New Homeowners Decry Cluster Boxes
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The personal mailbox is the latest casualty of suburban sprawl.
Across the nation, the U.S. Postal Service increasingly is delivering mail to communal cluster boxes as a way to keep pace with booming residential growth while controlling labor costs. The new strategy, aimed at new developments in fast-growing areas such as Clarksburg, Leesburg and Waldorf, saves the postal service time and money.
"Instead of going from door to door, from lawn to lawn, from driveway to driveway, we have a central location," said Luvenia Hyson, a postal service regional spokeswoman.
But many residents and developers say cluster boxes -- traditionally reserved for apartments and townhouses, not single-family homes -- are impersonal, inconvenient and downright ugly.
Mia Hall just moved into her dream house, a five-bedroom Colonial in Southern Maryland featuring a gourmet kitchen with a center island and a double oven, twin fireplaces and a finished basement, as well as a whirlpool tub and dual shower heads in the master bathroom.
At the edge of her nicely manicured front lawn, however, something's missing: a mailbox. Hall, 37, a government employee who lives with her husband and two children, walks each day from her cul-de-sac to the end of winding Downshire Court to retrieve her mail from a locked steel box.
Hers is slot No. 13 -- "lucky 13," she said, dejected.
"When I walk down there, I think, 'Jeez, this is a long walk.' It would complete our home if we had a nice mailbox out front that has our number, our name on it."
Nearby, in the first phase of the Waldorf subdivision Avalon, mail is delivered to personal mailboxes -- because construction began before the postal service stepped up its communal delivery efforts. But in Avalon West, where Hall moved into one of the first finished models this spring, mail lands in beige communal cluster boxes.
The communal delivery system's detractors include the National Association of Home Builders, which is lobbying against it. A.J. Holliday, a lawyer for the Washington-based interest group, called the new postal strategy "discrimination" against people buying new homes.
"The post office has set up a separate class, and they've created new residential construction as a separate class," he said.
Holliday said he understands why it saves money to deliver to cluster boxes. "They can send a truck up to this box, unload in the box, and drive away," he said.
The postal service adds about 2 million addresses each year nationwide, spokeswoman Yvonne Yoerger said. In addition, the postal service said cluster boxes are popular among some residents because they help protect against identity theft -- the slots are locked, whereas most personal mailboxes do not have locks.
"Your curb box is open to anyone, but with the cluster boxes, they are secured and you have to have a key," Hyson said.
But that doesn't make communal mail delivery okay, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers, which opposes the strategy.
"Our position is that where the postal patron requests curbside delivery, we believe that they should have curbside delivery," William H. Young, president of the postal worker's union, said through a spokesman. But "every new delivery point that is being opened up, the postal service is looking at using cluster boxes."
In Clarksburg, a rapidly developing community in northern Montgomery County, the postal service delivers mail to cluster boxes in all new subdivisions of single-family homes, Clarksburg Postmaster Dan Albert said.
In booming parts of Northern Virginia, such as Leesburg, the postal service wants to institute communal mail delivery in new developments. "We're trying to," Leesburg post office Supervisor Mary Bodolay said. "We have a couple of new [subdivisions] going in now. I'm trying to convince them to do it."
She said she tells home builders, "We'll buy the mailboxes, and all you have to do is pour the pad and find the location."
At Avalon West in Charles County, where new homes start at a half-million dollars, some home buyers are fuming.
Brian Hamilton and Kim Muchnick are engaged and recently signed for a $618,000 home next to Hall's house. One recent evening, the couple visited the bed of dirt and piles of wood that will sprout into their 4,700-square-foot brick beauty by September.
"This house is our dream. It's got everything -- all the bells and whistles," Hamilton said. But, he added, "you deserve to have a nice mailbox in front of your house. I don't think that those cluster boxes are pleasing to the eye."
Sitting on her front porch, staring ruefully at her freshly planted garden of shrubs and flowers, Hall said she did not find out that the subdivision would have only communal mail delivery until after she moved into her $525,000 home.
Particularly disappointing is that the houses in the first phase of the Avalon development have different mail service. "They get mailboxes and we don't," Hall said.
"If I didn't have a mailbox, I'd be mad," said Eric Johnson, 46, as he trimmed his grass in Avalon early one evening. A cluster box "devalues the area in terms of appearance. It's an eyesore. It really is."
Centex Homes, the builder of Avalon, asked the postal service to deliver mail individually in Avalon West, said Carole Oates, sales representative for the subdivision. But she said the postal service refused.
"That's what we preferred and lobbied for to no avail, but it was a postmaster general decision," Oates said. "Aesthetically, we think it looks better. That's what we've done with the first phase, and that's what we've always done, and we didn't want to change it."
The postal service said it does not mandate that all new subdivisions use cluster boxes.
"It's something that we try to implement when we can by having some kind of dialogue with the builder and getting the builder to understand that we may want to put in the cluster boxes for various reasons," Hyson said.
But Oates said: "When you go home, would you rather pick up your own mail in your driveway or ride down to the corner somewhere? It's a no-brainer."
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