Posts Tagged ‘Salon’
On renters
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Q&A with me on homeownership and the bubble in Salon today.
Comment from reader KayWWW stresses a supremely important point:
Renters and Owners
I’m glad someone has mentioned renters, at least briefly. One reason people tried so hard to buy homes is because renters are treated so badly. In most places, they have almost no rights at all. When your landlord can basically throw you out any time, for any reason at all, it’s no wonder people are desperate to buy. (I had one landlord who tried to evict me because the heat was broken and it was “too inconvenient” to fix it. That may be illegal, but good luck getting anyone to enforce the law.)
I don’t really want to buy a house – I’ve moved frequently for my job, and buying would be inconvenient. But it’s hard to continue renting when there is so little security, even if you have a lease. And the animosity toward renters is shocking – I went to a town meeting to hear about a new housing plan (they want to build luxury rental condos), and I heard the most nasty things directed toward renters (even ones that can afford trendy condos).
Not everyone wants to be a homeowner, and not everyone should be. The housing bubble showed that. But there needs to be stronger protection for renters, so people will have a viable alternative.
More (from me) on the homeowner bailout
I just wrote a story for Salon about California’s booming loan modification industry — a cadre of mortgage brokers, many of whom sold toxic mortgages during the boom, now reinventing themselves as mortgage bailout heroes, helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. The new Obama administration loan modification program helps guarantee them a steady stream of business, since there’s nothing in Treasury’s new “Homeowner Affordability and Sustainability Plan” to preclude borrowers from turning to one of these companies to help process the deal.
And who the heck came up with “Homeowner Affordability and Sustainability Plan”? It’s not even grammatically correct. Is Treasury promising to make homeowners affordable and sustainable? If I write a check for $10,000 will a homeowner (current? former?) show up on my doorstep?
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
The Latest
Organizations that matter
- Affordable Housing Centers of America
- Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
- Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center for Responsible Lending
- Demos
- Drum Major Institute
- Joint Center for Housing Studies
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- National Consumer Law Center
- National Housing Institute
- National Housing Trust
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- National Training and Information Center
- Natn’l Community Reinvestment Coalition
- NEDAP
- New America Foundation
- PolicyLink
- Pratt Center for Community Development
- Revson Fellowship
- Smart Growth America
What Alyssa reads
- Baseline Scenario
- Ben Smith
- Bloomberg News
- Calculated Risk
- City Limits
- Consumer Law and Policy Blog
- Doug Henwood
- Felix Salmon
- Galleycat
- Housing Wire
- Mother Jones
- Next American City
- Paul Krugman
- PolicyCents
- Ryan Avent
- Shelterforce
- Street Level
- Talking Points Memo
- The Audit
- The Balance Sheet
- The Big Picture
Tags
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