Is Home Ownership Still the American Dream?
by Nona Willis Aronowitz
Housing has been on this journalist’s mind lately. I just moved back to New York City after being gone for a while, and the reality of real estate here has hit me like a punch in the gut. Shiny condos that sit half empty have replaced warehouses and greasy spoons I used to know. Subsidized middle-class housing complexes have 20-year waiting lists. New Yorkers like me are priced out of their childhood neighborhoods.
Thoughts of my gentrified hometown reverberated through my head a few weeks ago when we visited Miami, a city still knee-deep in the housing crisis. This metropolitan area was one of the epicenters of the housing boom, where new constructions and sub-prime mortgages abounded a few years ago. A few hours after we stepped off the plane, we met Max Rameau, founder of Take Back the Land. The group moves homeless people into government-owned, foreclosed homes that are standing empty. (Check out the video above to hear his philosophy.)
We also met Ruby, a Miami native whose house was at risk of foreclosure after going through a bankruptcy and several rounds of refinancing. To her, a house is everything–a place to make your mark on the world. It is a place to lay down roots and engage in a community, a place to make beautiful, to make yours.
“The American dream is now a nightmare,” she told us listlessly. A little later: “Capitalism should not mean greed, but that’s what we’ve had.” Ruby didn’t expect elected officials to do much about her situation. She waxed poetic about her house, but she was disappointed–not only by the government, but by the direction of our country. She felt alone and in limbo.
Read the Full Essay @ Pop & Politics
by Nona Willis Aronowitz
Housing has been on this journalist’s mind lately. I just moved back to New York City after being gone for a while, and the reality of real estate here has hit me like a punch in the gut. Shiny condos that sit half empty have replaced warehouses and greasy spoons I used to know. Subsidized middle-class housing complexes have 20-year waiting lists. New Yorkers like me are priced out of their childhood neighborhoods.
Thoughts of my gentrified hometown reverberated through my head a few weeks ago when we visited Miami, a city still knee-deep in the housing crisis. This metropolitan area was one of the epicenters of the housing boom, where new constructions and sub-prime mortgages abounded a few years ago. A few hours after we stepped off the plane, we met Max Rameau, founder of Take Back the Land. The group moves homeless people into government-owned, foreclosed homes that are standing empty. (Check out the video above to hear his philosophy.)
We also met Ruby, a Miami native whose house was at risk of foreclosure after going through a bankruptcy and several rounds of refinancing. To her, a house is everything–a place to make your mark on the world. It is a place to lay down roots and engage in a community, a place to make beautiful, to make yours.
“The American dream is now a nightmare,” she told us listlessly. A little later: “Capitalism should not mean greed, but that’s what we’ve had.” Ruby didn’t expect elected officials to do much about her situation. She waxed poetic about her house, but she was disappointed–not only by the government, but by the direction of our country. She felt alone and in limbo.
Read the Full Essay @ Pop & Politics
