Trouble on the Home Front

While many rejoice in the creature comforts of home during the holiday season, the situation isn’t quite as placid for some neighbors. The former home of the late poet Robert Frost (pictured here) was ransacked last week, with vandals “destroying dozens of items and setting fire to furniture in what police say was an underage drinking party.” William Saletan of Slate recaps the top privacy threats of 2007, many involving domestic nuisances, in the piece “Personal Space Invaders.” As if the hotel market in Manhattan wasn’t cutthroat enough, the Village Voice investigates landlords who are booting long-time residents out of their apartments — illegally, perhaps — and “converting the newly vacant apartments into extended-stay hotel rooms, replacing cherished neighbors with oblivious short-timers.” On the opposite end of the Dickensian spectrum, the LA Times salutes the “city-sanctioned Safe Parking program, which allows people to live — sometimes for years — in cars or RVs in about a dozen parking lots that belong to the city, the county, churches, nonprofits and a few businesses in industrial areas.” … And far out of left field comes news that director Oliver Stone has joined a delegation in Venezuela that hopes to return three hostages home after they’ve been held for years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia… Take the Midnight Express!