Reply #51: A lot of us are trying to hang on to some of what we *could* afford

[jaybeat]

Don't tar us all with the same brush, GGM.

We bought our house 7 years ago and promptly invested 40K in it so my MIL could live here, too. (That was part of the plan.) Only, the SAME month we moved in, my employer decided that my manager had been "mistaken" when she had given me a raise the previous September. And they wanted the money back! They took it out of my paychecks before they laid me off in May, dot-com crash and all...

Right about the same time, both my mother and my MIL had serious accidents with hospital stays followed by extensive rehab--at home. Just as I got a new job, in September, my wife had to drastically cut her income to take care of them...

Fast forward to the present day, after high 5 figures of un-insured medical bills (not related to our moms' accidents), 3 more layoffs for me, bankruptcy, repossession of a modest used car, an interest-only ARM refinance (set to adjust this summer) that was in, but is now out of foreclosure, and we are still in our house.

We don't have "more house than we can afford"--we have less employment than we need to live! We have no health insurance, and I have the curse of being overqualified for most of the openings in my field. (People can't or won't hire me for what they know I'm worth, and don't want to hire me for what they would pay someone with less experience, even though I'd take it--I guess because they're afraid I'd jump ship for a better offer. Plus experience tends to indicate that you know something of what the fuck you're doing, and a lot of employers don't like that. They want sheeple who'll do it their way because they don't know enough to ask questions.) My salary, both what I've made and what I can expect to make, has stayed flat in real dollars since 2000. My unemployment insurance ran out right before Christmas.

Finally, if you want to compare median home prices, incomes, etc., we are, have been and should be "middle class." We can't "walk away"--where the hell would we live? Rents keep going up just as housing purchase prices are falling, and too many people are still coming here (Pacific NW) which keeps demand for rentals high along with competition for the few jobs out there. And we'd be giving up the equity that we do have and handing that to the bank.

I know of MANY people in similar circumstances. I know ANYBODY who are "living in houses they could never afford for 0% down, paying less than what rent would be..." or who are able to "stay in those houses for free for the months and years it often takes the banks to foreclose." That sounds disturbingly like "blame the victim, borrowers own fault for living beyond their means, blah, blah, blah..." right-wing crap that is used to justify bailing out the bankers and screwing the people that *really* are getting ripped off.

If you want to point fingers, point them at the speculators who buy something, rent it out for 6 months at a profit (since rents are high), then sell it for a profit, driving the price of houses up and up beyond what most people can afford. Point fingers at the Bush tax cuts, that tax profit-taking (stocks, real-estate, whatever) at *half* the rate of wages (otherwise known as working for a living). Look at homebuilders, who have all the incentives in the world to build more of the highest $ per square foot houses, since that's what makes them the most money and those buyers are the only people who are doing better than they were 8 years ago. Affordable, middle-class housing becomes local government's problem, only they also get more tax dollars from developments over the median so they are as likely as not to encourage the developers. Point them at the companies who boost their share prices by outsourcing, mergers, and cutting "costs"--wages and benefits. Point them at Republican policies that have radically decreased the taxes on those who make money with shell-game buying and selling of "stuff" and stuck it to people who work for wages. Point them at trade policies that say it good for America to buy cheap crap made in China from Wal-Mart, at the expense of jobs that pay enough to let you afford anything else. Point them at exurban sprawl that drives people looking for affordable houses to live 1, 2 or more hours away from where they work, at the expense of congestion, oil consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and kids stuck 10 hours a day in day-care.

The vast majority of people are not "living beyond their means." We're just trying to live, and it keeps getting harder and harder. My kids now, even when both of their parents ARE working, live no better, and sometimes worse, then my wife and I did growing up in single-earner households, where the wage-earner was either a secretary or a teacher. We each earn *twice* what one of those jobs would pay now, but we're barely treading water. In less than 30 years, the entire economy has been restructured to the detriment of people who work for a living--not just "working class" jobs, but college-educated professionals. AKA, the middle class.

It won't be long before there is no such thing.

Maybe I'll have to be a guest worker in India, and send money home to support my family.

Or be a contractor for KBR in Iraq.

America. The land of opportunity.