As America’s housing & homelessness problems reach crisis levels - the housing equivalent of malnutrition & starvation - Sen. Merkley has submitted legislation to stop the corporate feeding frenzy…
What a good opportunity for Republicans (under their new agenda) to show working people that they stand with them. So if you have an "R" Representative or Senator, you might want to tell them to put the money and housing where their mouth is.
I've briefly met Senator Merkley at a town hall, gave him some info with my address on it, and he wrote me a note of thanks; it wasn't typed. He is the real deal---a great American and Oregonian who fights for our planet.
Governor Brown of Oregon just did something that will perhaps prevent someone from losing their housing. She is forgiving traffic fines and fees; they disproportionately affect low-income people. She is so right! During a homeless count, I interviewed a young man who had lost his apartment because of fines and penalties. He couldn't get his license back to drive to work.
Thanks Thom, absolutely great assessment and call to action.
Appreciate your comments, and agree heartily that Thom's made a great assessment here. It's encouraging to read of your conscientious politicians, in a time when so many of them have been bought out by corporate interests. Makes for a heart-warming Christmas message; now if we can just translate that into getting the homeless into their desired accommodations.
I called the Congressional switchboard and left messages with Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Congressman Rick Larsen, asking them to cosponsor and or support this bill in any way possible. As you say, it is straight forward and clear, and it is absolutely necessary that such legislation be passed and vigorously enforced. It's very easy to make such calls, and the deep satisfaction one can receive from taking on this civic responsibility in our representative government cannot be overstated
Thom, do you not know about the 5 part Docuseries' called The Con? It's essential to know how this all changed with the start of illegal false mortgages sold to people by the Wall Street Bankers and the mortgages they sold to innocent home buyers. It's the biggest heist in the history of the world. Foreclosures by these banks created the homelessness and anger currently destroying our country. And, it's worldwide. Here's a link. https://www.thecon.tv/watch Not one person in the press or in congress has seen it or if they have, they haven't done anything about it. It's that huge.
I worked with rapid re-housing programs in Ocean County and Burlington County, NJ. The key is housing stock; you are right. We had housing stock in Burlington and were able to rapidly re-house homeless folks and back them up with social services. Not so much Ocean County where million dollar beach homes are owned by investors or crooks (take your pick). The homes are empty as is much of the shore community real estate for 10 months of the year and then rented in the Summer for exorbitant prices. $25,000 a week is common. So, no housing stock. Most of the homeless suffer from mental illness; they need a roof over their heads, medical care, food, treatment and then job training. It works!
Wall Street is killing us in every way imaginable. I had an inkling about this but didn't know the full extent of the story. Thanks for the details, Thom. This phenomenon also affects modest, middle-class local private investors/retirees who might want to own, say, a duplex home or subdivided rowhouse to live in one unit and rent out a second and third. Those used to be reasonable and abundant opportunities in smaller cities like Baltimore where I live. Your landlord might not be all that much wealthier than you, perhaps just a bit older and with more savings, and the landlord-tenant relationship could be relatively amicable. There goes another bulwark against our shrinking middle class.
A bit off topic. Just mentioning that corporations are also disturbing the secondary vacation home market with 'co-ownership'. They form LLCs and sell 1/8 ownership in e.g. high end areas. The effect is the aggregate sale of the property can be 1.5 - 2 times the single owner property sale. While timeshares (owned by corporations with 'usage shares' sold to individuals) seem similar these LLCs avoid any local timeshare regulations.
Individual (1/8) owners wishing to sell, are required to use the original corporation for the listing and resale. So the corporation is purchasing 'normal' single owner homes in these popular areas at somewhat over the market price, forms the LLC, and 'flips' the property as co-ownership. This provides a significant profit on the original flip plus ongoing profits from future sales by co-owners. The venture capitalists are salivating over this 'disruptive' concept and have made one of the current darlings (Pacaso) a unicorn (startup with over $1B valuation).
This disrupts the normal real estate market by pushing prices higher as well as takes properties for single families out of the market. An even newer trend is contractors purchasing empty lots, building a high end home 'on spec', and selling using the same arrangement. Meaning that empty lot you might have been considering purchasing and building now becomes out of reach.
Mr. Hartman's article references housing costs almost doubling in the Tennessee area of South Nashville, raising rentals from $1000 to $1750 per month; this is a very low estimation https://www.zillow.com/spring-hill-tn/rent-houses/. The economic boom in Tennessee is driven by the legislature's low tax platforms, but comes with huge burdens on existing communities as the influx of new families arrive: Area school districts are finding that their classrooms are full, teacher shortages are astronomical and costs of building new schools are requiring increased taxes on existing families.
The Tennessee legislature has been focused on attracting corporations, but it has not attached development legislation with cost shared specification for schools and infra structure. As a result, the general quality of life is rapidly diminishing for families and individuals, and the corporations are enjoying long-term guarantees of low, or no taxes, while property taxes for individual housing is sky rocketing.
Mr. Merkley's bill touches only a small portion of the transfer of supporting our communities unto families and individuals, and leaving a growing share of the pure profits from new growth on shareholders. His definition of 'Necessities' is abroad umbrella that deserves our attention. For example, TVA and its hundreds of co-op local utilities are effective solutions to locally controlled low electric utility prices and internet costs https://www.tva.com/newsroom/press-releases/tva-s-integrated-resource-plan-calls-for-low-cost-reliable-energy-choices and https://www.tnelectric.org/broadband/. We could easily do something similar with housing.
Mr. Hartman's citation
The End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act bans hedge funds and private equity leeches from owning housing at scale. Merkley noted:
“In order to meet Americans’ housing needs and root out systemic inequities in the housing market, the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act bans hedge funds and private equity investors from owning large numbers of homes by establishing a $20,000 federal tax penalty for each single family home owned by a single company and its affiliates over 100 homes.
“The bill allows companies with large portfolios to sell homes over several years to come into compliance so there’s an orderly exit, and includes incentives to make sure buyers of divested homes are ordinary people who will live in the home. The tax penalties collected will be used to provide down payment assistance to homebuyers.”
It’s not often legislation so precisely identifies a problem of crisis proportions and offers such common-sense remedies. There’s a petition in support of this bill at Daily Kos worth taking a moment to sign.
A new subdivision is bring built about a mile from my home. This subdivision is going up like lightning! The houses are not for sale though; they are for lease! I have to wonder what such a subdivision will do to the real estate market in my area. It also increases the population density in my immediate area right on the NC coast. The beaches are not easily accessible from our location, but stormwater could be a serious problem. Are such housing developments being built in other areas of the country? This is not likely to be affordable housing.
The simple though inconvenient truth is that the United States is now controlled by fascists who only want to add more billions to their personal fortunes and do not care how much others suffer in the process.
What is truly obscene is a "christian" government that spends more than half the annual budget on weapons of mass destruction and to fund its armed forces to terrorize third world countries. Money is taken from workers to support the multi billion dollar weapons industry and the energy industry.
There is the false assumption that the billionaires and their underlings in government actually care about the health of our society and our people. Many people actually thougth that Trump as president would help them which is self delusion at its most extreme.
There are a few who get into politics because they genuinely care about others, but agree with your comments - many people are being deluded. Some, like yourself, are awake to this delusion, but there are many who are "sheep", who will follow whatever their chosen leader says.
Are we holding fingers in the dike, waiting for the pressure to soon build, blowing out the entire dam and washing us and our families away? Putting a brake on the voracious housing grab will possibly slow the accumulation of wealth via the means of new targeted legislation that is too little too late for many, but the schemers and movers and shakers are already on to other big scandals designed to rape and pillage.
There is a mentality behind all of this which keeps us in a desperate battle for survival, in a war against ordinary citizens in which we are continually under-protected and under-resourced. There are programs running continually which disarm and distract the “public”. The ideas precede capitalism, neoliberalism, free marker fundamentalism, and the other isms. The public consciousness is framed, molded, and perpetuated via “the doctrinal system”, in the words of David Gabbard, Professor at Boise State in a brilliant analysis entitled, “Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus”. Look it up. I cannot begin to summarize here.
Professor Gabbard identifies the doctrinal system as the media and the schools.
False moral imperatives are at the root of our dilemma. We start with “the strict father metaphor” which is the basis of paternalism and authoritarianism, and the “theory of original sin” which probably flows from the strict father metaphor. What we have gotten from these, among various other things, mostly destructive, are the image of people as inherently bad or antisocial, as indolent and unproductive unless forced to learn and adopt certain social rules and economic values, and as needing direction, firm leadership, and sometimes punishment.
Why do so many people equate great wealth with superiority? One might just as easily equate great wealth with exploitation, cheating, greed, indifference, and brutality. Why is poverty and need so closely associated with weakness and inferiority? Why do women so often identify as dependent, children as ignorant, and those belonging to out groups as helpless victims, frequently with self-loathing and self-blaming?
In this worldview, helping others and community are encouragement to be wicked and idle, with only limited exceptions (determined by authority). The messages are in the air, the water, and the ether. Why didn’t you do your homework? In the glorious past, things were better, people were better, and hard work around the clock kept people from depravity.
Laws to reverse atrocities and to undo as much damage as possible are absolutely essential and should have our support. However, to reverse the inexorable movement toward gross inequality in income and wealth, authoritarianism and fascism, and corruption and personal irresponsibility, fundamental beliefs and attitudes must change. If there is even any way to get there from here, we must understand how the “doctrinal system” is conditioning and compromising the people and make some emergency changes based on the best science available. That means giving up myths, traditions, and bad thinking, as well as refusing to be entertained to sleep.
Not clear to me since Median is the simple 'middle' of the range. Average is much more appropriate as incorporates the semantics of number of families at each point in the range.
What a good opportunity for Republicans (under their new agenda) to show working people that they stand with them. So if you have an "R" Representative or Senator, you might want to tell them to put the money and housing where their mouth is.
I've briefly met Senator Merkley at a town hall, gave him some info with my address on it, and he wrote me a note of thanks; it wasn't typed. He is the real deal---a great American and Oregonian who fights for our planet.
Governor Brown of Oregon just did something that will perhaps prevent someone from losing their housing. She is forgiving traffic fines and fees; they disproportionately affect low-income people. She is so right! During a homeless count, I interviewed a young man who had lost his apartment because of fines and penalties. He couldn't get his license back to drive to work.
Thanks Thom, absolutely great assessment and call to action.
Appreciate your comments, and agree heartily that Thom's made a great assessment here. It's encouraging to read of your conscientious politicians, in a time when so many of them have been bought out by corporate interests. Makes for a heart-warming Christmas message; now if we can just translate that into getting the homeless into their desired accommodations.
I called the Congressional switchboard and left messages with Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell and Congressman Rick Larsen, asking them to cosponsor and or support this bill in any way possible. As you say, it is straight forward and clear, and it is absolutely necessary that such legislation be passed and vigorously enforced. It's very easy to make such calls, and the deep satisfaction one can receive from taking on this civic responsibility in our representative government cannot be overstated
Of course, I need to add that with Senator Murray and Rep. Larsen, I'm essentially preaching to the choir
Thank you for getting this growing cancer on the public out in the open.
I pray that our government will be up to the task
of remedying this potentially lethal
situation.
Thom, do you not know about the 5 part Docuseries' called The Con? It's essential to know how this all changed with the start of illegal false mortgages sold to people by the Wall Street Bankers and the mortgages they sold to innocent home buyers. It's the biggest heist in the history of the world. Foreclosures by these banks created the homelessness and anger currently destroying our country. And, it's worldwide. Here's a link. https://www.thecon.tv/watch Not one person in the press or in congress has seen it or if they have, they haven't done anything about it. It's that huge.
I worked with rapid re-housing programs in Ocean County and Burlington County, NJ. The key is housing stock; you are right. We had housing stock in Burlington and were able to rapidly re-house homeless folks and back them up with social services. Not so much Ocean County where million dollar beach homes are owned by investors or crooks (take your pick). The homes are empty as is much of the shore community real estate for 10 months of the year and then rented in the Summer for exorbitant prices. $25,000 a week is common. So, no housing stock. Most of the homeless suffer from mental illness; they need a roof over their heads, medical care, food, treatment and then job training. It works!
Wall Street is killing us in every way imaginable. I had an inkling about this but didn't know the full extent of the story. Thanks for the details, Thom. This phenomenon also affects modest, middle-class local private investors/retirees who might want to own, say, a duplex home or subdivided rowhouse to live in one unit and rent out a second and third. Those used to be reasonable and abundant opportunities in smaller cities like Baltimore where I live. Your landlord might not be all that much wealthier than you, perhaps just a bit older and with more savings, and the landlord-tenant relationship could be relatively amicable. There goes another bulwark against our shrinking middle class.
A bit off topic. Just mentioning that corporations are also disturbing the secondary vacation home market with 'co-ownership'. They form LLCs and sell 1/8 ownership in e.g. high end areas. The effect is the aggregate sale of the property can be 1.5 - 2 times the single owner property sale. While timeshares (owned by corporations with 'usage shares' sold to individuals) seem similar these LLCs avoid any local timeshare regulations.
Individual (1/8) owners wishing to sell, are required to use the original corporation for the listing and resale. So the corporation is purchasing 'normal' single owner homes in these popular areas at somewhat over the market price, forms the LLC, and 'flips' the property as co-ownership. This provides a significant profit on the original flip plus ongoing profits from future sales by co-owners. The venture capitalists are salivating over this 'disruptive' concept and have made one of the current darlings (Pacaso) a unicorn (startup with over $1B valuation).
This disrupts the normal real estate market by pushing prices higher as well as takes properties for single families out of the market. An even newer trend is contractors purchasing empty lots, building a high end home 'on spec', and selling using the same arrangement. Meaning that empty lot you might have been considering purchasing and building now becomes out of reach.
I'm not clear on all of the ramifications of this new trend but this large sucking of value can be heard if you live (or want to live) in one of these areas. A recent article: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/08/24/1030151330/a-unicorn-startup-is-turning-houses-into-corporations
This is a laudable piece of legislation; supporters would benefit from having actionable data and facts on the legislation. It is easier to call the Senate with a Bill number and references to votes already taken. I was unable to find anything except Senator Merkley's draft of a proposed Bill https://www.merkley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/end_hedge_fund_control_of_american_homes_act_bill_text.pdf
Mr. Hartman's article references housing costs almost doubling in the Tennessee area of South Nashville, raising rentals from $1000 to $1750 per month; this is a very low estimation https://www.zillow.com/spring-hill-tn/rent-houses/. The economic boom in Tennessee is driven by the legislature's low tax platforms, but comes with huge burdens on existing communities as the influx of new families arrive: Area school districts are finding that their classrooms are full, teacher shortages are astronomical and costs of building new schools are requiring increased taxes on existing families.
The Tennessee legislature has been focused on attracting corporations, but it has not attached development legislation with cost shared specification for schools and infra structure. As a result, the general quality of life is rapidly diminishing for families and individuals, and the corporations are enjoying long-term guarantees of low, or no taxes, while property taxes for individual housing is sky rocketing.
Mr. Merkley's bill touches only a small portion of the transfer of supporting our communities unto families and individuals, and leaving a growing share of the pure profits from new growth on shareholders. His definition of 'Necessities' is abroad umbrella that deserves our attention. For example, TVA and its hundreds of co-op local utilities are effective solutions to locally controlled low electric utility prices and internet costs https://www.tva.com/newsroom/press-releases/tva-s-integrated-resource-plan-calls-for-low-cost-reliable-energy-choices and https://www.tnelectric.org/broadband/. We could easily do something similar with housing.
Mr. Hartman's citation
The End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act bans hedge funds and private equity leeches from owning housing at scale. Merkley noted:
“In order to meet Americans’ housing needs and root out systemic inequities in the housing market, the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act bans hedge funds and private equity investors from owning large numbers of homes by establishing a $20,000 federal tax penalty for each single family home owned by a single company and its affiliates over 100 homes.
“The bill allows companies with large portfolios to sell homes over several years to come into compliance so there’s an orderly exit, and includes incentives to make sure buyers of divested homes are ordinary people who will live in the home. The tax penalties collected will be used to provide down payment assistance to homebuyers.”
It’s not often legislation so precisely identifies a problem of crisis proportions and offers such common-sense remedies. There’s a petition in support of this bill at Daily Kos worth taking a moment to sign.
A new subdivision is bring built about a mile from my home. This subdivision is going up like lightning! The houses are not for sale though; they are for lease! I have to wonder what such a subdivision will do to the real estate market in my area. It also increases the population density in my immediate area right on the NC coast. The beaches are not easily accessible from our location, but stormwater could be a serious problem. Are such housing developments being built in other areas of the country? This is not likely to be affordable housing.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/koch-industries-gobbling-real-estate-172051699.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACEZ4woLL3KBFL9tUyK_xrejNJbDAm-wuBR4C3jwONuMdJWyvWKT2zPQbpxvYqqtMraVpnp8IW7JMwk96rBqIWhAwcDoMLmfZAoN76HLJkt71RVd_iRN9izTFDh5KqSUdecphMbxQ1vaRrV_6ONqMik35G8JcEXbnyovJbhP-oVf
https://www.levernews.com/koch-funded-eviction-push-while-buying-real-estate-stakes/
https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/buyers-and-renters-beware-koch-industries-could-be-your-new-landlord/article_eaa5da74-05bf-5cd4-97ca-ee3337e32ca0.html
https://www.nst.com.my/property/2020/05/593680/koch-backs-amherst-200-million-bet-single-family-rentals
https://rethinkrealestateforgood.co/2022/08/08/hedge-funds-and-the-housing-crisis/
https://www.amgnational.com/insights/hedge-funds-gobbling-up-single-family-housing/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/15/what-happens-when-investment-firms-acquire-trailer-parks
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-25/rents-spike-as-big-pocketed-investors-buy-mobile-home-parks
https://www.mobilehomeuniversity.com/articles/blackstone-affirms-the-brilliance-of-the-mobile-home-park-business-model
The simple though inconvenient truth is that the United States is now controlled by fascists who only want to add more billions to their personal fortunes and do not care how much others suffer in the process.
What is truly obscene is a "christian" government that spends more than half the annual budget on weapons of mass destruction and to fund its armed forces to terrorize third world countries. Money is taken from workers to support the multi billion dollar weapons industry and the energy industry.
There is the false assumption that the billionaires and their underlings in government actually care about the health of our society and our people. Many people actually thougth that Trump as president would help them which is self delusion at its most extreme.
There are a few who get into politics because they genuinely care about others, but agree with your comments - many people are being deluded. Some, like yourself, are awake to this delusion, but there are many who are "sheep", who will follow whatever their chosen leader says.
is the USofA a
strip-mining Cor-
poration or is it really
a Country for Human Beings
to pursue Life Liberty and Happiness?
.
seems the Anti-Choicers
wanna make America the former.
.
and as per usual
THANK You Thom!
Watch The Con. https://www.thecon.tv/watch
Are we holding fingers in the dike, waiting for the pressure to soon build, blowing out the entire dam and washing us and our families away? Putting a brake on the voracious housing grab will possibly slow the accumulation of wealth via the means of new targeted legislation that is too little too late for many, but the schemers and movers and shakers are already on to other big scandals designed to rape and pillage.
There is a mentality behind all of this which keeps us in a desperate battle for survival, in a war against ordinary citizens in which we are continually under-protected and under-resourced. There are programs running continually which disarm and distract the “public”. The ideas precede capitalism, neoliberalism, free marker fundamentalism, and the other isms. The public consciousness is framed, molded, and perpetuated via “the doctrinal system”, in the words of David Gabbard, Professor at Boise State in a brilliant analysis entitled, “Militarizing Class Warfare: the historical foundations of the neoliberal/neoconservative nexus”. Look it up. I cannot begin to summarize here.
Professor Gabbard identifies the doctrinal system as the media and the schools.
False moral imperatives are at the root of our dilemma. We start with “the strict father metaphor” which is the basis of paternalism and authoritarianism, and the “theory of original sin” which probably flows from the strict father metaphor. What we have gotten from these, among various other things, mostly destructive, are the image of people as inherently bad or antisocial, as indolent and unproductive unless forced to learn and adopt certain social rules and economic values, and as needing direction, firm leadership, and sometimes punishment.
Why do so many people equate great wealth with superiority? One might just as easily equate great wealth with exploitation, cheating, greed, indifference, and brutality. Why is poverty and need so closely associated with weakness and inferiority? Why do women so often identify as dependent, children as ignorant, and those belonging to out groups as helpless victims, frequently with self-loathing and self-blaming?
In this worldview, helping others and community are encouragement to be wicked and idle, with only limited exceptions (determined by authority). The messages are in the air, the water, and the ether. Why didn’t you do your homework? In the glorious past, things were better, people were better, and hard work around the clock kept people from depravity.
Laws to reverse atrocities and to undo as much damage as possible are absolutely essential and should have our support. However, to reverse the inexorable movement toward gross inequality in income and wealth, authoritarianism and fascism, and corruption and personal irresponsibility, fundamental beliefs and attitudes must change. If there is even any way to get there from here, we must understand how the “doctrinal system” is conditioning and compromising the people and make some emergency changes based on the best science available. That means giving up myths, traditions, and bad thinking, as well as refusing to be entertained to sleep.
Not clear to me since Median is the simple 'middle' of the range. Average is much more appropriate as incorporates the semantics of number of families at each point in the range.
Thanks Ed.