How hard would it be for towns to buy unused buildings/houses and

[LiberalLoner]

use them to help the homeless/unemployed? I guess towns are strapped for cash just as the states are, etc. but if all the churches were to take up collections, wouldn't there eventually be enough to do something like this in towns? Or is this something that can only be done on a state level or federal level?

The reason I ask is that I really feel our present system to help the poor, elderly, unemployed, disabled etc. is collapsing and that things are going to get worse.

I'm starting to think about the only way things will ever get better, is if we somehow work together to help one another.

[Tx4obama]

1. The churches should buy them and house the homeless.

Instead of all those mega-churches spending their money on TV air-time, massive fancy church buildings, airplanes, fancy cars, etc they should be using the donations they receive to help the poor and homeless.

[FLyellowdog]

2. Totally agree.nt

[blondeatlast]

3. Love the idea, but right now, municipalities are losing federal and

state grants hand-over-fist.

Charities could perhaps do it, but then there would be huge zoning issues--residential neighborhoods would have a cow over this (ever had someone try to open a domestic violence shelter in your neighborhood? I have--good God, people lost their minds over it. It opened anyway and there's been no complaints; go figure--most people couldn't tell you where it's located.

[LiberalLoner]

6. oh, yeah, there is always the "NIMBY" factor. :( I volunteered at a

domestic violence shelter once. The women and children there didn't seem in the least dangerous to me. Scared, beaten down, wondering how they were going to get their lives together, but not dangerous.

[bobbolink]

4. I had hoped that my OP would finally put those things to rest.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1113198&mesg_id=1113198

Sadly, I guess not.

I can't for the life of me undersand why people think we should live with ASBESTOS, LEAD, etc., but I guess the conservative bent toward charity just isn't going to abate, no matter what.

[truedelphi]

5. What would really be great is if we had strong and independent state

Legislators, who would see to it that it was illegal to foreclose on people.

Then those houses would not be sitting vacant.

During the depression of the thirties, over 35 states forbade foreclosure.

But of course, back then, the lobbyists for the Big Bankers did not have full sway.

here in California, last year, just minor tweaks to see that mortgage rates could not spiral out of control, and additional regs to see that mortgage holders would receive proper notification were killed off as soon as the lobbyists hit the State Capital.

[LiberalLoner]

7. I also heard about how the locals would kind of rig the auctions so that

the original farmer could keep his land for, say, a penny. What I read was that anyone who tried to bid up the price was given a real beating afterwards by the town's men. And same with the sheriff, learned quickly that the crowds would not let the farmer be kicked off his land.

People in Montana still tell stories of that time, and stories of the times when people shared the food they had hunted or grown and that's how people more or less got by during the lean times.

Of course, I did ask my mother once, when I was 12, what Montana was like during the Great Depression (we were studying the subject at school.) She laughed and said, "Honey, just look around you - Montana never got OUT of the Great Depression..." And you know I think she was right. She was descended from some of the first settlers in NW Montana so I figure she knew some things about Montana.

[LiberalLoner]

8. Oh, and I have another story about the Great Depression. My grandfather

was in dire straits because he couldn't work as a lumberjack anymore (he'd just had a series of heart attacks at the age of 40 and was in poor health, not due to any fault of his own but just bad genes.) And to be honest there wasn't any work for lumberjacks anymore either because the investment in those businesses disappeared and no one wanted to buy wood any more.

He had a nice garden and land, and he grew enough vegetables to feed his large Catholic family (my mom grew up Catholic but switched to Lutheran) and they had a couple of milk cows and laying hens, and Grampa was a good hunter, so they were pretty much okay with food. But there were still taxes to be paid and sometimes you needed a doctor or dentist, and there was no money to pay.

He grew wheat, which once upon a time brought a good price, but not anymore. It wasn't even profitable to plant wheat at all, it cost more to plant than you would get. So the fields lay fallow except for what he grew for his family.

There were no jobs in town to be had. And since he'd quit school in the 3rd grade (his family pulled him out to work in the fields) there weren't all that many jobs he could do anyway.

Then FDR came around with the WPA and the CCC and programs like that. Hungry Horse Dam was built. My grandfather got a job on the construction crew, one he could do even with his damaged heart. He sure was grateful for that job and for the fact that it gave him money to pay taxes so he could keep his farm. He was proud that he helped build the dam that provided electric power inexpensively for the whole valley.

I don't have any idea what would have happened to my grandfather and his family (my mother and her siblings) but I know he always had high praise for FDR and voted party line Democrat all his life.

I listened to his stories and decided I was a Democrat too.

Sometimes I listen to right-wingers talk about how people who need welfare are just lazy worthless bums, and I think of my grandfather when they say those things.

[truedelphi]

12. Thank you fo rthe interesting stories, Liberal Loner.

I enjoyed reading about them.

In my family, my dad never went to college because of the Great Depression hitting just as he turned seventeen. As class valedictorian I know this was a major disappointment to him.

For a while he worked as an accountant, but when he over heard the boss talking about how someone in the office needed to be laid off, my dad sent in a resignation letter. He felt that as a single guy, he should not be the one that the company kept - the woman who was a single mom and the guy with three kids needed work more.

About a month later, he and his mom and sister moved. At that time in Chicago, you could rent an apartment free for the first month. They needed to do that.

Because of the move, he missed a letter coming from his old employer stating that the firm had created a job especially for him. He didn't find out about this until shopping in a department store at Christmas time after WWII - when he ran into his old boss!

[customerserviceguy]

9. I can't think of any level of government

or any sort of charitable organization, including churches, that would have the money to buy up an asset that is declining in value, then turn it over to people who might not be able to afford the upkeep.

Nice idea, but not gonna happen.

[Exen Trik]

10. Eminent domain would be one way to do this.

...But the bit about giving the owner "due monetary compensation" is a problem. Towns not having the money to spend is the biggest part, but the banks *profiting* over their shenanigans is what pisses me off. So there would need to be a way to not pay retail, as it were.

I do remember something about a place that let long unsold homes be bought be the state for basically nothing. More of that kind of thing would be nice and might just become important if it can be done all over.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Read the story of Baltimore's "Dollar Homes" program

The program had four key points that contributed to its success.

1 Truly low barrier to homeownership. Resident homeowners are the lifeblood of a city. Converting renters to homeowners, or attracting new resident homeowners from other locations maintains the vitality of a place. Investing in where you live is a heavy incentive to increase your involvement in community life.

2 Clustered properties. Since the City had purchased whole blocks of properties, it was possible to quickly improve large parts of a neighborhood. When an entire block of homes is renovated simultaneously, residents can see progress on a large scale being made daily, and the investment in homeownership creates financial rewards immediately.

3 Direct loans from the city. Of course, renovating a home costs more than a dollar. Since the city was selling the homes for $1, a prospective buyer didn’t need to come to closing with thousands of dollars in collateral to get an 80% mortgage on the property. However, there weren’t any banks that would finance the renovation loans under those circumstances. To provide the capital for renovation, the City issued bonds and loaned the resulting money to the new homeowners at + 1%. Over the course of the program, not a single homeowner defaulted on a loan, and the city turned a handsome profit on loan interest. Read that sentence one more time.

4 A dedicated office. A dedicated advisory office was established to help guide the homeowners through the renovation process, as many had not been through it before. The office helped the homeowners connect with architects and reliable, licensed contractors, and provided a general resource for information and support.

http://dollarhomes.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/history-of-the-dollar-home-in-baltimore/

There are actually a number of other neighborhoods beyond those mentioned in this article. The first areas to get this treatment were those burned during the racial riots of the 1970s. They are, today, vibrant, vital neighborhoods. If you're interested in a successful series of programs, do some googling. There's lots of information out there - about the program and anecdotally about the participants. One of the best accounts was a National Geographic story from the mid to late 70s.

[KharmaTrain]

13. Also Depends On The Condition...

The costs aren't in buying but in maintaining. In many older cities...especially the inner cities that's taking over structures that are upwards of 100 years old and older. Depending on the foreclosure the building may have suffered many years of neglect and then sitting vacant only accelerates the process. Thus do you have people live in housing that is unsafe? Also when you're leasing you are liable for its safety. It can be a major expense and a stop-gap answer as people come and go. A temporary solution at best and doesn't address the problems of un and under-employment that has created the bad conditions in the first place.

Add to these problems the fact that most cities and states aren't just broke, they're deep in debt and barely able to pay the bills for basic services. They were the biggest victims of the boooosh tax cuts for the rich as well as having to take on a greater burden of social and infrastructure spending over recent years. Raising the taxes on the rich and eliminating the many disastrous tax breaks to corporations would begin to restore the funding, but that's not going to happen anytime soon (especially in Southern states).

I'm all for the redevelopment of our inner cities...creating construction and then retail and small factory jobs in areas that were once vibrant and thriving. The big problem has been getting banks and corporates to invest in these projects and when they did loan it was for preditory purposes. If you got bit by these people over and over, would you trust them?