Archive for the 'Detroit' Category

Testament to sad times

Kasia April 7th, 2009

There are a lot of vacant or auction homes right now, and a lot of people without homes or jobs. I’m not sure why this particular auction home makes me so sad, except maybe that I’ve loved this house for years and wished I could buy it.

I don’t think that’s the only reason, though. It’s definitely one reason – here my dream house is going up for auction starting at $10,000 and I can’t buy it. That’s grounds to be a little bummed.

For those who are wondering why not: terms of sale are cash, for one thing; and I already have a mortgage on the little condo Canuck and I are calling home, for another. Unloading a property in Michigan in this economy is the stuff prayers are made of (which is why that house is up for auction right now). Besides, on my salary we’re in no position to maintain a house like that. Even if we got the house for $40 or $50 K, and could finance it, what happens when you need a new roof, or the septic field – which I guarantee that house has – goes kaputt? Old houses need ready cash. (Just ask my poor dad, who has owned several, including a notorious money pit about fifty years older than the house we’re talking about, and a barn of a house from the 1920s that was, I gather, a nightmare to heat.)

Anyway. I can see that that’s part of what’s making me sad.

But I think more of it is that I’m looking at this 100+ year old house – maintained very well if the exterior is any indicator – that someone else has loved and lost.

People other than me loved this house enough to maintain it to last the past 108 years: through wars and the Depression and lots of lean times. And maybe it’s my imagination, but I think it looks like a house that’s held a lot of love. How do you fill four bedrooms, but with family and friends?

But the last someone who had this house…who knows? Maybe they couldn’t afford it when they bought it. Or maybe they bought a different house expecting to be able to sell this one (because it’s been on the market for some time), only to find that the bubble had burst, and they made two payments for as long as they could, until… Or maybe they lost a job – or two, or more - and simply ran out of savings.

I don’t personally know anyone who I know to have fallen in the first category, but I know plenty of people who fall in the other two. And I suppose a lot of what’s making me so sad about this house is that it reminds me of those people. It reminds me of friends and acquaintances who, through bad decisions or bad luck (and in some cases, both) have lost their financial footing and are trying to get it back in other, less economically ravaged areas. It reminds me of others I know who are on the edge, or near it, and who are living every day with the knowledge that that could happen to their house next.

Yeah.

I think that’s why I’m so sad to see it up for auction.

It’s Michigan in a nutshell.

Here’s a stupid question for you…

Kasia November 12th, 2008

OK. So at least one or two of the Big Three have expressed interest in getting some of the money from that big government bailout/stimulus package that passed back in what, September? Now, I’m not going to debate whether the package should have passed – even at the time I recognized that it was beyond my meager economic competence to evaluate, and now it’s moot anyway because it’s long since passed. My question is a little more basic.

According to the news report I heard this morning, the Big Three and our governor, Jennifer Granholm, are earnestly pressing for this. However, (the news reported), some people object because the funds shouldn’t be used to prop up companies that have grossly mismanaged their resources. I paraphrase, but that’s the gist.

So here’s my question: As I recall, the package was precipitated by the apparently impending failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plus a few other financial institutions that had apparently either been instrumental in originating most of the mortgages that have since been deemed overly risky (you know, when they went into default – hindsight being 20/20 and all that) or had purchased them as investments (because we know risky investments NEVER fail and ALWAYS bring high returns)…doesn’t it seem like…well, you know…the package was designed for companies that have grossly mismanaged their resources? Or is it just me?

And now I hear the City of Detroit is trying to get in on the action. Well, they definitely qualify as having grossly mismanaged their resources…

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