Creating jobs from the bottom-up..and "curing" the housing crisis

[SoCalDem]

The post last night about the Guardian story on Detroit's cheap housing, brought this to mind..


Inner city housing there , and proabably in many other locales, has fallen on hard times......3 story homes selling for $500..and block after block of them at that.. houses just sitting there being stripped and vandalized...

Counter that issue with the thousands of people who are desperate for affordable housing.

True, many people will not move there becuase of the crime, lack of services and unavailability of jobs....


BUT... what if?


What if some of that $850B "rescue money" were to be spent on BUYING up distressed housing in poor areas, and then forming housing re-hab companies who would HIRE some of the unemployed/underemployed people to fix these places up and then RENT them to people who are already getting housing assisatnce money.. It would be a left pocket-right pocket proposition as far as the money transfer to/from government went, but it would solve several problems at once..

1... boost the economy through real jobs
2... revitalize dying neighborhoods
3... lessen crime
4... more people , means more need for stores to return
5... upgrade the value of owner-occupied homes
6... regenerate the building trades in the area

This would be different from the "gentrification" that goes on in select areas, and that push poor people OUT.. This would be renovating homes for poor people to actually live in, with the housing assistance money they already get.. It would spur the scummy landlords to upgrade their own properties too, because given a choice of living in a roomy house that's been fixed up, or a dilapidated rooming house with an absentee landlord, we all know which one they would choose..

As the areas rebounded, these houses could be offered for sale to people who , by then, might have re-entered the job market and rebuilt their own lives. It might also offer people who had been coerced into freaky mortgages, to try again, with government help, to buy a home they could actually afford.

[onethatcares]

1. exactly what I've been thinking about

Hire block captains with construction experience, maximum pay $150,000 a year to oversee the rehabbing of the properties.Hire workers, from laborers to roofers, beginners to journeymen in all trades. It would definitely provide an upswell in jobs for those areas hardest hit by loss of manufacturing jobs. But what are the layed off bankers to do?

I'm sure greater minds than mine could work out the details, the audits and the other needed items, but one thing has to happen. There cannot be a taking of our tax dollars pledged for this becoming someone elses trips to Aruba for meetings.

Great idea. Peace.

[Skittles]

2. they wouldn't have to create jobs if they'd stop pimping them out

to the lowest bidders overseas