part-time jobs for my older brothers during our school holidays. That added on to the family incomes.

Nowadays, housing business is one of the most annoying professions in the business world; construction sites are no more as a place where the hard-core families worked to make living to feed their children here. Construction workers are mostly foreigners. The developers are by and large the foreign investors. People who involved in real estate business are driving a luxury car, living in bungalow house, well educated, and the business men. These are the forerunners of the new jargon for HOME.

However, are these people build HOME for a family because it is a basic need, or, plainly produce another luxury product for the exclusive customers and attract wealth from upper-class?

People are going after their 2nd home project so that they can find a niche for their service or product in the market place or to stay competitive in the market. Home is a place not only for the hearts lie, but also where the wealth is. You feel the need to own homes, not because of you need a place for a family to live in comfortably and happily, but because of you want a right of access to the market.

Home, nowadays, is a place where part of the family waits till the rest of the family brings the car back. – Earl Wilson.

Home is not where you live, but where they understand you. – Christian Morganstem.

Wai Ping Lee/April 2011

Related Article:  There is no place like home.