Staggering Statistical Anomaly

There is a staggering statistical anomaly that must be brought to light in the wake of the foreclosure crisis that has crippled capital markets across the globe. While Wall St. had its profits see glorious heights never imagined before, mid-stream America saw trillions in equity slip through their fingers.

 

Hedge fund managers sought to “sell-forward” as much of the tainted paper as could be heaped onto unsuspecting investment groups. Teachers’ retirement funds, firefighters, state and county workers, you know, the hardest working people in the world, were made promises of “AAA” ratings, with derivatives as a hedge against the unlikely scenario of mass defaults. When the door swung shut, and the folks who were shoveling sh*t and calling it sugar  ran out of money and ran for cover…millions of homes were nearly instantaneously lost to the phantoms who were behind the entire scheme…Wall St. investment bankers.

 

Without any skin in the game, Wall St. has single-handedly run the biggest equity/land grab in the history of mankind…and nobody seems to mind. This leaves an inventory of empty homes strewn across this nation like an abandoned game of ball & jacks of massive proportions.

 

Here we go… in the United States today, there are over 18.5 million houses with nobody living in them. In the United States today, we have over 3.75 million homeless persons. The formulaic equation applied here is simple: every homeless person in the U.S. could occupy 6 homes each!

 

Think about the rationale being espoused to the general public through the media. The banks have taken over 1.7 trillion dollars in relief of one form or another as a result of their own careless actions. Meanwhile, millions of service veterans, single mothers, children, and innocent victims of “bad times” are filling the streets and shelters. But does anyone at the bank lift a finger to state the obvious? Of course not. The bank, instead, hordes the millions of vacant homes and simply waits for a large group of investors, or an even larger group of new, upcoming credit worthy younger Americans to pony up even more money for a home that has been prostituted out to anyone who temporarily qualifies as a “good risk”.

 

Does everyone see what I see? Is this not the easiest fix, making the most sense for all parties concerned? For those not yet putting this two piece puzzle together (CONGRESS), public placement of homeless, disparaged, displaced persons into a caretaker position, even if merely temporary, to insure maintenance and property care to the empty homes, and people who truly need the shelter get a place to call home…even if only temporary. One could assemble a master team of the most regionally qualified persons in need of temporary assistance (they’re not hard to locate, just go to the local shelters and ask for someone who might be interested in a home), set a rotational system of caretaking for the 6 homes that each homeless person could occupy and maintain while looking for more meaningful work, and a set of standards applied to the caretakers that matches what the banks are currently employing.

 

The average bank is spending nearly $12,000 per year in maintenance fees for these abandoned, empty houses. Do you think that the homeless, probably jobless, person would mind mowing a lawn once a week and possibly doing some light maintenance for $12 grand and a home? For those of you that are thinking “yeah, but what if they destroy the home, or turn it into a drug emporium?” What do you think is going on right now? 

 

So, Congress, state worker programs, Veterans Administration, Salvation Army, Wells Fargo, Bank of America… call me, I have a really cool plan that would be amazingly simple to implement. What would be the harm in trying…a benefit to someone who hasn’t paid your nominal fee for  playing the ball & jacks game you call mortgage banking? 

 

We’ll call it: “Homes for the Homeless”. Surely some political candidate could use this premise to further their self-preserving interests.

 

My next blog will address a method for re-valuing property to a true net present value and getting a fresh start. Pay attention if you own multiple properties, this could reduce your debt by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and is recognized throughout the court system without litigating or arguing (much). Strategic bankruptcy! They do work and thousands of people are saving millions of dollars through the “cram-down”.