‘The cost of living is driving us out’

Source: MSNBC/AP

STAMFORD, Conn. - This isn't how Simon and Jennifer Morris envisioned married life — sharing a charity-subsidized suite with four other hard-up families, abiding by a curfew and other rules that make them feel they are back in high school.

But for a working-class couple with two small children, trying to stick it out in their pricey hometown, housing options are few.

They abandoned their previous one-bedroom apartment when the rent rose from $1,200 to $1,425. Public housing has long waiting lists, so they moved into a shelter for dislocated families in a converted YMCA. The goal: Save enough money to move south and buy a home where costs are lower.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20776771/

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Pretty sad when a working class couple with two kids can't live on their own. What in the world has this country come to?

chances are you'll be living in a campground outside town. If you're a worker in Palm Springs, your commute will be an hour to the next town.

The wealthy want us to take care of their every need, but they do not want to live anywhere near us. They don't want us fucking up their view on our days off, they don't want to be reminded that we can't afford to live in the same sort of mansions they do. They push us out of town, out of sight, out of mind unless we're on the job.

The sad truth is that this family won't be that much better off in the south. Oh, the housing prices are a little cheaper, but the wages are a lot lower. They deserve the best but they are not likely to get it.

if this goes on, the rich will have to mow their own lawns, pump their own fuel, and clean their own bathroms! :P

But seriously ... most people are not greedy; they just want a comfortable happy healthy life and make the world a better place for their kids. The increasing housing prices, price hikes in basic goods, wage loss and stagnation, are making middle class people poorer -- this pattern of living will create a great deal of social instability. I wonder if the idiots making all that money realize that it's the middle class that's maintaining the relative peace and stability of this country.

"The sad truth is that this family won't be that much better off in the south. Oh, the housing prices are a little cheaper, but the wages are a lot lower. "

They take cheap apartment buildings near downtown and renovate (or demolish and rebuild) them to make them nice and pretty. Then they sell them as condos, but at such high prices, only well paid professionals can afford them. Even if they stay as apartments, the low wage workers can't afford them anymore.

I don't know how much better it is in the South. My sister lives in DC, and she is seeing her rent increase. Her boyfriend's apartment building spruced itself up and went co-op.

My husband and I live in Central Florida, where housing costs have outpaced wages to such an extent that even teachers, firefighters and police officers are hard pressed to afford a house. Imagine what it is like for all of our hotel and restaurant workers making minimum wage! Many people have started moving way out and face at least an hour commute to work. Since our public transportation sucks, most people drive. And the proposed solution to the gridlock on the interstate? Lexus Lanes!


:grr:

You have to bust your ass in school, and then even after school, you have to take continuing education to stay abreast of new developments and maintain your license. I don't consider Nursing a working class occupation but as a single mom, I could not afford a house in a resort area. I would not have been able to afford an apartment if the land lady had not given me a break BECAUSE I was a Nurse. My salary started at 24k and went up to 26K with actual experience in my field (1999-2003) and I had to take a second job the entire time just to make ends meet. After a few years of trying to make it work-a pencil and paper analysis lead me to conclude that I would never be able to afford anything. As beautiful as the area was-you can't feed, shelter, and clothe your kid or your self on scenery.....

I hope that one day, when that rich county commissioner bastard living in that trophy house hits the floor with a heart attack and no one arrives to save his sorry ass-he remembers the time he voted down a pay increase for the hospital staff and first responders. And maybe he might finally make the connection of how important it is to keep these people in the community. Everyone makes a contribution to the quality of life in a community and therefore deserve support in order to remain in the community. But since this bastard made it impossible for me to live there in a decent manner befitting my education and skill level, his sorry ass can stay on the floor and his calls go unheeded. Welcome to the new economic reality.

Three out of the four houses that have sold over the last 2 years in my immediate neighbourhood are occupied by more than one nuclear family. All of them are multi-generational, with a 30ish working couple with children and a set of grandparents. The house behind me has 2 working age couples,3 toddlers plus an elderly couple. And these are older 3 bedroom 1500+/- sf ranches.

I can barely manage to stay in my house, but my situation is a little different because i'm on ss disability. Once my daughter finishes school and turns 18 though I'll have no choice but to move.

I seem to recall something going on then ...

What was it again? It's on the tip of my tongue ...

Could it be ...

THE GREAT DEPRESSION?!?!

reach fruition, but by far the best is yet to come.

way up. My friend rents a house and her lease is up in 3 weeks and he landlord wants to raise the rent by $275 a month which she really cannot afford.

But it makes perfect sense.

Whenever I hear these sad stories, I do feel badly for them. There is this middle class squeeze that has been going on in recent years.

But I also wonder who many of these working class and "poor" people voted for in '04? Did they vote at all? Did they vote for Bush? Did they vote Democratic in their state elections?

Because it's a cinch that ALL of these working class and poor who are now getting screwed didn't vote for their own interests - Democratic - in past years, or Kerry would've won. Gore would've knocked it out of the ballpark. Their state legislators, being Democratic, would at least lend a more sympathetic ear to their plight.

Not that they don't deserve better, or that they don't deserve sympathy...but I just wonder....are they reaping what they sowed in 2000 and 2004? If so, they should beat a path to the voting booth in '08 and give the Democratic politicians landslides across the country, at local, state, and federal levels.

If they don't do that, then they may as well try and catch the wind by asking their Republican leaders for assistance.

all the election years you've mentioned have been notorious with it.

It's a curious psyops technique to set up a clandestine system of failure, then hold the losers personally accountable. Hasn't a permutation of that been ongoing for some millennia? Is it not a psyops technique and instead one of the weaker/stonger characteristics of human beings' natural pecking order? Is it part of the authoritarian mindset?

voted Democratic in 2000 and 2004, the Democrats would've won in a landslide at the local, state, and federal levels....even with election fraud by the Republicans. The country consists MAINLY of working class and poor people.

I feel for the plight of others....but I feel more for those who are made to suffer AFTER they took the time and trouble to go to the voting booth and actually try to do something that helps the working class and poor economically.

If, OTOH, they can't be bothered with "that political stuff," or they vote Republican because of the social issues...then they are reaping what they have sown. They are worse off economically, but they can rest easy that there are folks in Washington fighting that dastardly Roe vs. Wade decision.

as I recall, a number of churches encouraged their members to vote for the GOP - as the party of religious and moral values.

Godless Democrats, etc...

Now we know that with the GOP you are not safe in a public toilet; you can't send your young sons to be House Pages....

And there is a possibility when you go get your crack - you might be in line behind your religious leader.

I live in a very rural area in East TN. It is a mixed bag of people that range from upper middle class to utter poverty. I can't tell you how many times I've seen "W" stickers on beat-up, old jalopies with tail pipes hanging on by wires. I still see bush signs up on dilapidated out-houses with rusting trailers next to them. I shake my head and wonder what these poor people saw in the bushes. Why did they vote in 04 for a guy whose clear interests were not with them but with the excessively wealthy? I can understand they got lied to in 2000, and the dancing supremes picked our king for us. But in 04, it was clear the bushes were liars and scoundrels. And then they voted a republican, Porker Corker, in as their Senator.

Well, sometimes I think the majority of voters got the government they deserve.

they wouldn't have been *able* to steal 2000 and 2004, but the fact is there were *enough* Democratic votes if they hadn't in fact stolen 2000 and 2004.

people who in large part either did not vote at all, or voted for the party that favors the wealthy and the "free market." That's all I was saying.

It would be my hope that next time they run, not walk, to the voting booth and vote for politicians who at least try to consider the working class and "poor" issues.

As for feeling sorry for someone...feel sorry for me! I voted the "right way" in '00 and '04, but despite my votes, I believe my retirement income in future years will be taken away from me in large part by huge tax increases to pay off Bush's debt. And I did my best to keep him from getting elected.

I never thought I'd live in such "interesting times" until I found myself in the middle of them. It sucks. I feel sorry for you and me and all who are caught in this who didn't vote for it.

I notice the number of "W" stickers is *way* down in my neck of the woods, but there are still some. Can't imagine what they are thinking.

I still see some Kinky stickers too. Thanks for more years of Perry, y'all.

This is the uninformed, gullible voter, of whom Ben Franklin warned us.

I love that bumpersticker, and see it as being as close to the truth in a slogan as anything.

Expenses here are at an all time high...

To survive.

He married the daughter of a Stamford slum lord. His father-in-law taught him the ropes.

He bought a city block of skid row just south of the train station with a government 2% loan, rehabbed a bunch of tenements and rented them to illegal aliens who came here to work. He said they were the best tenants and never gave him any problems.
He finally sold it by the square foot and moved to the country.

The American dream. :rofl:

I still think he's an asshole.

It was an older dump, and nothing to be very excited about. The rents were initially high, but something I could deal with when I first moved in. When the dotcom bomb went crazy, the landlord jumped onto the bandwagon of when people's leases came up, that she would try to jack up their rent around 40% or force them to leave. These places were certainly not worth that much money and the first persons in this building, a family that was good friends of mine that lived across from me, moved out someplace else then. Subsequently she had like two or three Vietnamese or other Asian families all "cramming" in to that one unit that were H-1B employees of some other firm that in effect helped them get this housing to live there while they got their "H-1B visa jobs" that they were locked into.

Not too long before I moved out myself before my lease was up, I found out that these H-1B Visa people had all moved out (make that "kicked out"!), and their boss moved in. Apparently he had to find someplace, and the best way he had to deal with that is to kick them all out of the place he was renting for them, and take the place himself. I guess they had to fend for themselves in some worse neighborhood in South San Jose then. Everyone was trying to find someplace that wasn't going to go crazy on them. I moved to a place that was similarly priced to what I anticipated my rent was going to be raised to (about 40%) but which was a three bedroom house instead of a small fourplex apartment there. I signed a six month lease instead of a year lease, hoping that I'd have more freedom to renegotiate a lower rent then, or move someplace else when presumably the housing mess at that point would die down. Instead, I was told that she wanted to sell the place at the end of my six month lease (I'd bought tons of stuff to live in that house like a refrigerator, lawn mower, etc.), and I needed to find someplace else then. That was the signal to me to leave the bay area, since things were just getting more and more out of control. I found out later that she couldn't find a buyer and had moved into this place herself for some time afterward. The house next door and another across the street went on the market at the same time too. That was how crazy it was then.

It is what is probably happening on a larger scale around the country now too.

...small condo, like 800-900 sq. ft, we are talking %500K in just a so-so neighborhood.

Unbelievable!

There are multiple reasons why. I think the Bay Area was a macrocosm of some of these at the end of last century during the dotcom bust, when you had a similar "housing bust" at a small scale there. Rents and supply of housing was crazy, demand for home purchases of expensive housing was dropping like a stone, the cost of living was way to high, and jobs were still being lost and salaries weren't rising. There was a big exodus then. I was a part of that exodus.

Now down in San Diego (and places like where you are, we're getting similar situations). The rental market is getting increased pressure and rising prices there. Jobs are starting to suck more here. We have added problems here with increased numbers of illegal immigrants taking away many middle class jobs.

I think we're heading here for a very "feudal" society. Especially if we are really approaching a new "depression" nationally with the collapse of middle class, and a subsequent collapse of the housing market, subprime loans, etc. We're going to have a very "tiered" society. Around here those that will stay will have their "gated communities become "walled communities" like castles that can still afford such. The rest of the middle class, etc. will leave more and more. And you will be stuck with those that can't move or the immigrants that will work for cheap wages and who cannot vote.

If a coming depression becomes severe, with a lot more homeless, and people that are in the second tier that cannot afford this new "castle" tier of housing, will be more desperate and I think at some point evolve into "Mad Max" style gangs, that will TAKE what they can't earn, etc. with the increasing availability of arms and other means of inflicting will over others, that is more deadly now than the first depression, and now that we don't have "the family farm" much of any place that people can go to to get food and shelter in exchange for their work.

Probably need to move to smaller communities that can be more self sufficient (aka what the global warming people prescribe as communities that are more equpped to "go local"), and find a way of making a career there around a bunch of people that care about building a community of people around each other and taking care of the commons, the people and the land around them for everyone, so that those communities hopefully won't be as ravaged by the effects of what's likely to come. Hopefully these sorts of communities can have the same spirit of those of the first Republican depression that were able to help those in need with the family farm, and fend off development of hostilities and gangs around us then. If we can now build a decent set of jobs in these kind of communities now that can hopefully persist through the coming difficult times, that is the kind of place I'm looking for to move to.