Discussion for article #224416
There’s plenty of injustice to be indignant about and as sad as this is, it just doesn’t qualify…
Eminent domain is a very powerful tool that should be used sparingly by the government. To selectively choose private citizens that will benefit goes against the idea that eminent domain should only be used for the public good.
One might argue that it is for the public good to give relief to struggling families to help stop these neighborhoods from declining even further.
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The story’s about NYC, but the photograph is a picture of the Bank of America building in San Francisco.
These people are victims of the avarice and greed of the few. Justice for the many robbed by financial institutions and corporate amerikkka will come someday, but not in time for too many of us. What goes unaddressed in this conversation is the underlying cause of so much of the pain you see now: declining wages and price fixing. Yes, people used their homes as “ATMs”, but only because it was the only way to deal with skyrocketing energy, food, and medical costs.
Who foresaw heating oil costs approaching $5.00 a gallon? When you are going through 350 gallons a month to keep from freezing, that’s enough to put anyone making less than $60,000 in default. I heard from retired people speeding in excess of $1,000 a month for heat, which drove many of them to sell homes long paid for which further depressed the housing market.
The elite in this country have a lot to answer for. Medical bankruptcy, which is common in America, is unheard of in all other first world countries. Become a debtor or watch your child/spouse/parent die. Some choice.
In the meantime, these vultures are making record profits, neither caring or acknowledging the wasted lives and busted families their greed leaves in its wake.
At some point, the guillotines will make a comeback, and it won’t be pretty for the gated community set.
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This would have been a good idea in 2009. But they screamed anguish about that.
Now you would leave the 5 million who have already been foreclosed upon feeling like they were the suckers in all this.
I would imagine the lawyers are all in favor of this, as it would guarantee years of billable hours as the lawsuits fly. Meanwhile, very little would get accomplished for the middle and working classes.
We don’t need more ligation. We need the federal, state and municipal governments to step in and start building up the inventory of affordable housing since private developers have repeatedly demonstrated that they are unable or unwilling to.