Posted on 01/29/2006 2:17:44 PM PST by Uncle Sham
Don't leave us to foreclosure Sunday, January 29, 2006 Here in a community full of ruined homes, it takes no imagination to predict an epidemic of foreclosures that could devastate families, cripple the recovery of greater New Orleans and strain the nation's economy. If your flood insurance payout isn't nearly enough to cover your mortgage, you wonder if you'll have to abandon your unlivable home. If you look down the block at a dozen other damaged houses and know that your neighbors are in the same bind, you understand the fear of losing your neighborhood to blight. If you travel daily past block after block of empty, flood-marked houses, you understand how large the hole in our economy could become. This explains why U.S. Rep. Richard Baker is not giving up on his proposal for a federally backed buyout of flooded-out homeowners and small business owners. He wants Congress to create a corporation that would release Hurricane Katrina's victims from their mortgages, sell bundles of property to developers and help get storm-ravaged land back into commerce.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
Kind of difficult to be prepared when you have the pols stealing the dough, ignore repeated messages from the Whitehoue, prior to Katrina hitting, suggesting the feds be allowed to take over, have a make believe evacuation plan, like Kerry had for running the USA, and flee to Texas as their people get ravaged, the elderly are left to die in nursing homes, and the school buses drown.
The same with the Northridge earthquake. The insurance company started with about 17K, and ended up with 95K on my triplex (a place I knew was poorly built in places, and really, really needed quake insurance), and the pad became much better than it had before. (Pity the softwall garage didn't collapse. I am having to pay a fair amount now to avoid that collapsing in the next one, given that the deductibles are so high.) There is safety in numbers methinks.
You obvioulsy know very little about that flood. I suggest reading up a bit and seeing some of the photos of the devastation. The impact on the state was greater than Katrina.
Nagin and Blanco need to "sit down and shut up", then put their respective shoulders to the wheel to make recovery happen instead of constantly lobbying for more federal bailout money. Both the city and the state have the authority to issue bonds and to exercise "eminent domain". What is preventing THEM from at least making a start on the "Baker plan", or one similar.
If they abandon the home, do you expect them to still pay the mortgage? Get real.
Yes I do. I would. It's called honor.
You make the huge assumption that the houses are 100% mortgaged, which is quite unlikely. Depending on the number of long time owner/residents (the closer your birth to the Great Depression, the less you like mortgages), it's possible the average is below 60%, wherein we'd owe the banks less than the 60% buyout you mention.
The Devil is in the details here. I'm sure somebody knows the right number, but I haven't seen it.
Your opposition to President Bush goes back far earlier than Katrina and your blame of him for your forseeable woes is not unexpected.
What you don't seem to grasp is the feeling here that we've already pitched in. With no gratitude. None.
We're still pitching in. Louisiana residents are still in our hotels living for free, running around killing our residents, engaging in gang wars, and generally doing nothing to do anything to change that.
When is enough enough?
New Orleans is sinking at a rate of 3-5 feet per century and nothing will change that. It's not manmade subsidence. It's Gulf Coast geology. Bourbon Street, with its strippers and barf in the gutters, is not so important that every taxpayer in America needs to pay out the nose to keep it intact when it's eventually going to be 50 feet below sea level on an unprotected coastline.
We don't owe you jack. You haven't been grateful so far and eventually even a fool realizes he's been suckered.
Let the private sector give you the "loans" you want if they make sense. Uncle Sam is not your insurance agency.
You posted an article from the future, September, 2006 (which I can only assume you meant to post as September, 2005) to make your dumb-@ss point? How many more articles will you post today on this topic?
Ray Nagin? Governor Blanco? Is that you? ;)
Then why do you expect ME to pay it?
I wondered that myself; it was like a frantic search to find anything to post to bash Bush and the rest of us.
"I wondered that myself; it was like a frantic search to find anything to post to bash Bush and the rest of us."
I love a person that can properly use semi-colons. :)
This guy is a one-note wonder. I mean, we ALL have our personal picadillos 'round here, but Puh-Leeze. Move to higher ground already.
You all know how dumb I am about money, so let me ask you this:
If they get the money, what guarantee is there that they will actually pay off their mortgages?
and
If they pay off their mortgages, will they want money to buy a house somewhere else?
I wonder if this corporation will buy me a house, since its obvious that I will never be able to afford one myself as long as I have to keep paying for people who build in geologically unsound areas!
Presumably the money would be paid directly to the mortgage company. Even the federal government isn't stupid enough to make the check payable directly to the homeowner.
Of course, the plan would give the homeowners at least 60% of their imaginary equity in a worthless house, so they'd get that, and the ones with an IQ higher than an oyster would go live somewhere else.
Bush is the president of this nation. He is accountable for the fiasco called FEMA, it's lack of preparedness for such a scale of disaster, and the sluggish response to the needs of the citizens. Everyone seems to think that Louisiana has received billions of dollars in aid. Where the hell is it? Can you tell me? The fact is that most of that money is stuck somewhere in the middle of red tape city. It's not getting to the people it's supposed to be helping.
Meanwhile, they are being referred to as all forms of low-life, murderers (by you) and being told by their fellow Americans to "find a job", "shoulda had insurance", "elect better politicians", "don't live in a hole", etc. etc. etc. Guess what, most of these folks, almost none of which you've seen on TV, need our help. It's that simple. Bush, by delaying, then knocking down the one sensible proposal that might offer them the exact type of help they need, is not living up to his words from Jackson Square. Had he been honest then, based upon what has happened in the last four and a half months, he should have told us to screw ourselves.
I've not been a Bush supporter, this is true, but none of this is about me. I'm fine and don't need anything. It's about plenty of honest, hard-working, decent families that have been totally devastated and need our help. All they are getting from most on this forum is a spanking and or help with all sorts of strings and conditions attached plus insults. It wasn't one of those "normal" aftermaths we've all come to expect with a hurricane. I've been through plenty of them, this is nothing close. Stop judging it by those standards until you go down to St. Bernard or to Cameron.
"However, if my home is destroyed by a tornado and I do not have the proper insurance, no one is going to give me a new one. "
A very important distinction is that the residents of NO were told by the federal govt that the levee system would hold for a cat 3 hurricane. It didn't. While residents knew that the levees were no match for cat 4 or 5, it has been shown that Katrina was only a cat 2 hurricane by the time it reached NO. Exactly what kind of levee protection is that? Just what have we taxpayers been paying for?
It appears from years of records that it was known by the federal govt that the levees wouldn't hold and nothing was ever said to warn the residents or rectify the situation. This is goes back more to Clinton and him being totally asleep at the wheel (or messing with the interns).
Add on top of that the fact that the barrier protection has been lost and that this responsibility to maintain it fell into the federal govts hands and you can understand why Louisiana residents are POed at the feds. Now pile on top of that those with proper flood insurance are getting the run around and not getting their checks. Wouldn't you be rather upset if 6 months after that torrnado hit your house that you didn't get your insurance check??? While not everyone in NO was insured, the insured homeowners are getting the run around in too many cases.
It is simply a huge mess down there and the federal govt should get a lot of the blame just as President Bush says it should. It is interesting that The Netherlands is 60% below seas level and experience horrific storms and yet they have an outstanding flood control system. Why can't the US produce something just as good? Even more importantly, this tells us about how vulnerable all of our cities are to a major terrorist attack by dirty bombs, chemical agents, biological agents and so on. That should worry everyone here and we need to see NO as a reflection of what will happen in the next city-wide crisis in this country.
Whether you like it or not, NO is a strategic city for the US. It has 2 major ports and serves a significant part of the country. It sits virtually on top of the strategic oil reserves and is an entry for natural gas and petroleum to the US. It seems strange that a billion dollars a day go into Iraq with hardly a squawk by conservatives and yet they scream bloody hell when our own taxpaying citizens are asking for what gets used up in a week in Iraq. Something is very odd about that.
Gee, you really nailed me on that one, you're so smart and all. Is that all you got?
"Female. Mid-forties. Retired Army. Conservative. Christian"
Christian?
It's Sunday. Try practicing your faith.
Commerce clause legitimately prevents it both ways.....a rare instance where it could be invoked for its intended purpose instead of the nonsense that they usually use it for.
Here's what I would expect the government to do for me if I lived in New Orleans.
Pluck me off of my roof even though I was too stupid to leave when I was told to.
Give me temporary shelter and food until I hooked up with relatives or friends willing to take me in.
Maybe give me a loan if I had a respectable credit record, although I should be able to get that from a private lender. But a temporary federal guarantee on that might facilitate the process.
That's it.
The rest of my losses are between me and my insurance company and my loss of livelihood is between me and my employer. If I have to relocate and get a new job, hey, that's life. It's not like that doesn't happen to people even without a hurricane or a Republican President to blame.
I can grasp the devastation.
I lived thru more than one major earthquake and wildfire in California.
Having said than, I HAD earthquake insurance, and also fire insurance. I knew I had those hazards and I paid accordingly.
If you chose to live BELOW sea level, and have NO FLOOD insurance, then I am completely baffled why and how you can actually stand there and tell me as a taxpayer all my adult life that I should contribute one thin dime to your problem.
You desire to rebuild WITHOUT flood insurance where you were, and when all this happens again, you will stand there and plead again. WRONG wrong, wrong.
The political members of your state squandered monies earmarked for the maintenance of the levees. Go talk to them. You got a "Shrimp Industry Museum" instead of maintenance as well as other things, not to mention the outright graft.
The citizens of Louisiana have spent multiple lifetimes allowing the graft and ineptitude to run rampant for years and years. Reap what you sow.
Now it has come home to roost. 200,000+ people "couldn't get out of NO on their own", and now there are 200,000+ cars scattered all over the city, which they won't move because of ownership and insurance questions. I want to know why the people couldn't get into the cars and DRIVE out of danger.
IF they stayed because they thought they could "RIDE IT OUT", then I say: You got what you deserved. Get on the bucking bull and don't bitch when you get bucked off.
The land in the lowest areas should be bought up at a reasonable value and made into a large park. When it floods again, then it is only flooding the grass/dirt.
Sepulveda Dam Basin at the intersection of Hwy 101 and I-405 is exactly that.
Stay out of my tax-payer pocket. You already have a disproportionate number of welfare collectors there. Leave me and my hardworking brethern alone, please.
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