Yesterday for our anniversary Kristin and I decided to go on a bike ride.  We didn’t know where we were going to go, but we knew we wanted to have lunch in Downtown Franklin and then go from there.  First of all, let me say we had an awesome time and it was one of the most fun days I have had in a long time.  But that’s not what this post is about.

We’ve lived in this area for almost four years now, and for as long as we’ve lived here Downtown Franklin has been ‘the place’.  It’s the swanky area.  It’s where the ‘high end’ restaurants are, it’s where the money goes, and it’s where people go to see or be seen.  But even with all that, we love it down there.  We love the little shops, we love  the ability to walk around at night with other families, grab some Starbucks or ice cream and enjoy the quaint little downtown.  In fact, we’d love to live there someday.  We’ve even talked about it, we’ve looked at houses, but with the area being so desirable, living there isn’t much of a reality as far as money goes.

See, something like this house here is absolutely gorgeous and can be ours for one easy payment of $1,495,000.  A little steep for our price range, but that’s not even what this post is about.  Let me get to the point.

Yesterday while riding around and drooling over gorgeous Downtown Franklin houses Kristin and I took a side road and ended up in what felt like a completely different world.  You see the red and blue line up there on that map?  That was one of the circles we rode.  And here’s what we saw.  The house above on one street selling for one and a half million dollars on the red line and then this house literally a block away.

Now, what this is NOT, is a statement of housing prices, or how the market has changed or anything like that.  While Kristin and I were riding down the ‘Blue Line’ I couldn’t help but think, ‘Where have I been?  I thought Downtown Franklin was a ‘swanky’ high end area?  How come I have never heard of this area of obvious neglect and poverty.  We waved and talked to a few people down the street, shaking our heads at how run down some of these houses are and the fact that even after four years of living in the area we have never seen or heard of the people that live a block away from ‘where the money hangs out’.  Do churches not want to talk about it?  Do the folks on West Main just ignore what’s down the street?

I don’t even really have a solution for something like this and I’m certainly not being overly preachy about helping people out or anything, but I was completely blown away at the fact that this is a society and group of people that seem like they have completely fallen off the cities radar.

Any of you Franklin peeps been over there?  Heard anything about this area?  Any churches involved in helping this area out?  Or are we too busy wishing we could walk to Starbucks from our one and a half million dollar home?