Posted on 01/29/2006 2:17:44 PM PST by Uncle Sham
Don't leave us to foreclosure Sunday, January 29, 2006 Here in a community full of ruined homes, it takes no imagination to predict an epidemic of foreclosures that could devastate families, cripple the recovery of greater New Orleans and strain the nation's economy. If your flood insurance payout isn't nearly enough to cover your mortgage, you wonder if you'll have to abandon your unlivable home. If you look down the block at a dozen other damaged houses and know that your neighbors are in the same bind, you understand the fear of losing your neighborhood to blight. If you travel daily past block after block of empty, flood-marked houses, you understand how large the hole in our economy could become. This explains why U.S. Rep. Richard Baker is not giving up on his proposal for a federally backed buyout of flooded-out homeowners and small business owners. He wants Congress to create a corporation that would release Hurricane Katrina's victims from their mortgages, sell bundles of property to developers and help get storm-ravaged land back into commerce.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
ROTFLMAO!
Most excellent.
If I gave you a few laughs my job is halfway done :)
I'm still laughing. I just love that comment of yours!
Have you read John McPhee's essay on the Old River locks? It's the "Atchafalaya" section in his book, "The Control of Nature."
I love McPhee and this is his best book (in my opinion) and his best essay, although I admit to being personally interested in the subject matter due to growing up in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
My impression is that some day the Mississippi will break loose again. I've visited the Old River locks twice, once during high water, when it seemed like the structure was about to break at any moment, and once during this long drought, where it was all silted up with grass growing where flood water used to be.
I love that river. Been all the way to Lake Itasca (the beginning) and to the Eads jetties, though not everywhere in between.
Ironic that it wasn't the Mississippi that did this.
I agree. This decision should not be taking 5 months to make. It has put a lot of things on hold.
Lurker, did that God you trust in on your tag line teach you to insult people who are in need of help while you turn your back on them?
I am not asking for your compassion. If you don't care, that's your right not to care.
I am simply pointing out that the bottom line is going to come due, one way or the other.
There are laws already on the books, and the sequence of events is pretty much pre-ordained.
As it stands now, here's what's going to happen:
1) The homeowners are going to default on the mortgages and abandon the property.
2) The mortgage companies are going to foreclose, shelling out legal fees and costs, but nobody will buy them at the foreclosure sale.
3) HUD ( the federal guarantor) will have to carry these non-performing pieces of property on their books and pay the property tax.
4) The former residents will go on welfare.
5) The American taxpayer will foot the bill.
Pay it now, or pay it later.
No one is asking you to buy their house. Read the article with your eyes open next time. And stop being so angry.
Seems to me that asking for compassion from most of these birds is a losing proposition.
They heard Bush make all those pretty promises and think he already delivered, and now the people in New Orleans are asking for something on top of what he/we already gave.
I'm just like you, trying to spread some truth around rather than the ignorant cruelty currently in vogue. I appreciate very much those like you who are helping others understand what is truly going on. You've been quite a trooper these past few threads!
My brother, who lives in Arizona, came to NOLA the first week and stayed for about a month, helping. For example, he helped set up a clinic and gave vaccinations to first responders and rode around with cops when they searched abandoned houses.
I am very proud of him. Wish I had useful skills like his. But I can try to get out the word.
He took me to see it a couple of weeks ago. It's just mind-boggling. We're going back for Mardi Gras, try to spend some money and help the local economy.
As far as 'turning my back' on people goes, that doesn't apply in this case. The citizens of NO have sucked up hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer largesse already. A lot of my tax money went there.
Right now, the citizens of NO and LA are rapidly becoming a bunch of whining crybabies who sound like they haven't been given enough formula.
Listen to me pal, building large populations below sea level is stupid. It's even more stupid to build below sea level in a hurricane zone. Even more stupid than those two things is to live in a known hurricane zone below sea level and not adequately insure your property.
The only thing that I could think of that would be more stupid than the above would be to give an obviously stupid population a few billion taxpayer dollars so they could repeat their already painfully stupid behavior.
If you think I'm cold hearted, good. My 11 year old realizes how stupid what you're asking us to do is.
Here's a clue. Move somewhere that isn't below sea level and isn't struck by hurricanes regularly. Oh, and look into buying some insurance.
Now, do us all a favor and piss off.
L
From what I have read about some of these refugees no amount of money is going to save them.
Isn't that true everywhere you go? I mean, consider the odds.
About 1% of any given population is schizophrenic. I don't know what percentage of the country is alcoholic, or dependent on painkillers, or depressed, or otherwise mentally ill.
Not to mention too old to take care of themselves, or from a broken home, or illiterate, or hard core psychopaths.
New Orleans had a bigger population of impaired people than most, but surprise, surprise, surprise, now they're living in Houston, and Atlanta, and Austin, and Salt Lake City.
If ya'll want them to go back to NOLA, well, think about it.
Thanks for showing the world what an ugly person you are. Your kid must be proud.
Listen jerkweed, you have no idea how many hours I spent packing up relief supplies for your ungrateful ass. You have no idea how much money I spent on bottled water, canned food, diapers, batteries, flashlights etc that came out of my household budget.
You haven't got a clue how many hours I put in with my fellow ES workers refurbishing a frigging fire truck that the citizens and taxpayers of my County just gave away to a demolished LA county.
You haven't got a frigging clue how hard my family, including my kid, worked collecting relief supplies at his school or how many hours we spent packing them up and prepping them for shipment down to your greedy ass.
Now you've got some nerve calling me ugly you ungrateful little worm. I'm not the one with my hand out demanding billions of additional tax dollars be sent to a demonstrably corrupt government.
My kid, my wife, and I worked our asses off and spent a not insiginificant amount of our household budget helping you people out. Now you've got the hubris to stand there and call me ugly because we're not in favor of another government bailout?
Go f*** yourself, pal.
L
Insulting people as you pretend to help them and resenting the fact that you are helping them is ugly. Ignorant ugly.
I would like to say thank you for sending supplies and bottled water and fixing up that fire truck and so forth. It was very generous and very kind. I know a lot of people down there, and they are grateful.
But the scale of this disaster is unprecedented.
Who did what to whom back in August-September 2005 -- we're not talking about that now. Let the people who plan for future disasters learn from their mistakes, we hope.
The article that you're responding to is about dealing with the present, not the past and not the future. Mostly about abandoned property and the consequences thereof.
To put it bluntly -- people who were flooded out aren't coming back. Well, not too many outside New Orleans are crying about that, we think they built in the wrong place.
Nevertheless, the properties are eventually going to be the property of you and me, the American taxpayer. How much should we pay for them, and when, and what do we do with them?
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