Sen. Obama has a proposal that would generate $500 million to provide 14,000 units of affordable housing per year. Admittedly I don’t know a whole lot about this issue, but it strikes me as a little small for a nation of 400 million. To be frank, as much as I clearly like Sen. Obama that’s the thing that kind of bothered me while reading this profile of him. If our next president is a Democrat, he or she will likely have Democratic majorities in the House and Senate for the first time in a long time as well as the task of undoing eight years of Bush policies that have eroded our nation from coast to coast.
This is not 1996. Now is not the time for incremental change. The new millennium has been hell, and we need visionary leadership to save our souls.
Assuming you are referring to the number of houses, 14000 alone seems very small, especially when comparing it to 400 million. On the other hand, not everyone negatively affected by the economy actually needs a house. Perhaps someone could post a comment on how many homeless families there are in the U.S., waiting for HFH or some other entity to help out. Also, does he mean 14000 per year?
400 million? Man, looks like that 10,000-person-killer tornado was followed by a fertility epidemic to more than make up for the lost lives.
Methinks you meant “300 million.”
Also, that works out to roughly $36K per unit. I’ll leave it up to those more familiar with real estate costs to see how realistic that is.
J.
$36000 is about Five per cent of what you would need to buy a house where I live.
Get out the calculators and try it again, BO (uh - oh, I sense his campaign just hit a snag).
This is for assistance, not total cost. Done right, with home buyers being required to invest their own money (as Habitat for Humanity does, for example, requiring new owners to invest sweat equity), it could work well.
Mr. Obama didn’t say that this is the only initiative he will start. These 14,000 units per year will be financed through a very specific fund, others may be financed in other ways. $36k doesn’t sound like much but consider that cities have a lot of resources in abandoned property that they own. Some of the residences could be placed there. That has the side benefit of returning blighted properties to the municipal tax rolls, making cities stronger.
Aaannnd … the housing market goes bust as banks increase rates to fund this proposal, leaving the middle class out in the cold.
Please name some specific Bush policies that have “eroded our nation from coast to coast” and need to be undone.
Seems to me that our economy is chugging along just fine.
It would be a pretty pathetic day when I turn to a politician to save my soul.
And it’s not like creating ownership for people is anything new. Jack Kemp went all out for something similar when he was Secretary of HUD under President GHWB. Of course, it was those ‘progressive’ Democrats controlling Congress that allocated a meager $150 million out of a budget of $24 billion for his plan as most of them said it was ‘unrealistic.’ I don’t see how people who have no interest in progress can call themselves progressives.
The $500M would probably not be to build the houses themselves but for the costs of various incentives to get developers (tax breaks etc)to build the houses. Perhaps the land would be gov-donated (and therefore a cost within the $500M).
And
“The new millennium has been hell”
Get a grip OW. No real war. No significant inflation or depression. Longer life span. Higher standard of living. Where you gonna hide if things ever do go bad. We had inflation/unemployment at 22% just 30 year ago. The Vietnam war was about 20 times more deadly than Iraq. And Korea and WWII were even worse.
Perspective, get some!
“No real war”? Are you insane?
You broke the code Nimmer. Compare US casualties in Iraq to Vietnam. To Korea. To WWII. To WWI. H*ll, to the first day of the Somme - British only. That’s war, son.
Perspective! Get some!
So it only counts as a war if x amount of people die? You don’t think war in general is obscene?
And you don’t need to tell me about the Somme. I had a great grandfather there. I have his medals. He’d have told you what war is, “son”.
Basic humanity. Get some.
Nimmer
Tell you what. You affirm to me OW is chock full of high grade CaCa for saying the new Millenium is hell and I won’t bore with you hard facts about wars and inflation and unemployment. BTW, cancer is worse than bunions and we should put more money into cancer research than bunion research? Insulted? Upper class highly moral panties in a wad, bunky? Because that judgement was based on the fact that more die of cancer. I guess you would fund each equally. Because it would icky to count the dead from each, right?
Perspective. Get it here today!
9/11
Afghanistan
Iraq
Katrina
Global Terror
Yes, the new millennium is just a bed of roses.
a) I’m going to take that as a no, you don’t think war in general is an obscene, horrific tragedy and that every life lost is a truly bad thing.
b) Upper class WHAT?
c) Oliver was being hyperbolic. Maybe it hasn’t literally been hell but it’s not been fun growing up in the oughties. It’s been disturbingly reminiscent of the Eighties in many respects.
d) The comparison of war to healthcare is the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever typed, this month maybe. If you’re selling perspective it’s a broken, damaged, almost unusable set you got off the back of a lorry marked “Smoke Damaged” and are now selling from a suitcase.
e) A brain, get one.
That’s 14,000 per year, OW. If we do that as long as we’ve been investing in Reagan’s Star Wars boondoggle, we’ll have a couple of hundred thousand affordable units.
“Oliver was being hyperbolic”
And then some!
And yes war is h*ll (have never said otherwise), but the whole point is not all wars are the same (bunions are bad, but not as bad as cancer).
Oliver is always hyperbolic.
What else is new?
Maybe Obama was just tired…
Here’s a plan, and the government stays out of it (the best part):
[From Flat Tax, Fair Tax] Make all mortgage interest deductible from gross income in the year the mortgage is signed, and until all the interest is deducted.
My idea: Make all savings account interest tax free. Make all interest on dividends tax free. Make all capital gains on retirement plans tax free.
Make all pension contributions tax free.
Make all pensions tax free.
Inform Alan Greenspan that if he ever mentions the words “inflation”, “recession”, “depression”, “prime rate” or “downturn” again, he will be stripped naked and tied down on an anthill of fire ants, slathered with honey.
It will make the “dot com” boom look like the Great Depression.
Seeing as how Alan Greenspan is now a private citizen, I don’t think he could give a shit anymore.
Here’s another plan:
Make all investment earnings tax-free. Make all money earned by brokerage houses tax-free. Make all income earned by lenders tax-free.
Then tax the living hell out of everybody who works for a living, just to pay for basic services. (at an equal rate of course; I think this is in Flat Tax, Fair Tax, too.)
It’ll make Haiti look like an economic dream.
Duros: I guess you didn’t hear about the downward spiral that was triggered by one of his speeches — a few weeks ago.
jrc: That’s not a very good plan.