The political opening: attack the myth of home ownership as freedom and success. This myth has been an anchor of consumer oriented capitalism, a capitalism designed to diminish the power of organized workers (workers with a mortgage to pay don't strike) and amplify consumer spending. We should also add: increase isolation from others, amplify self-absorption, incite keeping up with the neighbors, diminish common experiences, etc.
The two pillars of the so-called American dream are single family private homes and cars. Yet both of these are destroying the planet (suburban living is energy inefficient and basically requires private transportation). Right now, neoliberalism's evolution into despotic financialism is making both homes and cars impossibilities for significant percentages of the population.
So now it's time to wake up from this dream into the Real of the communist horizon: equitable, collective alternatives in living and transportation. In some cities (not a lot in the US), squatters are leading forces in this direction. Campaigns around cycling are also important as they wage war on the hegemony of the car.
Households across a majority of large U.S. cities received more foreclosure warnings in the first six months of this year than in the first half of 2009, new data shows.
The trend is the latest sign that the nation's foreclosure crisis is worsening as homeowners battling high unemployment, slow job growth and an uneven rebound in home prices continue to fall behind on their mortgage payments.
In all, 154 out of 206 metropolitan areas with at least 200,000 residents posted an annual increase in foreclosure activity between January and June, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
The firm tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions — warnings that can lead up to a home eventually being lost to foreclosure.
The latest figures show the threat of foreclosures is spreading well beyond the top tier of metropolitan areas located in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, which have borne the brunt of the fallout from the housing crisis.
Those states saw housing values surge during the housing boom years. When the boom ended, values collapsed and foreclosures soared.
"The face of foreclosure is driven much more now by unemployment than in the past, and it's moving out from the places where we've been focusing on in the last few years," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "The combination of a weak job market and a weak housing market is making it difficult in some of these areas."
via news.yahoo.com
Cycling may wage war on the hegemony of the car, but in some places, such as contemporary NYC, it (or at least the creation of bike paths) is also strongly associated with the assertion of the priorities of the upper middle class over everyone else. In general, in the US, the politics of reducing consumption have become entangled with the politics of increasing the cultural capital of the reducers.
Posted by: Steven Sherman | August 01, 2010 at 12:40 PM