Don't Buy A Collapsible Home Because They're Built In Such A Way That They Will Collapse Day!
A smart consumer never assumes. But when Collapsible Homes were introduced to the Community Development market, it was assumed by many that these homes were built so as to one day fall down because such a design was cheaper to build and therefore cheaper to buy.
Not true.
Take a look at this 2002 interview with Cole Robertson, president of Homestead Developments and designer of the Collapsible Home. This interview was originally published in the Mascara Industry journal Lashes and has been reprinted below in its entirety, with permission.
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Lashes Magazine: Did you design the Collapsible Home because it was cheaper to build and therefore cheaper to buy?
Cole Robertson: No.
LM: Really?
CR: Yeah. That's not why.
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Pretty startling stuff, huh? Unfortunately, turmoil, both financial and monetary, caused bitter infighting within the Mascara industry and prevented anyone from looking up whether the industry that handles homes being built was called the Home Design industry, or the Housing Industry, or something like Community Development or whatever, so since they didn't know what that industry was called and were too busy worrying about Mascara Industry turmoil to ask around, they never knew how to look up that industry's offices in the phone book to tell somebody.
The end-result: Collapsible Homes sold like vaginas that queef silver dollars.
What people didn't know, and what Girls Are Pretty is about to make up, is that the Collapsible Home is actually far more expensive to build than a home that doesn't fall down on purpose. This is because Cole Robertson designed the Collapsible Home to fall all at once, and to the right.
"Always to the right," Mr Robertson said recently to a person who was listening. "I tried making them fall to the left, but I thought that looked stupid. When the house all of a sudden just slants over to the right and drops like a drunk on a doorstep, that rules."
Robertson, it turns out, never created the Collapsible Home to make a buck. In fact, he priced the homes at far below their construction cost so as to make them so affordable that many Americans would have no choice but to buy them.
"There are a lot of people out there who would like to own their own home but can't afford it," says Robertson. "I realized that if the Collapsible Home was cheap enough, people would buy it. And at first, I thought it was really funny that all these people would choose to live in these houses that will one day just fall down on their heads, guaranteed. And then they just have to climb out of the rubble and find somewhere else to live because their house fell down, just like they were promised it would. I used to just drive around and sit in my car outside the houses I sold and wait for them to fall down. After one would fall, I'd wait to see how many of the people who bought it would climb out of the rubble and stand there wondering where to go and live, then I'd drive to another house and watch that one fall."
But the bloom is off the rose for Robertson. "Eventually, it got boring. I knew the houses were gonna fall just as clearly as the people who bought them. And even though I tried to construct them with varying declines in durability, eventually people could tell when the house was about to collapse and they'd move in with their mothers as much as a week beforehand. So now I just keep making intentionally failed attempts at suicide to try to get my daughter to write me back."
While Collapsible Homes might have seemed like a terrible idea, in the end, there was actually no point to them either. "I was just really rich," said Robertson. "When I realized I was rich enough to get a lot of people to choose to live in homes that fall down, I figured 'What the hey?'" When asked whether he regretted putting the Collapsible Home on the market, Robertson just kind of shrugged and started talking to someone else.
So, if you were planning on buying the Collapsible Home, make sure you're aware that the home will one day collapse. And make sure you know that the only reason it will collapse is because a very rich man used to think that was funny.
Happy Don't Buy A Collapsible Home Because They're Built In Such A Way That They Will Collapse Day!
