"Who, day and night, must scramble for a living..."- Page 2

[papalovesmambo]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:14pm

are there no prisons? are there no work houses?

[justme2]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:15pm

Not for me, baby! I am living within my means...which isn't as fun as living in million dollar homes, I admit.

[tazber]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:17pm

Perhaps in your neighborhood the reason you see for this greed, but that is certainly not the case everywhere.
There are a myriad of reasons why people are finding themselves in this situation that have nothing to do with avarice.

[Yawper]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:22pm

What happens when you lose your job and can't find another, or find only minimum wage?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:22pm

This is not about yuppies or guppies. This is about working-class families.

[justme2]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:22pm

Of course there are lots of reasons, but I am responding to best12's thread about the housing crisis and how it's one of the causes of the recession bearing down on us.

Thus, my comments on the housing crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area. Not just my neighborbood, unfortunately.

edit for reading material:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/17/BUQ7UH3V8.DTL&tsp=1

Updated On: 1/17/08 at 07:22 PM

[Yawper]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:25pm

The housing crisis is a convenient mask for what's really happening.

[justme2]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:35pm

The EFFECTS will be detrimental to the working class families (as usual! we alwasy pay for it), but the housing crisis was started by GREED...at least in SF Bay Area, which is the area I can speak about.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:50pm

Eh. The technology boom of the 90s was started by greed too. Money is always driven by greed. That's not the point.

The villains here are the folks in power who deregulated the baking industry.

The Republicans created the housing book, and the Republicans are responsible for the current crisis.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:55pm

"The villains here are the folks in power who deregulated the baking industry."

Wasn't THAT Reagan as well?

[justme2]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 7:56pm

Well, I can say I absolutely agree with you there...the deregulation led to the loan crisis.

And that technology boom is what started the whole housing cost increase in SF Bay Area (this is seperate from the deregulation and loan issues now). My rent went from $600 to $950 in one month during that timeframe, and even with moving and rooming and the like, I was paying $2000 for 700 square feet back then...it settled down, then the Guppies came in with what Best12 described in his original post...flipping houses...with the aid of your favorite...republications...to help them out with loans for anynone and everyone.


As a native Californian, it disgusts me.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 8:03pm

"One of these days, all of my sautéed chickens will come home to roost, and I'll be forced to sing myself this baleful ditty…


Broke as I am
Who wants to see a Diva
Broke as I am"

[Yawper]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 8:27pm

The greed being paid for is American greed in the face of the world, and it's China, India, and other low cost nations that are making us pay.

Unless some trade competance is quickly found somewhere in Federal government it's a race to the bottom and anyone with a vested interest in the US is going to loose.

The foolishness in the housing market is just a symptom.

[artscallion]

Posted: 1/17/08 at 8:37pm

Love it, Diva!

Maybe I'll pay my mortgage.
Why botha?

[nygrl23]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 12:27am

Sorry to stray a little off topic, I wonder how the real estate market in NYC always manages to avoid these pitfalls. It's as recession-resistant as well, pornography.

[Yawper]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 1:35am

That's because all the bankers and financiers picking clean everyone else's pockets live and work there.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 8:39am

The Manhattan Elite!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 8:45am

And for those who think this is just a problem for yuppies and "guppies"--a homophobic term that usually means "gay yuppies"--here is an article from CNNMoney that shows how bad this situation is for the entire building industry:

===

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Housing starts and building permits plunged in December much more than expected, resulting in a full-year decline in new home construction that was the sharpest drop in 27 years.

And there is little sign things will get better soon. According to government data released Thursday, the full-year total for building permits posted the biggest drop in 33 years. The sharp dropoff in building is one of the reasons that many leading economists are growing increasingly fearful that an economic recession is near, if it hasn't already struck....
Homebuilding: Sharpest drop in 27 years

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 9:10am

Who wants to build homes that no one could possibly afford to live in?

My eyes were opened to the "crisis in the making" last year, before it even happened. A year ago (the last glorious months of the phony "housing high"), I had finally reached a salary that by all stretches of logic and mathematics should have easily led to my buying a home. A nice, decent home in Los Angeles.

My salary was way above the average for Los Angeles. Not "movie star" money, by any means, but successful and... way above average.

So, you would think I could buy something, right? Wrong. I got approved for a housing loan... a ridiculously high amount, because I have an immaculate credit rating. So, they gave me the moon... on loan, and in "theory" of course.

So, I looked at that "theory" and couldn't figure out how I could ever afford to pay it back. Then the real estate vultures descended upon me, showing me these cute little bungalows in the L.A. area for well above half a million dollars. Bungalows! 950 to 1200 square feet. My two-bedroom apartment is bigger and lovelier than anything I saw in this "low end" half a million range.

And I saw the people living in these neighborhood homes. Simple, average families. Not rich folks. Not people earning way above the average salary for the city of Los Angeles.

So, here I was, a potential first-time home buyer, with my nice comfortable paycheck... and I couldn't afford anything.

BUT.. everyone tried to convince me that I could afford it. "We can get you into this home for $1,800 a month today!" one real estate agent told me. When I asked him how that was possible, he started to fumble. Ultimately, I learned that the mortgage rate "might" go up as much as triple that amount in about 18 months. Great! I laughed at him. He didn't laugh back.

To make a long story short, I put on the brakes around mid-July last year. I was discouraged, defeated... but honestly, I was mostly scared. Not for me so much as what I could see was coming for our country. Even a few financial advisers (and only ONE told me to "wait" and not buy a house), they told me there would be a "dip" in the housing market in the coming year, and prices would either stay the same or even drop a bit.

I actually laughed at them too. I told them no one can afford to live in their own homes right now. It's not going to drop "a bit," it's going to CRASH.

[DG]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 10:41am

"I put on the brakes"

That's the important part of your story, Besty. YOU did some homework, and actually THOUGHT about what you were doing, and made appropriate choices.

The lemmings have been hypnotized into a state of feeling they get to have whatever they want, regardless. Most of society just feels they are owed.

I am always bemused by going through a lower-end department store, and seeing families - who make WAY below any kind of average salary - buying big-screen TVs and miniature 'Hummers' for the kids.

No one expects to own anything anymore, so the outrageous mortage doesn't get thought about - it's just a part of everything else they can't afford. But they all WANT it, because that's what they're told they should do.

Look at the rationale given for the new tax cut yesterday. They said right out loud they needed to get the money into the hands of those who would 'spend it right away'. Those kinds of people aren't going to look at a prospective mortage and determine for themselves the sanity of it all.

[Calvin]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 11:00am

A story about my former roommate, who a few on here had the pleasure of meeting and can attest to his, um, uniqueness:

When I first met him, I assumed his family was loaded. He was staying in New York only for a month, an extended vacation for him while he moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, where he'd just bought a downtown apartment. He went out to dinner every night, got spa treatments at the Mandarin Oriental, saw about five or six full-price shows and etc. He, to my annoyance, wanted to know WHY I lived in the neighborhood where I did instead of in Chelsea, WHY I cooked a few times a week instead of always eating out, WHY I did my own laundry instead of paying for a laundry service, WHY I didn't always demand to pay full-price orchestra for theatre tickets, etc. etc. Keep in mind, this guy wasn't here working, nor was he going to a job in LA, nor did he have the level of education to get a decent job. Come to find out -- it was all credit card spending. I never saw him with cash once. He was just building up a crapload of debt, and damn the consequences later.

My sister is the same. She got way behind on her rent, so my parents bought her a house. Not only is she not making payments to them, but she's not even paying enough to them to cover the taxes. Yet she has enough to get weekly manicures and to have had a $5,000 boob job done. But my parents, in their 70s and 80s, are, as much as I would want to the contrary, not going to be around forever. Ultimately, she's going to end up losing most if not all of her inheritance because of this, and then she's going to be stuck with a crapload of debt with no safety net. And she has two kids, at least one of whom will probably go to college. Her ex-husband is even worse.

I just don't understand that way of thinking. At all. I guess it was just because I was the type of kid who could never really enjoy doing something really wrong because I spent the whole time worrying that I would be caught.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 11:05am

And there's so much PRESSURE on TV, especially the media.

Everyone is talking about sales, and numbers being down.

It's like they're doing a telethon for the U.S.

Save the economy! Save the country! You MUST shop beyond your means, and buy everything in sight, or we're all going to die. Please, go out and "do your part."

Like it's somehow CHARITY. And people actually feel good about themselves when they max out their credit cards, because if the economy crashes (which they don't even understand what that means), they will have at least "done all they could" to keep those numbers high. It's so surreal!

And the media (once again) was disgusting! They reported it every day, on location in various stores, during Christmas. I had to turn it off, nightly. We're being bullied and scared into buying, almost as if "we're not helping" if we don't... and it's getting worse and worse each season.

As far as putting on the brakes, I'm no financial genius, nor do I have a savvy understanding of economics. But I ask a lot of questions, I always have, and things have to make sense to me before I dive into anything, especially when it comes to purchases of over half a million dollars. No one could show me just how it "made sense" that I could afford to do this. So I didn't.

But I watched others around me, including my partner's older sister, buy not one but TWO properties early last year. And she sat there trying to encourage me to dive in with her. I kept telling her I didn't see the math working out. She said, "Well, how can I afford to do it, then?" With a big smile on her face. I told her she COULDN'T afford to do it, but the banks and her financial advisers, and everyone was "enabling" her to think she could. So they could line their own pockets, and then turn a blind eye.

Lovely. She's in big trouble now, BTW. She's lost SO much equity in her homes and the ARM rates are about to go up.

[robbiej]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 11:19am

I have to tell you...last year, I had a bit of a tough year. Financially. I decided to be an actor again and, after booking two really fun gigs, the well dried. So I went back to temping for the first time in years. BOY was that not enough money. So I would use my credit card without even thinking...cause I was sure the law firm was going to hire me. Well they did. Three weeks ago...but I spent a full year supplementing my life with my credit card. It's a scary (for me) amount of debt. Now, I'm able to make decent monthly payments to start digging myself out of the hole, but it's going to take a while.

Denial is a remarkable thing. And keeping your head down and just thinking in the short term because you are living from paycheck to paycheck whilst working two jobs can keep you from seeing a bigger picture.

[DG]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 11:29am

Robbie - you're absolutely right, but I think you're still coming from a mental place different from much of what I see around me. By your own admission, you were always aware of the debt you were accruing. I live around people who's only thought regarding that matter is when the next pre-approved credit card application will arrive. I swear, we seem to get one in the mail at least every other day!

Awhile ago, I read a report that the average American has FOURTEEN credit cards - and that's NOT including things like gas cards! FOURTEEN! And that's an AVERAGE!

[Bluemoon]

Posted: 1/18/08 at 11:58am

And part of that credit card debt is fueled by CC companies who give young, non-working college students cards for just walking on campus. When my daughter was a Freshman she was given the opportunity to sign up with three different credit cards. No income check, all pre-approved. While her credit limit was lower than say, mine, if she'd gotten enough cards, her debt could have equaled her college tuition. And yes, she took all three cards and maxed them out. Her part time job at the campus bookstore couldn't even cover the interest owed. It was a costly and sobering lesson to and it's repeated on campuses across the nation each year.

No wonder people don't blink at a housing loan that seems too good to be true.