@a – I don’t get that question.

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2008 15:35 utc | 3

The vacant house supply destruction thesis will be self-solving. If you talk with folks living outside the city limits of police jurisdiction, the outlying subdivisions are being prowled at night by “recyclers”, and that’s the nice word for house trashers who kick in the door, strip out everything that can be salvaged without destroying it, sinks, toilets, marble countertops, cabinets, all the electrical wiring, light fixtures, some have even torn the sheetrock off the walls and sawed out the copper plumbing. A friend in the SW tells of families huddling in their houses at night, father away in the city or another state looking for work, wife and kids with blankets pulled up and all lights on, while outside their windows the “wrecking crews” of meth addicts are kicking in the doors on both sides of their house, godawful noise of wrecking bars and breaking window glass and fixtures being dragged to the street. Those that haven’t been trashed yet, folks I’ve talked to say, aren’t being heated or air conditioned, so are already haz-mat black mold dumps, requiring air suits to enter, never to be sold, never to be demolished because that costs money too, and counties are broke. No, the “bulldoze excess inventory” thesis wasn’t just a cute twist of phrase, the problem is real, a cancer, a tooth rot, a disease, most likely will be solved by massive-scale arson once the owner’s are safely out of town. Just leave a pile of polyester clothes in the garage with a space heater parked a bit too close, gives you hours for a getaway, but with volunteer fire departments folding left and right for no money, that single house arson here and there would probably end up burning entire subdivisions down, good houses and vacant.

Posted by: Terra Bula | Sep 18 2008 16:00 utc | 5

Two years back or so there was real worry that cities did “creep” outward, ever bigger homes with generous allocation of lawn replaced farmland, forest, nature…
Assuming that the owners who fail to pay the mortgage are more or less evenly distributed, above problem would not be solved: Instead of a “tidy” suburb it would contain holes (one every 20 or 30 houses).
Is the distribution of really halfway eben, or are there surburbs which contain a significant amount of empty houses? If yes, what would be the reason for this?
To pull the two threads together: Is it possible to modify b’s program in a way to reduce the space allocated to cities, and get more land in a halfway natural state back?

Posted by: No So Ana | Sep 18 2008 16:48 utc | 7

No So Ana,
Well, I think b has the right idea, but his explicit solution will never be accepted. In the least, though, a moratorium needs to be put on further building until excess supply approaches zero. In the meantime, Federal Legislation needs to be passed that requires uniformity in Urban, and Non-Urban Planning. The process as it stands today is not a process at all. It is highly fragmented and inconsistent from state to state. The counties and cities decide what gets built, and what doesn’t, and they are all pretty much bought and paid for by the developers.
Of course, none of what I said above will ever happen. It will end up increasingly looking like a war zone, similar to New Orleans. New Orleans is the shining example of things to come. New York City is next.

Posted by: Jane Jacobs | Sep 18 2008 17:06 utc | 9

Yes! We’ll launch a War on Housing!
War is how Americans approach the subtle art of problem solving, both at home and abroad. With a sledgehammer, with shock and awe. Declare war upon it, have people run around in circles, accomplishing nothing, while all profits are shuttled to the top few wiseguys who have the inside track on the whole program.
These scams are called War On Poverty, War on Illiteracy, War on Drugs, War on Immigration, War on Terror, and there will soon be declared a War on Global Warming.
They are called Wars in Washington. They are called Bubbles in New York. They are called Foreign Policy beyond our borders.
I still prefer the Mafia’s term — “bustouts.”

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 18 2008 17:32 utc | 11

@No So Ana – Two years back or so there was real worry that cities did “creep” outward, ever bigger homes with generous allocation of lawn replaced farmland, forest, nature…
Assuming that the owners who fail to pay the mortgage are more or less evenly distributed, above problem would not be solved: Instead of a “tidy” suburb it would contain holes (one every 20 or 30 houses).
The bad mortgages are not evenly distributed. There are Suburbs with 70% failures. Those 30% left there would hopefully ask to be bought out. If not – eminent domain(?) and compensation.
Is the distribution of really halfway eben, or are there surburbs which contain a significant amount of empty houses? If yes, what would be the reason for this?
Social alignment of classes.
To pull the two threads together: Is it possible to modify b’s program in a way to reduce the space allocated to cities, and get more land in a halfway natural state back?
Yes, I think it is – it would be a lot of trouble with libertarians etc, but I could help counties etc. get through the slump.
The crisis has only started. Imagine how the empty houses will look when the municipals put off policemen and firemen during this downturn. Patrolling five suburbs requires more than patrolling three or four. So shut down one and concentrate the people.
I am sure it will be worth the money. Much cheaper than all these bailouts (which also only started).

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2008 17:42 utc | 13

what i meant to say was what is the correlation (if any) between the number of homeless people and he number of empty houses in the us. not that such a correlation would prove anything. just an interesting statistic bit to keep in the head.

Posted by: a | Sep 18 2008 17:54 utc | 15

Empty lots won’t improve the neigborhoods! Just keep them off the market for a while, sell them later when the serfs can take up debt again.
Better an empty lot than a half burned down meth lab …
The future costs of the empty lot are much less.

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2008 18:47 utc | 17

b,
Perhaps the dolts in the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team can help in the effort since they’re being deployed stateside shortly.

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”
The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.
Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.
The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.
In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

Entire article
Hmmmm…..

Posted by: Buck Turgidson | Sep 18 2008 19:03 utc | 19

Yes. This can work.
We just need to be sure to shoot the people who live there, too. And burn their cars, and crops, and put salt on their fields, and make damn sure no stone is sitting on top of another stone.
It’s a bit Roman, I admit, but look how well it worked for previous Reichs.

Posted by: Antifa | Sep 18 2008 19:34 utc | 21

@Alex – b would not propose this argument in Europe; there are no houses available to demolish.
Some East German counties are doing what I proposed – destroy empty house that have no chance to be bought or rented because of population flow. It is cheaper than keeping them up. That will be the solution for the recent over-build in Spain too. Not so much in the UK and Ireland yet, but the problem is not the same everywhere.
@Spyware – You can’t really be serious?
Like usual you are offering a silly unfounded remark instead of an argument – not that I expected anything different – but please spare us such a waste of electrons.
@all – What I and FM propose is a buyout, which can be modified for this or that, to lower the total costs the community (taxpayers) will have to carry anyway. That can be argued on several reasons. But polemics are not an argument.

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2008 20:03 utc | 23

Demolishing by city gov of abandoned residences has been going on in Buffalo, NY, my hometown. Didn’t find a link quickly to city program, but thought some here might find prices on this link interesting. It’s a great town if one’s gainfully employed, which also means it’s a good place to open a business.
fixbuffalo.blogspot.com

Posted by: plushtown | Sep 18 2008 20:25 utc | 25

And if we don’t have enough construction workers on hand to tear down vast tracts of vacant McMansions sitting out in the middle of nowhere, we can always recruit our soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to help tear them down as well.
Plus this would be a great way for our soldiers to keep their skills of destruction, creative or otherwise, up to snuff.
Then once these tracts of land are free of McMansions, we can turn them into vast network of victory gardens — minus the seeds of destruction, of course!;^)

Posted by: Cynthia | Sep 18 2008 21:26 utc | 27

And further, Cynthia, Depleted Uranium makes great fertilizer. You can grow pumpkins the size of VW Bugs. Sure, your kid may be born with only a brain stem, or some extra digits, or a hand growing out of her forehead, but at least they will have plenty to eat.

Posted by: DU | Sep 18 2008 22:41 utc | 29

Spyware, welcome to the brilliant solutions of MoA.
IntelVet nails it. House the homeless, the refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, and throw the $190 billion at them.

Posted by: waldo | Sep 19 2008 2:01 utc | 31

Lizard, I’m really impressed by your opinion and I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you achieve brilliant success at something or the other. That is, when you grow up.
As for burning down neighbourhoods, sure, brilliant, whatever. Don’t vote, wait for the ‘paradigm shift’ so that you can indulge in some ‘creative destruction’. “maybe amerika should wage a war on stupid,” starting with teh MoA 101st anarchical keyboarders creative to the point of lunacy solution committee.

Posted by: waldo | Sep 19 2008 9:52 utc | 33

You can’t really be serious? You REALLY can’t really be serious? You really need someone to deconstruct ‘creative destruction’. If this is not a put-on, and you really need an ‘argument’ rather than ‘silly unfounded remark(s)’ – there are a number who will oblige in you can spare the electrons.
But, then again, I’m still not convinced that this is not an oblique attempt at satire.
Just where have I heard the term ‘creative destruction’ before?

Posted by: DM | Sep 19 2008 10:19 utc | 35

@DM – You can’t really be serious?
I am serious. Some recent press reports might explain why:
Squatters in abandoned homes raise fears among East County Realtors

During the Labor Day weekend alone, Amodeo said, she entered four houses to find destruction or signs of squatting.
“It’s absolutely absurd. Theft and vandalism and squatters. It’s all over the place. The holiday weekend was the worst,” she said, armed with a canister of pepper spray on a visit to one house. “I’m not trying to be a vigilante. I’m pretty tired of going into these houses and wondering. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the door.”
Realtors say the problem festers in Bay Point, Pittsburg and Antioch, communities hard-hit by a foreclosure epidemic that shows no sign of abating. The results in Antioch are stark: Of the 944 homes actively on the market last week, more than 850 were either bank-owned or short-sale homes.

Abandoned houses don’t pay taxes, but cost the communities a lot of money. Buy ’em up and tear them down.
St. Paul in Minnesota is already doing this:
St. Paul’s plan for empty houses

“When you drive down that street, it impacts your feeling of safety,” she said. “It impacts neighbors’ desire to put more money into their own home if they see the neighborhood declining. And the community as a whole, if foreclosures lead to more vacant houses, that’s fewer folks who are shopping at our neighborhood commercial outlets and those neighborhood businesses suffer as well. So there’s a significant domino effect.”
City Hall wants neighborhood district councils to identify which blocks to focus on first. Some groups are most interested in pockets near schools, playgrounds and senior centers. These are areas where clusters of vacant properties, if left alone, could pose the biggest risk to vulnerable neighbors.
Bedor says the next question — whether to rehab or demolish — is a huge undertaking.
…
Bob Kessler, director of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections, says his office spends a lot of time trying to track down property owners. But when certified letters go unanswered, sometimes the city needs to make a call.
“Finally, two weeks after the property’s been demolished, they call to find out what the status of their property is,” Kessler said. “And our response is, ‘Do you know the directions on how to get to the Pine Bend Landfill? Because that’s where your property is.'”
Dayton’s Bluff developer Jim Erchul said some homes are beyond repair. …

It sounds radical, but when you think about it it is a solution that helps to clean up the markets and to shorten the slump.

Posted by: b | Sep 19 2008 11:42 utc | 37

b,
They may be doing this in the inner city, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an example in suburbia, which is where the bulk of this mess resides. You will have to go county by county, and small city by small city, and the liklihood of all of them, or even a majority doing it is improbable unless they’re forced to do it by decree.

Posted by: Lyndon | Sep 19 2008 12:14 utc | 39

b,
I think that you may not understand American culture, especially when you get out of the cities.

Posted by: Lyndon | Sep 19 2008 13:23 utc | 41

A view from within the US house construction industry: b’s proposal is reasonable and may be helpful. There is another insurance crisis going on as to whether homes at risk can and should have homeowner insurance. After hurricane Rita following Katrina hit Texas, the Texas insurance board sought to allow insurance companies to deny coverage to certain at-risk coastal properties. Rich property owners on the coast got that measure overturned. The most recent hurricane may mean little or no rebuilding of Galveston this time around.
Housing in the exurbs is at risk as well, though in a different way. Meth usually moves from rural areas into the exurbs. I’ve seen one development in North Dakota a few years ago taken down by mold complaints then arson then meth then total abandonment. These exurb developments were a stretch anyway for utilities and services; they arose due to high-handed pressure on matters such as impact fees applied by the National Association of Home Builders. Towns and cities may begin to consider de-annexation, though it will be a hard sell as long as some property tax revenues are coming in. A federal program that buys outlying property (perhaps uninsurable) for re-conversion to farmland would allow towns to re-consolidate and fill vacancies closer to the center. Insurance companies already calculate premiums as a function of fire company responsiveness. The historic preservation people do scavenging of property to be demolished, and such programs could be expanded. Then we realize how much of US housing has no scavenged value: shingles, OSB, trusses, drywall, carpet, vinyl siding, concrete, probably half the total mass at least. Sad.

Posted by: Browning | Sep 19 2008 14:07 utc | 43

I think it sounds like a reasonable proposition. Certainly a better way to spend a couple of hundred billion dollars than throwing it away on banking behemoths who will never give any return on the investment.
It’s more than a slump, though, b. There’s a permanance to what we are seeing unfold. The halcion days are done, once and for all.
I know fatalism and belief in poetic justice are attractive. Who cares? It ain’t over til it’s over.
Look, it’s not just the houses. There’s road, electricity, water and plenty of other infrastructure involved, that don’t just appear.
Bulldoze the lot of ’em, at least when it comes to the ones leading out to all those completely un-self-sustaining exurbs. Which will be dying soon no matter what anyway unless car fuel gets cheaper.

Posted by: Quin | Sep 19 2008 14:35 utc | 45

Waldo, I will vote for Obama if, and only if, he eschews all corporate and special interest funding, including the $10 million, and counting, from Wall Street.

Posted by: Onyango | Sep 19 2008 17:11 utc | 47

There were four families living in the last house I lived in before I left the US, it was built to be a two-family. The landlord was getting about $5K/mo. This was 40 min north of NYC, two miles from the metro north railway. I don’t know where that fits into this theory. I think that the two immigrant families living in the basement would have liked to live in one of these OSB-shacks that I read about, too bad the owners don’t sacrifice them early enough to bring in some de facto security guards. Maybe the lack of local oversight by a local mortgage-holder is contributing to the failure of owners to go into fire-sale mode. just anecdotes.

Posted by: boxcar mike | Sep 19 2008 18:39 utc | 49

someone referenced–i believe it was Gaienne–(spelling?) the collapse party. i think it’s time, especially for amerikans, to accept the inevitably of collapse, and prepare accordingly. either we take the initiative to restructure our own communities, or they will be restructured for us to ensure perpetual enslavement.
you better believe the perpetrators of these massive crimes of illegal war and economic manipulation are prepared. the Bushes will flee the country they’ve helped wreck to their extensive land holdings in Paraguay. they’ll have nice homes and an aquifer while the rest of us slide into the new dark age.

Posted by: Lizard | Sep 19 2008 20:08 utc | 51

The U.S. could easily buy the total of 1.9 million units and depose them. It could buy whole suburbs and tear them down. At a $100,000 average price per unit the current owner or mortgage holder would likely make a big loss so there would be no moral hazard.

How about putting homeless veterans or disabled veterans or people qualifying for public housing in there … deposing of housing units like deposing of useless men to society? … bulldozing … third world racist dictatorships do that kind of stuff … oh, wait

Posted by: mimi | Sep 20 2008 4:28 utc | 53