|
My parents were poor in the 1950s, but they could buy a house. Houses were smaller and poor people could afford them.
In L.A., people can't afford the rents. That's why they wanted to buy -- because they could buy more cheaply than they could rent.
We need a whole new view on affordable housing.
I live in a low middle class area of L.A. (under gang injunction, the works, I mean low). My husband and I used to go for walks on a large empty lot up in the hillsides.
One day, the bulldozers moved in and someone began to build houses -- rows of big houses -- 4 bedrooms, family rooms, the works. The place became a concrete nightmare as the builders paved all but a few feet in front of one side of each home and a tiny area behind each home. The lots were divided so as to permit the smallest set-back between houses possible. I would never want to live there. Put a few children on those paved streets, and the noise would be deafening.
When we first examined the houses, they were offered for maybe $350,000. Within a couple of years, the builders were demanding about $200,000 more for the same houses -- same floor plans, same construction materials, same cement landscaping, same claustrophobic set-backs, same nightmares.
The builders got greedy.
Since the Reagan administration, our country has had no plan for low-income housing. The Republicans ridicule government-owned projects. Where do they think the guys that do their dirty work for minimum wage are supposed to live? In caves? In the middle of L.A.?
Bush and the conservatives offered the idea of the "ownership society" and home ownership for minorities and the poor so that their friends in the construction business could take over the public housing, renovate it and sell it for high prices as middle class condos.
These bogus "loans," called sub-prime mortgages were intended to pacify the rabble until the condo takeover process could be completed. Democrats in Congress were paid big bucks to go along with the scam. Take a look at the pay-offs on Open Secrets. You will see that Republicans and Democrats alike have feasted at the trough of the companies that profited from the transfer of low-income housing to the hands of the wealthy predator lenders.
I worked 8 years for a homeless project. I watched this tragedy unfurl.
Where do Paulson and Bernanke think that poor families should live? In shoe boxes?
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
