Re: Ping Diddy...from (the)duckster

FurPaw wrote:

Do you have any idea how long it is taking people to find a buyer in THIS market? The prices of housing have dropped so much that unless they have been living in their house long enough to build up some equity (quite a few years), they can't even sell their house for the amount that they owe on their mortgage.

My mom's house is paid off. She doesn't live in a great neighborhood (old Victorian gas boom houses that are about half fixed up and half falling down). When we moved there in the mid 80s, we bought the house for $32K. It appraised last year for $25K. That's with a new roof, new furnace, new duct work, new windows, fully rewired, insulation, refinished floors, landscaping, etc. Also a carriage house-cum-garage. And the kicker? She couldn't sell it if she wanted to, and where the heck is she going to find to live that would be cheaper than where she is now, anyway?

Oh, and she was laid off about 6 months ago and hasn't been able to find a new job. Where she lives is *seriously* economically depressed. For the most part, you work for the university or you work in the service industry. Getting into the university system is hard--harder now than it was when I worked there. And who can support themselves on a minimum wage service job?

So she's not in danger of losing her house in the "can't pay the mortgage" sense, but she very well could in the "what the hell am I going to do?" sense.

But by all means, Paul ought to make a bunch of sweeping judgments about her. And while he's at it, he can add my best friend to the list of low life scum who has had the gall to get divorced and lose her house because she couldn't scrape together the mortgage payments. (Ex was all for refinancing multiple times, so there was no equity and more was owed on the house than it was worth even before the market collapsed. Now the house is worth half--half!!!--what it appraised for in 2005.)

fundamental attribution error and just jump to the conclusion that it's due to bad character, rather than bad circumstances and bad luck? Who are you mad at?

Because folks like Paul believe in their stony little hearts that it's a moral failing to be poor.

--
Shelly
http://www.cat-sidh.net (the Mother Ship)
http://esther.cat-sidh.net (Letters to Esther)
.

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