quote:But with a major blow to their credit score. Making renting more difficult.
Or they could move to a different neighborhood. It seems to me to be the case that there are some extraordinary cheap rents available, on good-sized property, if you don't mind living around black people.
My comparison of renting versus mortgage is a black neighborhood, an apartment that was barely above slum, possibly slum. I was the only white person who lived there. Now I live in a fairly diverse safe, clean neighborhood (going through my nearest neighbors, we have a black family, a young white couple, two old retired couples, a Hispanic family and a Chinese family)- and for the same cost.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Rabbit, the problem with your reasoning here is that, whether or not poor lending practices were the cause of the recent rise in housing prices, these people still chose to take out loans on houses they couldn't afford. Yeah, it sucks if this was the reason they couldn't afford the houses, but that doesn't mean they should or will get a free pass for their mistakes in buying those houses. You need to make the right decision for the situation you find yourself in, not the decision for the situation you think you ought to be in, if other people hadn't screwed up. That's not the way the world works. (Or, if it is and I haven't heard, someone should tell my boss, since I should be on vacation rather than cleaning up the fires from other team members' mistakes.)
What you are missing Jhai is that when all the sudden a million people make the same bad decision its evidence that something more is going on than just bad judgement. And as you so aptly noted in your own situation, there are always people who pay for the mistakes they had no part in.
Rabbit, I'm not "paying" for the mistakes of others. I'm doing the job I agreed to do, as a senior member of my team. I get the benefits of increased pay and responsibilities, but at the cost of cleaning up messes. I'm sure you can see the analogy without me spelling it out.
And no, I don't take the fact that millions of people made the same mistake as evidence of anything more than bad judgment - well, that, and the fact that the system just now allowed more of them to make a bad judgment. But I'm not going to blame "the system" for that - the people still made the wrong decision. Just like I don't blame credit card companies for the massive amounts of credit card debt that millions of Americans have wracked up.
quote: 20/20 hindsight is deceptive. Go back five years to a time when prices were skyrocketing and imagine you are a young person watching as prices increase 15% or more per year and realizing that if you wait 5 years to buy a house, the price will have doubled. You are offered a loan to buy a modest house with little or no down payment and an initially low interest rate. Do you choose to buy the house now, knowing that your interest rates and payments are likely to double in 5 years or do you wait knowing that the price of houses is likely to double in 5 years? The decision isn't nearly as clear as people are pretending. 5 years ago, I'd be willing to bet that even conservative financial councillors were telling people to buy the house, that this was a relatively safe bet, that even if they couldn't afford the higher payments in 5 years they could sell the house at a profit and be better off than if they just kept renting. Five years ago, people would have been telling you that a home was the safest investment on the market, that averaged over 5 years home prices never dropped. The decision isn't as clear cut as people are pretending. In fact, over the last 20 years I've watched many of my friends and acquaintances overextend themselves to buy their first home and nearly all of them have come out way ahead in the long run. While some people have always lost that kind of gamble, the numbers were always small enough to go largely unnoticed.
Five years ago I was a young person, and, as an economics college student I loved to watch Bloomberg and laugh at the people who thought housing prices would continuously rise, especially with the dotcom boom only a few years behind us. Today I'm still a young person, and a homeowner as well - with a house well within my & my husband's means.
quote: The big problem with your reasoning is first that it ignores the fact that this crisis is big enough to impact all home owners (and renters) not just those who made bad decisions. As I mentioned before, the market price of my home in Utah dropped 16% in 9 months despite the fact that I didn't have a sub-prime loan. And second most of the people who are loosing their homes in this crisis didn't make fundamentally worse decisions than 90% of the other Americans who bought houses in major urban areas in the past twenty years. We should bail them (or at least some of them) out because 1st it would hurt most homeowners to let so many houses be repossessed and 2nd most of these people weren't fools.
The housing market drop meant that my husband and I could buy our home without stretching our income. Other home owners' losses are current home buyers' gains. And its always a fundamentally bad decision to buy a house you can't afford. Just because some other people have won the gamble doesn't mean that its not your fault that you choose to make the same gamble, and happened to lose.
I really don't have any sympathy for people who make bad financial decisions, and then want a hand out for it. Being a homeowner is not a right, just like having a big screen tv, stainless steel appliances, two newish cars, etc is not a right - despite what many people around me (geographically/socially) seem to believe. Having your home increase in value is not a right either - I'm sorry that your house lost value right before you needed to sell, but that's part of being a homeowner.
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Yes, something else is going on than bad judgment. There were incentives created to encourage people to make those bad judgments. I'm pretty certain Jhai (like myself) is strongly opposed to the existence of those incentives.
However, that doesn't mean it makes sense to reward people for following those incentives.
And of course your home price went down, it was far higher than it should have been. It was probably still far higher than it should have been when you sold.
And no, most of those involuntarily (I distinguish them from those walking away on houses that aren't going to recover equity for a long time despite ability to make payments) losing homes at this time are not like those who were able to make housing payments before. The vast majority of those losing houses had subprime mortgages, and subprime mortgages effectively didn't exist until a little over 20 years ago, didn't start being somewhat popular until a little under 15 years ago, and weren't a really huge part of the mortgage market until 2003.
This isn't to say someone with subprime qualifications shouldn't be able to purchase a house, but many of those taking out subprime loans towards the end were the ones taking out loans that were absurd, frequently when barely able to make the payments before the rate ballooned. Many of them were being assured that they could just refinance, and those assuring them that was possible should be pursued, but that doesn't make their choices any less blatantly stupid.
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quote: Today, I will introduce the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act, which removes government subsidies from the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the National Home Loan Bank Board.
quote:This explicit promise by the Treasury to bail out GSEs in times of economic difficulty helps the GSEs attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital.
quote: Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
quote:These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
quote:In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
quote:But with a major blow to their credit score. Making renting more difficult.
Or they could move to a different neighborhood. It seems to me to be the case that there are some extraordinary cheap rents available, on good-sized property, if you don't mind living around black people.
My comparison of renting versus mortgage is a black neighborhood, an apartment that was barely above slum, possibly slum. I was the only white person who lived there. Now I live in a fairly diverse safe, clean neighborhood (going through my nearest neighbors, we have a black family, a young white couple, two old retired couples, a Hispanic family and a Chinese family)- and for the same cost.
While there are some risks to being a visible minority (I would love to know what city you live in) I have found that if you cultivate a good relationship with your neighbors, particularly ones who have children and use some common sense, you will generally be safe, apart from violence like random drive-by shootings.
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To be fair, I have lived places where cultivating a good relationship with my neighbors would have required illegal activities.
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I tried to cultivate a good relationship with my minority neighbors by saying hello on the stairs and such. For my efforts, I was rewarded with the neighbor attempting to assault me in my apaprtment, apparently assuming that a lack of repulsion = "Come up and see me sometime."
I don't have a problem living in neighborhoods where I'm a minority, but I no longer talk to the neighbors.
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posted
I stand corrected, my statement above was too general.
Tom, I know where you lived, it does depend on the level of slum or maybe the definition of "slum" vs "ghetto" (I think there should be a level worse than ghetto for some specific areas too, and I suspect that where Tom lived was in the Beyond Ghetto classification.) I guess the key question is what scholarettes determination of "slum" is, which is why I'm extremely curious to know her general geographic vicinity.
Katie, I didn't realize your assaulter was a minority. I'm just curious, did he have children? Despite the assault, I suspect that I wouldn't define where you lived as inherently the "slums" but I don't know for sure.
Except at the "ghetto" extremes (which may contain large populations, but are generally confined to a limited number of large cities across the country) there are a lot of so-called slums that contain mostly "working poor" and/or illegal immigrants with a lot fewer criminals than one might think. Those sorts of areas are the ones where getting to know one's neighbors may come in handy.
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quote: Except at the "ghetto" extremes (which may contain large populations, but are generally confined to a limited number of large cities across the country) there are a lot of so-called slums that contain mostly "working poor" and/or illegal immigrants with a lot fewer criminals than one might think. Those sorts of areas are the ones where getting to know one's neighbors may come in handy.
And where the property values are lower.
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He had a wife or a live in girlfriend and there were at least four children in the house.
I didn't live in quite the ghetto, mostly because I've lived in Detroit and I define ghetto as bullet holes in the front door and pizza places refusing to deliver. But I definitely lived in a poorer neighborhood filled with minorities where the police were regularly called and my apartment complex averaged about 6 arrests per month.
*shrug* I had a wonderful, rosy picture of the working poor as well until I found out first hand the reason for the "snotty princess" stereotype. It isn't safe, because you can't assume that everyone is operating under the same expectations of reasonable behavior.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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The not feeling safe was from a male neighbor. Whenever he talked to me, he kinda leered. Him and his friends would stop talking the moment I got out of the car and stare at me. And he was overly interested in when my "man" was going to be home. The leering was uncomfortable, but the attempts to figure out my husband's schedule freaked me out. (And the phrasing was much more how long will you be home alone then any other interpretation- also, he never, ever spoke to my husband).
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Yep - there's a standard of behavior where a woman's privacy is nonexistent and strange men feel perfectly free to invade her private life and space at will.
It is not an expectation of behavior that I share, and I am not comfortable living in a neighborhood where that is a popular expectation of behavior.
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Nonetheless, it is clear that many women do, in fact, live in such circumstances. Or are you asserting that these enclaves are 100% populated by men? This being so, why should you have an expectation that you, particularly, are entitled to follow your preferences in this matter? If middle-class living is expensive, then poor people cannot afford it. If you are poor, then you cannot afford it. Is there any particular reason why the taxpayers (me, among others) ought to be helping you move away from this?
It seems to me that several people here are saying "I could not rent any cheaper than X" with an unspoken rider "except under circumstances too unpleasant to contemplate".
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There are so many wrong assumptions in that post that it is completely worthless as a fact. Just take it that you're wrong at everything.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Yep - there's a standard of behavior where a woman's privacy is nonexistent and strange men feel perfectly free to invade her private life and space at will.
It is not an expectation of behavior that I share, and I am not comfortable living in a neighborhood where that is a popular expectation of behavior.
In all seriousness, I suspect my general level of obliviousness probably helps me in this regard. I probably have been leered at in some neighborhoods where I have lived and just never noticed. Where I grew up, I knew who my friendly neighborhood drug dealers were, and would talk to one in particular about motorcycles.
We knew to go through the alley and look over the wall into a particular yard if bicycles or surfboards went missing, and how to negotiate behind the scenes to get them back. One of the ex-convicts (well he's back in jail again so he's not really an ex-convict anymore) on our street taught me how to lay brick when his mother had nagged him into finally fixing a brick planter. His legit brother that didn't live there was into masonry, and this guy could do the job of a craftsman had he wanted to but he scammed off of his mother mostly instead. His younger cousins and my brothers and I played bicycle tag together.
While being the only white folks, we were integrated enough into the community (and my parents and brothers still are) that we were never bothered in significant ways. There were certain areas of gang activity, that we knew not to linger long in, but we'd never be bothered if we were just passing through. I'd ride my bicycle alone through some even worse areas as a teenager when I was going to work during the summer, or visiting friends and was never ever bothered.
The only thing that I can figure, is that I'm truly oblivious, or that because of my early upbringing I just manage to carry myself so that nobody ever bothers to try messing with me to begin with. Now that I'm thinking about it, it is probably some combination of the two.
I actually found the reported crime stats for my city, which I know have vastly improved from when I lived there. The most interesting crime within a quarter mile of my folks house last week, along with the run of the mill assuaults and burglaries was an attempted kidnapping. They do manage to keep the murder rate pretty low although you'll see quite a few "shooting at an inhabited dwelling" reports.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:It seems to me that several people here are saying "I could not rent any cheaper than X" with an unspoken rider "except under circumstances too unpleasant to contemplate".
Yeah, this is true. I think "and maintain a similar standard of living" is the unspoken rider and it's understood by most everyone even though it's unspoken. Also assumed:
"in roughly the same area" "without adding labor to the monetary cost of rent" "with all the same people that live in the house currently" ..etc.
So, what's your point?
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BannaOj, I imagine that you and your family are salutary influences on the community; in addition, you learned how to lay bricks and who knows what other worthwhile sensibilities. Everyone wins.
scifibum, the point is that it's not just their housing that's artificially inflated, but also their standard of living and sense of social class.
posted
Basically this, I guess: If you are living in a house you can't afford, then you are living beyond your means. And so, when stating "Renting would not be cheaper", you should be certain in your own mind that you really have looked for an apartment that actually does match your means, rather than your expectations.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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It's been said many times (at least at the magazines & blogs I frequent), but too many young people think that they should have the same standard of living their parents currently enjoy, while ignoring the fact that they haven't worked for twenty-plus years like their parents. They complain about money being tight, ignoring the fact that they have tons more things than people did a generation ago: cable television, cellphones, decent/nice cars, expensive organic Whole Foods-type food, and so forth. My husband, despite - or perhaps because of - his childhood of semi-poverty in India, is nearly as bad when it comes to electronic goodies.
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There is some sort of amalgamated crime database that gives cities rankings. 1-10 with 10 being the worst. The US average is also given. I've abbreviated Los Angeles and New York City as LA and NYC
code:
Chicago Oxnard LA NYC U.S. Violent Crime 7 6 7 6 3 Property Crime 7 5 6 5 3
I don't know how much population density is taken into account in these numbers, but I do know that the population of Oxnard is around 185,000. Of course every city has its good and bad areas too, while we didn't live in the absolute worst area of town, we were on the wrong side of the roads that define the "good" areas too.
For addtional comparisons in the Chicago area, Harvey, IL is at 8 in both categories and Gary, IN is ranked 9 in violent crime and 7 in property crime. Compton, CA is 8 and 6. Washington D.C. is 8 and 7.
Ironically, the town I now live has crime stats of 4 and 4, and I feel perfectly safe walking down most of the streets at midnight. However I have been informed by people who live in the surrounding subburbs (crime rates 2 and 2) that my town actually is "the ghetto" a statement I find completely ludicrous even though I now understand why.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Okay, I find it very very funny that I was told by my in-laws not to walk around at night alone when we moved to their city, but my parents let me do it all the time; the city where I grew up (a "very good part of town" is a 7 and 7 according to those stats, whereas the city I moved to is a 4 and 3. You want to know the difference? Income level is higher where I grew up, education is higher where I grew up, there are more whites and asians where I grew up, more blacks and hispanics where I moved, most other stats are within 2 percentage points of each other. Our rent was about 1/6 what it would have been where I grew up... I'd compare to my current city but it isn't listed.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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(FTR, I have always felt perfectly safe walking around at night almost anywhere, including most parts of downtown L.A. and Dallas. Yes, even the parts with homeless people.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: (FTR, I have always felt perfectly safe walking around at night almost anywhere, including most parts of downtown L.A. and Dallas. Yes, even the parts with homeless people.)
Not all of us can kill an assailant in under 2 seconds with an innocent looking ketchup dispenser. How many poor fools tried before word spread around KQ? Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Ketchup Queen, I imagine that will change when you're assaulted.
KoM, you are better off sticking to what you know and are good at. Which isn't this. Or anything else you talk about. I'm sure there's something though. Keep looking. You'll find it.
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If you were just discussing how a low standard of living manifests, why not simply say so? While I'm certainly capable of reading your mind to determine the intent of your posts, I prefer not to do so; passive aggression is unpleasant enough in forum posts, without bathing in the brain that produces it.
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By a stranger when you were walking alone at night which you continue to do? Did you learn nothing from it?
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: By a stranger when you were walking alone at night which you continue to do? Did you learn nothing from it?
Katharina I really don't think this is a subject that requires specific details, do you?
KQ clearly is quite aware that there are people willing to physically harm a person who has done them no harm. Weighing all the other things, she has decided to continue walking down the street alone at night. You claimed that if a worst case scenario occurred she'd reevaluate her standard operating procedure, but obviously now that is not the case. Trying to make the point that KQ's experience is not a complete mirror of your own does not invalidate what she is saying.
Nor does stating that because she has not reached the same conclusion as you, she is therefore less intelligent.
I've walked down the street at night alone numerous times, but there are occasions where the scene around me suggests I need to be alert. I've cautioned my wife about walking around at night alone, and she doesn't do it. There isn't a universal code of conduct for walking down an urban street alone at night.
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If you don't want it discussed, don't bring it up. If you bring it up, then it isn't off limits.
And no, it isn't obvious that that is what happened. The vast, vast majority of assaults do not come from strangers.
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quote:Ketchup Queen, I imagine that will change when you're assaulted.
Right. Because this isn't at all challenging. And of course, anybody who holds a different opinion on something you've obviously put so much thought into must be either inexperienced or an idiot.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I didn't appreciate the challenging tone.
Maybe it was the use of the word "when" rather than "if" in your statement, "I imagine that will change..." that struck me as a tad confrontational. That and you basically told KOM to take a hike in the same post.
quote: If you don't want it discussed, don't bring it up. If you bring it up, then it isn't off limits.
If I mention that say my father molested me as a child,(he didn't thank God) how does requesting the lurid details advance the conversation?
quote: And no, it isn't obvious that that is what happened. The vast, vast majority of assaults do not come from strangers.
Fine, so KQ statistically is safer walking down the street alone when she passes homeless strangers than in other circumstances where she is around acquaintances.
Or else she is safe until she reaches her neighborhood and it is then she should be brandishing some sort of weapon?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: By a stranger when you were walking alone at night which you continue to do? Did you learn nothing from it?
I'm trying to figure out how this sentence could be said with anything but a challenging tone and I'm failing. I can hear it in a mocking voice, or an exasperated voice, even a condescending voice -- but not any voice that doesn't imply a direct insult to the listener.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Nice to see the discussion continued while I took a nap...
Okay, so, first things first. Katie, sorry if I was rude. I guess I was a bit irritated by the tone of your post. I'm sorry I responded in kind (or what I percieved to be in kind.)
It was an acquaintance assault, indeed. I don't think that makes the experience less valid as grounds for deciding whether to walk around at night. I have felt threatened by certain areas at night; I don't go to the areas where I feel threatened. There are even a very small number of areas where I won't go walking during daylight because so much random violence happens (I gotta tell you, if I ever go to South Africa I am NEVER walking alone. The country has an astonishingly awful rate of rapes and it's just not safe for a woman to be out alone, ever.) I was simply saying that the areas I feel unsafe in do not always correspond to the ones other people feel unsafe in (I had an Armenian co-worker who wouldn't walk certain parts of L.A. with me when we went downtown because she felt unsafe, and that was in a group; I did not feel the same way about those areas.) I think a large part of it has to do with listening to your intuition about a place; if I feel threatened somewhere, I leave, even if there is no reason to feel threatened. I learned that one the hard way, from that attempted rape; I didn't listen to the nagging thought that this really wasn't a good idea, went out anyway, and got in trouble.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I feel I need to say that this whole conversation is very intriguing. I haven't felt intimidated walking through an area since I was a kid. Mostly because I'm a big, white, male with broad shoulders and a buzzed head. Plus I can handle myself in a scuffle even if it involves a pistol (at very close range).
So even with people getting emotionally charged in this debate, I'm learning a tremendous amount about mindsets.
Please, without burning bridges, keep the emotion in this. I think it helps expose the guts of the debate.
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I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think the CEOs of both companies failed completely and shouldn't be given compensation for failing their shareholders. But how much total control does a CEO have? Is there a marked degree of difference from company to company? If CEOs do not have much control, should they be punished for a problem that expands across the entire economic sector?
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or maybe the definition of "slum" vs "ghetto" (I think there should be a level worse than ghetto for some specific areas too, and I suspect that where Tom lived was in the Beyond Ghetto classification.) I guess the key question is what scholarettes determination of "slum" is, which is why I'm extremely curious to know her general geographic vicinity.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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