The housing market crisis in America
I was just browsing our local homes for sale around here. Talk about being out of control on prices. They are about 3 times more than what they are worth. I saw a home that was listed when we first moved here. It is 4 times the original asking price. It's going to be interesting to see what they market does this year.
I completely agree with this. I just talked about this last week, and have personally seen it in the remote tiny towns around here. Starlink has helped drive this as well. Cities and larger towns have driven up home prices, but you can still find some great deals in these tiny towns. Not much longer though. One town about 5 years ago had tons of lots and homes for sale about two hours from us, now you can’t buy a home or even a lot. People moved, got Starlink and do remote from home jobs. Shoot, if I had a remote from home job I would be doing the same thing. Also the new American Dream is homesteading, raising your family in a small town and having a ranch or farm animals.
In terms of government and financial stuff, all I really know is the past, and that's really hard to deal with. I needed the help in my early 20s if I was going to get a jump on things, and minimum wage and the price of rent made living impossible. Not hard.. impossible. I could not even afford rent and a car payment and could not find a job within walking distance from anywhere. It was Montana. There's no way to travel without good transportation.
That feeling of hopelessness when I already had nothing has really messed up my perception of the hope of how other humans can fix things going forward. I don't think I'll ever expect help in the form of others to handle things, but I will still try to love them.
That being said I'm still here trying, and at least here in Minnesota they have free health care (mostly), so I was able to get new glasses and at least get a dental checkup and health screening. My little brother died in MT, homeless. It's a wonderful place that I was born in, but the kindness of the people and the foresight as to what others need has been and probably still is worse than most other places.
Just to expound a little: I dropped out of college due to depression (some hereditary, some family trauma stuff), and lost all of my student loan progress and my grant for paying for the first semester. I moved back in with my mom who was now again divorced in a small apartment where I had just 'escaped' from, in my mind. I had 1) World of Warcraft. That's it. LOL.
The only place that was hiring was the Montana Standard in Uptown Butte and they were paying... $5.50 an hour. I worked 40 hour weeks for a year and could not save enough to do a single thing. I have a lot of stories from that place, but that kind of pattern kept going on throughout my 20s. There are no chances of being promoted, and when you are it's just to make you feel good; the prices on things are still way too much to make any progress. I was making like $300-$500 every two weeks per paycheck after taxes. I don't remember just how much rent and car payments were, but every single paycheck I had less than $100 to spend on groceries or save.
I have more to share about my education as I did complete some training as a CNA eventually and almost have a few degrees in the healthcare field, but I can save that for another time.
In any case, I can tell you for a fact that we don't appreciate our workers in this country and it's starting to bite us in the ass. If I wasn't strong enough, with all of my problems and help received, then there will be a lot worse.
*edit* I did learn a few things, though. Here are a few solid tips.
1) Trauma and stress are cumulative. When you feel a pain that won't go away and you mourn and grieve, it's not just over with and gone, it will come back and you will have to deal with it a lot more in your life. I learned that the hard way. The cumulative stress isn't just wiped away as you grieve, again, it will come back and get mixed in with other struggles you find yourself in. There isn't a shortcut around it; we're hardwired through long-term experience and beating it is a long-term battle.
2) A lot of counselors have no experience in life with pain and have just read books and have experience talking to people. People with no experience feeling the actual pain, exhaustion, and time spent agonizing in your brain as to what's going wrong will not help you when you're trying to seek help for something and especially something specific.
3) ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families) literature has examples, meetings, and descriptions of exactly how those kinds of things feel. No one in my life ever told me about it, and I would have never found out about it except by chance when my mom and I were looking after really hitting a hard bottom. No church we have ever tried has the kind of support I needed and no counselor or church told me about this resource. I spent the first half of my life fighting the wrong problems in my mind and heart.
4) Wall of text I know but here is another good one. God is for us. We don't always see Him, feel Him, or experience Him in the way we would choose. We want a blessing like a Christmas present to drop down and cover all the pain, but He doesn't work like that. He helps us work through our lives one tiny bit at a time and only if we are willing to keep trying.
Thanks for reading. I am confident in leaving this information here.
That feeling of hopelessness when I already had nothing has really messed up my perception of the hope of how other humans can fix things going forward. I don't think I'll ever expect help in the form of others to handle things, but I will still try to love them.
That being said I'm still here trying, and at least here in Minnesota they have free health care (mostly), so I was able to get new glasses and at least get a dental checkup and health screening. My little brother died in MT, homeless. It's a wonderful place that I was born in, but the kindness of the people and the foresight as to what others need has been and probably still is worse than most other places.
Just to expound a little: I dropped out of college due to depression (some hereditary, some family trauma stuff), and lost all of my student loan progress and my grant for paying for the first semester. I moved back in with my mom who was now again divorced in a small apartment where I had just 'escaped' from, in my mind. I had 1) World of Warcraft. That's it. LOL.
The only place that was hiring was the Montana Standard in Uptown Butte and they were paying... $5.50 an hour. I worked 40 hour weeks for a year and could not save enough to do a single thing. I have a lot of stories from that place, but that kind of pattern kept going on throughout my 20s. There are no chances of being promoted, and when you are it's just to make you feel good; the prices on things are still way too much to make any progress. I was making like $300-$500 every two weeks per paycheck after taxes. I don't remember just how much rent and car payments were, but every single paycheck I had less than $100 to spend on groceries or save.
I have more to share about my education as I did complete some training as a CNA eventually and almost have a few degrees in the healthcare field, but I can save that for another time.
In any case, I can tell you for a fact that we don't appreciate our workers in this country and it's starting to bite us in the ass. If I wasn't strong enough, with all of my problems and help received, then there will be a lot worse.
*edit* I did learn a few things, though. Here are a few solid tips.
1) Trauma and stress are cumulative. When you feel a pain that won't go away and you mourn and grieve, it's not just over with and gone, it will come back and you will have to deal with it a lot more in your life. I learned that the hard way. The cumulative stress isn't just wiped away as you grieve, again, it will come back and get mixed in with other struggles you find yourself in. There isn't a shortcut around it; we're hardwired through long-term experience and beating it is a long-term battle.
2) A lot of counselors have no experience in life with pain and have just read books and have experience talking to people. People with no experience feeling the actual pain, exhaustion, and time spent agonizing in your brain as to what's going wrong will not help you when you're trying to seek help for something and especially something specific.
3) ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families) literature has examples, meetings, and descriptions of exactly how those kinds of things feel. No one in my life ever told me about it, and I would have never found out about it except by chance when my mom and I were looking after really hitting a hard bottom. No church we have ever tried has the kind of support I needed and no counselor or church told me about this resource. I spent the first half of my life fighting the wrong problems in my mind and heart.
4) Wall of text I know but here is another good one. God is for us. We don't always see Him, feel Him, or experience Him in the way we would choose. We want a blessing like a Christmas present to drop down and cover all the pain, but He doesn't work like that. He helps us work through our lives one tiny bit at a time and only if we are willing to keep trying.
Thanks for reading. I am confident in leaving this information here.
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It's a real interesting situation there. A lot of people are about to be screwed by their insurance companies who aren't going to cover the full cost of replacement. And some had their insurance companies totally bail before the event. Building homes are about $1,000 per sq ft there. I sense a government bailout coming.
I thought an insurance company has to replace your home with today's cost of replacement. That is agreed upon between the insurance company and the home owner, when they pay their premium. Are you saying that there are so many expensive homes and they have to foot the bill for the people on that insurance company that the insurance companies are going to flat out refuse?
Yes.
"For example, the California FAIR Plan caps insurance payments for natural disasters at $3 million for residential policyholders. That price tag is important, given there are now at least 33 Bay Area cities where the average home value exceeds $2 million, according to data from Zillow."
FAIR Plan coverage caps at $3 million: Here's why experts are worried about Bay Area housing market
"There's no question there's going to be a lot of people impacted by this fire and their insurance falls short," said Amy Bach, with United Policyholders. As wildfire victims are forced to the California FAIR Plan, new concerns are being raised about its coverage caps and the impact on the...
Haha oh man this is going to get interesting, that is a breach of contract then, if you can't put up and have the money to back it up (as an insurance company) you are defrauding the customer because you promised something that you are not following through with. I hope this exposes the scam that insurance companies are.
Well it's not really a breach of contract if it is in the contract. How many read the fine print or ask questions of their insurance policies? Insurance companies will be on the hook to pay up to the $3million per the contract if the house is worth at least that much. Which it sounds like many are just due to the size and location of these homes. But over that amount? Good luck.
I see a loop hole that these were manmade fires, and not natural disasters, so the FAIR plan would not count in these instances. I think they have arrested over 40 illegal immigrants related to this, if they can prove that even one started this, then what would the insurance companies do then?
Well now that is a different story...It looks like you might have to have an optional FAIR plan for vandalism fire. Complicated stuff. Going to be interesting.