Home.html



This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008)

A residential home in Pathanapuram, Kerala-India

A home is a place of residence or refuge.¹ It is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and be able to store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, living either in the wild or in a domesticated environment.

There are certain cultures in which members lack permanent homes, such as with nomadic people.

Terminology

Many wetlands are home to birds such as these Northern Shoveler ducks.

A houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle, Washington

While a house or a residential dwelling is often referred to as a "home", the concept of "home" expresses itself upon a much broader denotation of a physical dwelling. Many people think of home in terms of where they grew up or where they lived, a place that brings back old memories or feelings, and a home can even be a time rather than an actual place.¹

The word "home" can be used for various types of residential institutions in which people can live in, such as nursing homes, group homes (orphanages for children, retirement homes for seniors, prisons for criminals, treatment facilities, etc.), and foster homes.

In computer terminology, a 'home' is a starting view that branches off into other tasks, e.g. a homepage or a desktop. Many such home pages on the internet start with introductory information, recent news or events, and links to subpages.

Psychological impact

Since it can be said that humans are generally creatures of habit, the state of a person's home has been known to physiologically influence their behavior, emotions, and overall mental health.^{citation needed}

Some people may become homesick when they leave their home over an extended period of time.

History of Homes

The invention of homes probably came from the homes that animals build - bird nests, beaver dams, burrows, etc. In prehistoric times, families built their own one-room huts or tents. When natural disasters destroyed their homes, they quickly rebuilt their homes within a week. They did not buy homes, nor pay rent and property tax. Homelessness did not exist, because everyone knew how to built a hut or tent. Theft was virtually unknown, because everyone knew how to make baskets, pottery, hunting weapons, etc.

During the Feudal System in Europe, lords divided entire countries into personal territories. No one else could own land. People who lived on the lords' land had to pay one third of their income to their local lord in taxes, plus one third to the king. The lords took many human rights away from the people who lived on their land.

Many people escaped the oppressive Feudal System during the Age of Exploration, when they colonized continents like Africa, the Americas, and Australia. As much as 90% of the colonists built their own log cabins on their own land from the trees on that land. These self-sufficient pioneers and farmers grew, hunted, and herded their own food, drew water from wells and rivers, and spun their own cloth, much like the natives. Most of them were too poor to rent or buy homes, and often too distant for the tax collector to reach.

During the Industrial Revolution, many farmers sold the farm and moved to the city to work in factories and shops. City life had many advantages, such as access to time-saving technologies, running water, sewage systems instead of outhouses, electricity, luxuries, and entertainments. For the first time in U.S. history, home ownership dropped dramatically, as people rented city apartments near their jobs, instead of building a home. People had more money to spend, causing a rise in inflation, rent, and home prices. Homelessness rose among those who could not afford homes or apartments. Theft rose in the cities because there were more products to buy, own, and steal. In the U.S., the practice of debtor's prison was reduced in 1833. Without debtor's prison, many Americans were less afraid to borrow money to buy homes.

In the 20th century, the invention and development of electricity and plumbing caused home construction to become more specialized. This caused fewer builders and higher home prices. A new complicated building code and zoning laws discouraged people from building their own homes. Instead, people rented apartments or bought homes. To afford a home, new forms of lending were invented, such as financing and credit cards. People who borrow money have more available money to spend, causing rising house prices. Governments often responded to the growing homeless and rent problem by passing laws that allow easier borrowing of money to buy homes, and allowed loans to people with bad credit while compensating the banks. This caused more inflation of home prices. In the U.S., the price of an average new home grew from $16,500 in 1960[1] to $149,800 in 1990[2], far beyond the rate of inflation. Today only half of the population of the U.S. owns homes, while the other half rents apartments. This has prompted some to build their own homes outside of city limits to escape the high home prices and complex building codes, just as the traditional native folk still do.

See also

Look up home in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References