New Fears Arise in Michigan

Neq York Times ^

[mathwhizz]

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.”

All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real.

It is the same story in other parts of Michigan, as the state’s already entrenched recession — in at least its fifth year, according to economic experts — digs deeper as a result of the recent global financial crisis.

New data show the state’s unemployment rate crept up to 9.3 percent, almost three times what it was in 2000, and, along with Rhode Island, the highest in the country. Just last week, Herman Miller Inc., an office furniture company based in Zeeland, Mich., announced that it would eliminate or lay off 400 to 650 workers, many of them in western Michigan. SKD Automotive, an auto parts manufacturer in Jonesville, Mich., where it is the largest employer, indicated it would eliminate 300 jobs.

As a result of the steady job losses that began in the summer of 2000, 1.82 million Michigan residents, or close to 20 percent of the population, are now on some form of public assistance, including food stamps and home heating credits, a record for the state.

[netmilsmom]

>>If you had no job in your current state, and you didn’t own a home, all the other costs are meaningless.<<

Trust me, if I had no house, I would be gone.

Next year, my hubby is taking two weeks off work and pulling the Pop-out down to NC to look for work.

The house will then be boarded up and we live out of the Pop-out for as long as it takes.

[grellis]

On my street??! FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK...immediately south of me are TWO abandoned, repo'd houses. One recently sold at auction for $22K. In November of 2006 the very same home sold for $110K. The second repo was on the market for two years, listed for $139K. It is now in foreclosure, asking $44K. The house I share my drive with sold out of foreclosure last spring for $77K. The previous owner had bought it for $122K. House next to that is on the market for $239K. It's a beautiful home, and the asking price is far less than what the house is worth, but the market won't even pay half of that now. Owner is a retiree trying to live off of a shrinking pension.

I never look in the Help Wanted section because I stopped getting the paper years ago. Look it up online, lsj.com. Any jobs listed are going to have a healthy dozen applicants each, at the very least, since GM is about to layoff half of its Lansing workforce. Look for all of the local suppliers to go belly up by spring of next year. But don't get me wrong--A bailout for the Big 3 would be nothing short of more disaster for Michigan. You really don't get what Net and I have been saying: We don't want anyone's stinking help, we aren't asking for that. We do for ours. We're sick of people acting like they understand the situation here in MI. You have to live here to get it, or you at least have to try and understand a basic fact: The recession in Michigan started THREE YEARS AGO. Y'all are just playing catch up.

Have fun with that.

[Round 9]

You’re not reading my posts, obviously. My friends and I and the majority of my parish didn’t kick back and behave like some in Orleans parish. There is a DIFERENCE, a large difference. None of us mistreated any volunteers. Few of us needed them. We did it ourselves. In fact, in addition to getting our lives back together we also spent time volunteering.

Also, if you re-read what I posted, I noted that I appreciated the difficulty of selling your house but suggest that IMAGINED difficulties shouldn’t be piled on to real ones so as to disuade one from possibly moving on, especially when it was a broadbrush swipe at Texans. That’s it. You may have gotten me mixed up with others who intimated that it was easy to move, but I didn’t.

Resorting to calling me an “idiot” or “doofus” really only reflects poorly on you.

[bronxboy]

Really, who is going to rent to you with no job and probably bad credit if you’ve been unemployed for a while? Hotels are expensive and require credit cards. What if you don’t get a job right away? I have a nephew in Georgia where the economy is better, it took him three or four weeks to get a job-not a good paying job either. Look, I know you are trying to be helpful, but people with kids can not pull up roots so quickly, we can’t risk ending up in a new place with no job and no place to live. My husband will look for a job in all fifty states and live apart from us if that is what it takes, but it’s not easy and it is really bad for families, but better than starving. I am totally furious at the financial sector for getting us into this mess.

Nyconse

[netmilsmom]

>>Resorting to calling me an “idiot” or “doofus” really only reflects poorly on you.<<

With everything going on in my life, and your lack of ability to see anything besides your own discomfort, do you think I really care at all about your opinion of me?

Let me answer, I don’t care at all. You can sing a song and dance a dance but in the long run, I’m sure that not a single Michigander who has come onto this thread and watched you do it, gives a rats behind what you think of any of us.

Your post 100
“What do you think they’ll do, behave like a bunch of midwestern union thugs?”
Strikes a nerve with those of us who ARE midwesterners and have been dealing with the Union thugs causing our problems. You put your foot in your mouth and never saw it.

Your darling post at 107
“But, if you’re invested in wallowing in every possible remote reason why something can’t be done then feel free.” only lead to a ton of others dismissing the real concens of the inability to sell a home here. Every post was a chastisement of one person’s feelings while you dug in farther about how hard you had it. YOU made the whole issue about a statement made my one poster, while continually disregarding all of the facts being presented to you. NEVER did you say, WHY you felt the poster was wrong, just the smary snap posts to aching Michiganders. Talk about reflecting poorly?

Happy Thanksgiving, and I really do mean that. I will thank the Lord that we will have one more good turkey before we’re shooting squirrels for supper rather than sucking off the teat of the government and strapping your kids with the bill. And pray for you. That when the MI economy comes to your hometown, and trust me it will, lead by the big 0, someone will be left to cut you as much sympathy as you have shown here.

[netmilsmom]

Like I said, Utica is 2.2 miles. Much of it is part of Lakeside Mall.

We have 60 houses on the market.

But when our economy spreads out of the midwest and into their communities, OH the gnashing of teeth!

And FEMA isn’t coming to give us any low interest loans either. We don’t want them. We’ll do it ourselves.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Michigan should just raise corporate tax rates again.

That should fix their problems. /sarcasm

[netmilsmom]

Shhhhh. Jenny will do that....

Her big claim to fame is that she gave huge incentives for Hollywood movies to be made here. Oooooo, that helped.

[Political Junkie Too]

Maybe that's just how they do things in Canada. It worked for Vancouver, I guess.

-PJ

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Tell me about it.

I live in Illinois.

[netmilsmom]

Aw geez.
You know, you sure know.

[netmilsmom]

I never thought of that!!!!

[Knitebane]

..and what money, pray tell,will these unemployed persons use to move and work in another state? For the most part FR is full of heartless jerks these days.

You do what I did when I got laid off.

You sell as much as you can, you give away a lot and then you pack up your car and drive.

It's not about being heartless. It's about being realistic and being willing to make sacrifices NOW in order to have a future.

[Political Junkie Too]

Just think of the possibilities...

If you need to film a TV episode showing a post-apocolyptic city with empty streets and newspapers flying around like tumbleweeds, come to Michigan! We can shut down streets for your film crews and we won't even notice the disruption!

-PJ

[netmilsmom]

Ya know!
Maybe she’s on to something.

Lots of X-Files were filmed in Vancouver.

We could do the next Terminator movie with Christian Bale as John Conner and not even bat an eye.

[netmilsmom]

Did you own a house?
Did you sell it?

[Political Junkie Too]

I think the syndicated Da Vinci Inquest police drama is filmed there, too.

-PJ

[netmilsmom]

It’s funny because one of the production companies had a casting call this weekend at a local hotel.

Thousands showed up. They charged them a fee to register to be an extra. People were flipping out about it. LOL!

[Knitebane]

Did you own a house?

Nope.

But so what?

What is more likely to have a good outcome? Walking away from a house and mortgage to go start over or sitting around with your hand out?

[TruthFactor]

I have a cousin that just bought a house in Dearborn Heights that was in foreclosure for his son. The original asking price was $154K when it was put on the market. He ended up getting it for $36K! The mortgage payment is under $300/mo.!!!