New Haven Independent

Posted by: robn | October 1, 2007 1:58 PM

Heres a riddle,

Q: What do George W Bush and Alan Greenspan have in common?
A: They both made careers out of running businesses into the ground.

George W Bush focussed on the quantity of collapses, while Greenspan focussed on quality...after 32 years , his financial consulting company had such a piss poor record of forecasting that it was down to just him in an office.

And now together they've run the US govt into the ground....tripling the national debt to $40 trillion...yes that's trillion with a T. It's a brilliant combination of immediate calamity (foreclosure and credit crisis) to be followed by a long, drawn-out effort to try and eliminate the staggerring US debt (while at the same time, trying to rebuild our completely devastated armed forces.)

Posted by: Esbe | October 1, 2007 3:33 PM

Robn -- that would be a funny joke if it weren't true.

How many of these foreclosed homes are going to end up empty, nearly worthless to the bank and less than worthless (flat out damaging) to the surrounding community? I'm worried.

Posted by: Albert Vosburn | October 1, 2007 5:36 PM

Of course, there has been lender fraud and personal catastrophe, which deserve reporting to correct the injustice.

But how about reporting on the many foreclosures that are the result of poor judgment on the part of the home buyer? Overextending, failure to plan for tomorrow, people with a back-up plan of bankruptcy. And in many of those same impoverished neighborhoods, you see spanking new Cadillac Escalades and Mercedes convertibles, also purchased with expensive credit.

Where is your informational reporting that would educate people to save, to avoid this reckless and extreme consumer behavior?

Posted by: fairhavener | October 1, 2007 6:14 PM

"How many of these foreclosed homes are going to end up empty, nearly worthless to the bank and less than worthless (flat out damaging) to the surrounding community? I'm worried."

No Kidding. I am not just worried though, I am scared.

Since the comments so far have been addressing the bigger picture(s) I will follow suite. I have empathy for May and anyone who losses a home, it is something that should never happen, but I do have one thing to say about people who do what she did. That is, rent Section 8 apartments. As stated above:

"Setting out in the new realm of homeownership wasn't easy, said May. Section 8 tenants "destroyed" the property, leaving pock marks in the walls when they left. May took out a spackling paddle and smoothed over the damage."

There is only ONE reason I know of that people rent to Section 8 tenants; that is MONEY. You can charge more rent for apartments when taxpayers pay most of the tenants' rent. But, that is what happens; your property turns to trash. Everywhere I have lived and a Section 8 rental was created and rented all hell broke loose. In addition to serious crime, and petty crimes, all the quality of life issues become real issues again. We need to stop allowing Section 8 landlords from collecting more for Section 8 tenants than they would from any other tenant (isn't that discrimination).

"...but struggled to keep up with payments, slipping behind as a tenant left and the apartment remained empty. The porch on the century-old house caved in. She had to replace the roof."

And that's another thing. Don't buy an old house if you don't have the money to make repairs (or know how to repair it yourself (not just patching holes)). Fair Haven has a wealth of beautiful old homes that have been destroyed from neglect, slumlords, general ignorance, incompetent cops, and Section 8. I will bet we will lose a lot more of our culture and history from architecture over the next 10 years due to the same causes.

Posted by: cedarhillresident | October 1, 2007 7:29 PM

Esbe, fairhavener

While I read these stories that is all that I think...how scary is this!

Not just to the country, to the state, to the city, but to my small little community! With gas,ui,food,medical,taxes all going up and paychecks staying the same this is going to happen to alot more people. Something needs to be done fast.

I see on the city web site this artical posted http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/article.aspx?id=207
that our city's real estate is very valuable right now. So we are not suppose to worry about all the houses people are now losing??? Hmmm Is town hall that detached??

as far as what fairhavener said about the section 8 he or she :) (not sure) is right about there being some kind of control over what kind of money is given out for rents. They say it is market value.Personally I think that section 8 should have a nuisance and destruction clause. They lose there section 8 if they become a nuisance to the community that they move into and or if they do major damage to the property that they live in. Section 8 is not the lottery it is emergency assistance for people in need. There are people waiting on a large waiting list that will value that kind of assistance and not abuse it.

Posted by: charlie | October 1, 2007 9:42 PM

The problem is that gasoline and roads are so heavily subsidized by the government. In most countries, you actually have to pay to use the roads and gas is priced based on what it actually costs. Here, our government is indirectly paying for people to drive 40 miles every day to work. The result is that older houses in middle-class areas, relatively speaking, have little value, because it is simply cheaper to build a crappy piece of drywall in Southington and drive back and forth to it for an hour every day than it is to put a new coat of paint on a beautiful, 100-year-old mansion in Fair Haven.

Ironically, this slash-and-burn type of system we have also makes our citizens generally too fat, tired (from driving everywhere), stupid and lazy to be able to do anything to change it.

I can count five solutions to the problem at hand:

1) Raising taxes on the people making hundreds of millions of dollars per year while the rest of us can barely afford to shop at Walmart. Use the money to expand the EITC and provide free healthcare so that people actually have an incentive to work and save for their families' futures. Also use it to expand mass transit and create more jobs fixing the public infrastructure that is collapsing all around us. Look at what our country built in the 1930s and compare it to the crumbling bridges we have today.

2) A local revolution. This would ideally be nonviolent and consist of citizens basically barracading all of the roads leading into town for a couple of weeks until the suburbs agree to a higher tax rate, because currently they get to benefit from all the services and economic advantages (e.g., density, hospitals, freeway interchanges, ports, etc.) created by the city without having to pay for it. Another version would be violent, but this would likely just lead to an immediate implementation of solution #1.

3) Economic development. Unfortunately, the city administration is too shortsighted to be able to take the steps that would allow the city to grow its tax base more quickly, i.e., 1) cutting all of the ridiculously high city permitting fees so developers would want to build here and local universities will expand more quickly - currently, they are so high it makes you laugh when you compare them to what other cities charge; 2) eliminating all new government-subsidized housing and enacting a 5-year plan to reduce the current stock of it so that it is in line with what suburban towns have (e.g., getting rid of almost all of it); 3) focusing political efforts on bulldozing the houses of the 10 or 20 people in East Haven who are holding up the economic development of the entire region by blocking the airport from extending its runway by a few feet; 4) passing a local ordinance requiring a mandatory minimum 40-year sentences with no parole for every violent criminal, no matter how minor the offense, and 5) putting Gateway Community College on Route 34 so you can downtown land for tax-producing purposes given than it is 10 times more valuable than any other land.

4) Doing nothing. This may be the best solution for New Haven proper, because ultimately you will have a wealthy, gentrified central city of beautiful historic buildings surrounded by a ring of dysfunctional, bombed-out industrial parking lot slums in East Haven, Hamden, and West Haven. Even though New Haven has a lot of foreclosures, they are primarily concentrated in outlying neighborhoods, and the surrounding towns have even more. You're not seeing as many foreclosures in Downtown, East Rock, Wooster Square, Edgewood, or Westville.

5) Raising the gasoline tax so gas is what it actually costs, e.g., about $10 per gallon. This would solve hundreds, if not thousands, of our problems at once. If we did this, we could also stop spending the 38% of our nation's budget (including interest) that goes to national "defense" but is actually just used to help prop up oil consumption.

Posted by: DEZ | October 2, 2007 8:41 AM

Question. When one rents to "Various Tenant A" one obtains a security deposit. When one rents to "Various Tenant B" who happens to be a section 8 tenant, is there a security deposit involved? I am aware of many section 8 tenants that do no harm, but am amazed to hear about the ones who trash a rental leaving the owner to pay the damages and starting the 'spiral to insolvency' should the owner not have the funds to remedy the damage, leading to an unrented unit, leading to an empty property, leading to more damage, ad infinitum...

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | October 3, 2007 11:15 AM

The ID card program, in round numbers, has used up about $300,000 -- not City $$ -- came from First City Fund Corp. For this sum, in round numbers, about 3500 ID cards have been issued. That's about $85 per card! Maybe another 2000 cards will be issued. That would cut the cost per card to about $64 per card.

I'm not questioning the need for the cards. Though they seem very expensive for what they are, I'm sure they do some good. It's just a question of deploying money for the best possible use.

If that same $350,000 was spent on helping people with foreclosures, just to imagine one of many,many uses, at $500 each,extra legal services could have been privided to defend Bank actions against 700 foreclosed owners. That could buy the owners substantial additional time, settlements, reduced payments, etc. There's lots the City could do to help distressed folks, especially by using funds from First City Fund Corp., a non-profit formed from the City's settlement on the New Haven Savings Bank/NewAlliance conversion.

ID cards definitely do some good. However a program without a really tangible purpose provided to maximum 4% of the City's population at a cost of about $64 per card doesn't seem to be a big priority especially when folks are losing their homes.

Posted by: Fairhaven Dave | October 3, 2007 1:35 PM

I have zero sympathy for a person who buys an antique home, takes financial advantage of section 8 housing, and then uses repair costs as an excuse for defaulting on a home mortgage.

The first law of Section 8: "When you GIVE a person something they are going to treat it like it is free."

Comments by FAIRHAVENER and CEDARHILLRESIDENT were both very appropriate; on the other hand:

I'm not sure what the rest of you are talking about. Gasoline? City ID cards? Greenspan? (Who, by the by, warned us about this situation over five years before retiring.) Get off the soapbox! Note how the rest of us quote or discuss issues directly from the article?

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | October 3, 2007 2:46 PM

Boy you're a really relevant guy, Dave. Stick to the article. O, by the way did the article mention Section 8. Do you know Section 8 subsidizes only rental housing? Where in the article was rental housing mentioned?

Posted by: cedarhillresident | October 4, 2007 8:20 AM

Your Tax Dollars at Work
the artical did mention section 8 and the fact that she blames those tenants for her demise. And it was her chose to rent to them, knowing the history of the damage that people on section 8 (not all) can do to a property. Being a landlord (no matter who you rent to is a gamble).

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | October 4, 2007 12:42 PM

Sorry, CedarHillResident; the tenor of the article was foreclosures. I missed the Section 8 reference.

However, now that I think of it, your remarks about Section 8 tenants show a strikingly biased attitude.

Please reconsider. Section 8 has been around for many, many years. Matter of fact I'm proud to say we have some Section 8 tenants in our neighborhood. There's absolutely no evidence of a general "history of damage." It's a pretty good program providing subsidies so our lower-income brethren can afford to live in neighborhoods they otherwise could not afford.

You're against that?

Posted by: FAIRHAVEN DAVE | October 4, 2007 2:16 PM

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Yes, the tenor of the article was about mass foreclosures, but the single example they gave was not a situation where I sympathize due to the reasons many of us have listed above.

In our neighborhood section 8 housing is a for-profit enterprise notoriously abused and neglected by the tenants and/or landlords. Single family homes are gutted, poorly reconstructed into a dozen apartments, vinyl sided, and then neglected until condemned. I am glad to see it is doing some good in your neighborhood, but in mine it is destroying properties. From all the research I have been able to do your example is an exception to the norm.

I truly appreciate you calling me relevant. I like to think I am up to date. But, to call anyone biased while voicing an opinion is redundant. To imply that one of us are suggesting anything as irrational as your closing statement is assumptive and rude. AND until THIS paragraph, I HAVE stayed on topic and, unlike yourself, have not gone off on a rambling tangent about how some pet issue barely-indirectly ties into the story.

Posted by: DEZ | October 4, 2007 4:12 PM

Back to my question about section 8...is there any type of security deposit given to the landlord to protect the property in a section 8 rental?

Posted by: Your Tax Dollars at Work | October 4, 2007 4:48 PM

The Man says "post a comment." Nothing there about relevancy.

Posted by: FAIRHAVEN DAVE | October 4, 2007 10:04 PM

DEZ

A deposit can be requested, tho often it is treated by tenants as 'last months rent'. Any amount substantial enough to guarantee adequate property maintenance would be considered socio-economically unfair as it would defeat the purpose of having an assistance based system in the first place.

Note that when 'Sec8' checks were recently legislated to go directly to the renter, rather than the landlord, these foreclosures increased ten fold.

This has had a two pronged effect. The bad news is that folks like "May" who relied on the old, system will have to adapt quickly.

The good news is, scumbags who used section 8 to buy up properties all over town, hack together ten apartments, cut corners, while taking advantage of impoverished communities and tax based assistance systems are going broke.

Posted by: Edward_H | October 21, 2007 11:57 AM

Dez
"Back to my question about section 8...is there any type of security deposit given to the landlord to protect the property in a section 8 rental?"

Section 8 does not provide security deposits. Over my years as a landlord I have seen no end of other goverment and private programs that do provide or assist with security deposits for renters who cannot save up the money. The Department of Social Services runs such a program called the Security Deposit Guarantee Program if I recall correctly.