The focus is back on housing again!
The discussion is about how to get anyone hit by a foreclosure “out of trouble”. Perceptions of “too much change in too short a period of time“, or Future Shock underlie the reporting. Headlines about how shocked “Families flock to foreclosure fairs”and about how Homeownership Preservation Forums might help, abound.
Howstuffworks has an article detailing how foreclosures can affect a family. Realtytrac, a firm that monitors foreclosures, estimates that 20 per cent of foreclosures nationwide involve rental property and that number rises to around 45 per cent in some places like Las Vegas and San Diego (more). A lot of the advice seems to be doublespeak for how to get foreclosure victims back “into the system” that got them homeless in the first place.
Those affected by foreclosure are tending to become “Walkaway homeowners”, and this phenomenon is on the increase. . As their home values tumble and their mortgages rise, these “walk away homeowners” decide to cede their houses to their lenders. You Walk Away, based in San Diego, began in January to assist homeowners who want to let their homes go into foreclosure. It is being reported that some walk away homeowners feel that they have paid too much in terms of stress and worry for the title of homeowner.
Why should they be expected to want to return again to the same stress and worry if or when the market rebounds? Some homeowners may want to get back into that again. What about those who are tired of all that worry about payments?
Surely this is the time to think more about how to make low cost housing available to larger numbers of people than ever before. Is this not an event demanding instant housing just like a natural disaster does? If a subprime lending crisis sweeps up millions of borrowers nationwide and dumps them into the streets homeless, should we not deal with it as if a tsunami had swept them up and dumped them into the streets homeless?
The mission of Home Grown Food Network is to promote affordable energy and building. We do not believe in succumbing to future shock. We do not believe in fighting the emerging housing problem, we believe in solving it. We are aware of a vast reservoir of good will and ingenuity that is available for this purpose. A product of this ingenuity is The Future Shack- a mass produced relocatable house suitable for use as relief housing when sited on land suitably zoned for it.
It is available now. It is ultra low cost. How about FUTURE SHACK instead of Future Shock?
Filed under: Beat the mortgage hike, Ultra low cost housing | Tagged: foreclosures, future shock, homelessness, low cost housing, squatting
