The House Decided for You

Cedar Valley News — March 20, 2026
Faith and the Front Porch: The House Decided for You
By: Dan Larson
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

Only a quarter of Americans say they know most of their neighbors. Between 2003 and 2022, face-to-face socializing declined by 30 percent among American men and by more than 45 percent among teenagers. The country has moved from a “townshipped” society, where neighbors communicated regularly, to a “networked” one, where local neighborhoods, churches, and civic organizations have weakened over time. I have spent 25 years building houses. I can tell you part of the reason. The house decided for you.

I am a contractor. I have framed walls, hung doors, and poured foundations in Cedar Valley since I was young enough to think the work would never tire me out. I have watched the houses change. The homes I built early in my career had front porches wide enough for two chairs and a conversation. The garage was on the side or in the back. The front door faced the street. When you walked up to the house, you walked toward the people who lived there.

The houses I am asked to build now face the street with a garage door. The front entrance is a decorative afterthought between the garage and the landscaping. The living space is in the back, behind a privacy fence, facing a yard nobody outside the family will ever see. The message the house sends to the street is clear: we are not available.

I do not blame the homeowners. They are buying what the market offers. I do not blame the architects. They are designing what the market rewards. But somebody should say out loud what the blueprints are doing to the neighborhood. When the garage faces the street, the car goes in, the door comes down, and the family disappears. No wave. No pause where a conversation might begin.

Before air conditioning, families sat on the porch because it was the coolest place in the house. The porch was not a design feature. It was survival. But it did something no architect intended — it put people where other people could see them. The widow next door came over with a question about her gutters. The teenager down the block stopped to ask if your son could come out. None of this was planned. It happened because the house was built facing outward.

Now the house faces inward. The backyard has a deck. The deck has a grill. The family eats dinner 30 feet from their neighbor’s family eating dinner, separated by a six-foot fence, and neither family knows the other is there.

Aisha wrote last month about loneliness. Chloe wrote yesterday about inheritance — what we pass to our children through our hands and our choices. Both are stories about connection being interrupted. The front porch is another one. It is the oldest one. And unlike the others, this one is drawn into the blueprint before the first nail is driven.

I keep a notebook. I write down verses and thoughts when the day gets long. I wrote this last week: the first act of hospitality is the architecture. Before you invite someone in, the house has already told them whether they are welcome.

Rebecca and I sit on our front porch most evenings when the weather is fair. It is not a large porch. Two chairs, a small table, and a view of the street. People walk by and wave. Some stop. Last Tuesday a man I had not spoken to in a year stopped because he saw me sitting there and remembered something he had been meaning to ask. The conversation lasted four minutes. It would not have happened if I had been on the deck in the back.

Let’s find a way. If you are building, ask your builder for a real front porch — not a decorative overhang, a porch with room for chairs. If you already have one, sit on it. If you do not, put two chairs in your front yard and see what happens. The architecture does not have to decide for you. You can decide for the architecture.

The front porch is open. It has always been open. The question is whether anybody is sitting on it.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, Publication Consultants, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

The front porch is open. Readers of the Cedar Valley News are gathering on Facebook to respond to the editorials, share their own stories, and join a conversation built on respect, honesty, and no party lines. Come sit with us. https://bit.ly/40p8jKy

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