Halloween advice: My neighbors are taking advantage of my street's generosity on Halloween

This special edition is part of our Guest Prudie series, where we ask smart, thoughtful people to step in as Prudie for the day and give you advice. Dan’s most recent novel is Hampton Heights: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which the New York Times recently called “a comic, gently spooky ’80s tale of boyhood, community and Burger King.” We asked Kois to weigh in on a new trick-or-treating tradition, withering memorials, and a conversation about death: Dear Prudence, I live in a rural New England town, on a mile-long dirt road with about 12 houses on it. I feel like these families are now taking advantage of the street’s generosity, especially knowing that a very robust trick-or-treating opportunity has returned to the center of town. “I feel like these families are now taking advantage of the street’s generosity,” you write, but do you think the parents’ motivation in organizing this event is … a fevered desire to make sure their children get great candy? But if people keep having babies and nobody “leaves,” then there won’t be enough food, housing, or clothes for everyone as more and more people live on Earth.