Demolition of Abandoned U.S. homes has already begun
For nearly a year now, I have preached a consistent formula for putting a (real) “bottom” in the U.S. housing collapse – a meltdown which is already far worse than the (first) “Great Depression”.
U.S. homeowners require across-the-board mortgage relief, to restore solvency to most U.S. homeowners (i.e. eliminate most of the “negative equity”) - requiring roughly $3 trillion to pay-down all mortgages by approximately 20%. The additional component which is absolutely necessary is to demolish at least one million homes in the U.S. - to begin to put a “dent” into the massive stockpile of 20 MILLION empty homes.
Instead, the Obama regime has resorted to yet more pathetic band-aids, and absurd lies about the severity of the collapse. The U.S. Government's housing agency is now nothing but a bureau of fiction. “House prices have risen for the last two months,” claims the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
In the real world, the Case-Schiller index of U.S. home prices in major U.S. cities shows the price collapse in the U.S. still accelerating, and currently falling by roughly 20% per year. This means that the OFHEO isn't simply lying, it is publishing ridiculous fiction. No one who is capable of counting to ten (without using their fingers) could possibly believe such nonsense.
U.S. banksters are doing their part – by keeping two thirds of already-foreclosed homes off the market. If the banks dumped all these properties onto this over-saturated market, the price collapse would accelerate MUCH faster, still.
Unlike the U.S. federal government, U.S. towns and cities must live in the real world (since they don't own a “magic” printing press, like the privately-owned Federal Reserve). Therefore, they must enact policies which deal with reality, rather than simply increasing the size of their lies.
A harbinger of where the U.S. is heading is easy to find: Flint, Michigan. What makes Flint such a useful example is that is an auto-manufacturing town (or rather, it was), so its collapse started several years earlier than the broader, U.S. economic collapse. Today, this once-thriving of city of nearly ¼ million people has seen it's population shrink by more than half, while abandoned, derelict homes blight the landscape – like a neighbourhood of Beirut, transported to the U.S.
While many U.S. towns and cities have been forced to start demolishing derelict homes, on an individual basis, Flint is now pondering a plan to demolish “entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods”, according to an article in the New York Times.
There are many advantages to widespread, planned demolition of homes, and consolidation – which is currently dubbed simply “shrinkage”. This eliminates the massive waste of city resources servicing neighbourhoods which are largely empty, and maintaining homes (at least at some minimal level) – when there will NEVER be a buyer for these properties.
Consolidating the business district also provides many advantages, including lower taxes for businesses, reduced commuter costs for shoppers after consolidation, and reduced risk of vandalism and other crimes which are prevalent in semi-deserted districts.
The alternative for these near-bankrupt towns and cities is to simply withdraw all services from underpopulated areas (as a necessary cost-savings) – which would lead to the same result, but merely spread over a much longer time frame.
Clearly, the Obama regime has absolutely no desire to live in the real world (and be forced to design policies accordingly). This creates an interesting dichotomy, where U.S. towns and cities are forced to react to an economic collapse already as bad (in the U.S.) as the (first) Great Depression, while the Obama regime continues to proclaim “bottoms” every month – from the security of their taxpayer-funded “ivory towers”.
How long will it be before the U.S. population rejects the Obama regime's “Fantasy Island” propaganda – and demands that they begin to provide responsible government, rather than spending all their time looting the U.S. Treasury to enrich their bankster-masters?
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written by timm jowers, June 16, 2010
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I understand your sentiments. However, in some cases, this "urban blight" has progressed to such a degree that many of the most poverty-stricken cities have districts that look like "war zones". And even if the homes were livable, the city can't afford to provide basic services to these areas.
Given how far the deterioration has gone, even allowing the poor to live in such areas as "squatters" would be a highly dubious policy - since such habitats would be anything-but-safe. And imagine if the GOVERNMENT suddenly seized upon this as a "solution" to U.S. poverty: busing homeless people from various parts of the U.S. to these deserted shanty-towns - and allowing them to live in such ghettos, and then just FORGET about them.
You can't really look at the issues of homelessness and poverty without also looking closely at unemployment, so I also highly recommend a previous commentary:
"Why lying about unemployment is so important"
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=500:why-lying-about-unemployment-is-so-important&catid=46:canadian-commentary&Itemid=134
The only solution to poverty is to first provide JOBS, and then provide affordable (and safe) housing. Until the first problem is dealt with, the second can't be - since the homeless can't afford ANY housing.