Once upon a time, many years ago, Sam's Club decided to set up shop in Muskegon, along with all the satellite businesses that go with it. Woohoo! Sam's Club! AND Lowes! Circuit City! And Target! Think of the jobs!
Except there was one problem...there were houses in the way. And people were living in them. So the company offered to buy the houses for a "fair market price" which wasn't all that fair. But whatever. The people sold.
Not all though. Some said "Well...the thing is...we LIKE our homes." Some managed to get higher prices. Others held out because they genuinely wanted to stay in their homes.
In those cases the City moved to condemn the properties and those who couldn't afford legal council ended up taking a pittance for the properties they were kicked out of.
Fast forward a decade or so, to a time when over 18% of the population of Muskegon County is below the poverty level, and homelessness is up by 50%.
Here's a photo of a tent city...the photo is from the Grand Rapids Press. This tent city has had residents for at least five years and is about 20 miles east of my house. My mother drives near it every day on her way to work.
[Homeless] numbers are rising. Last year’s count was up nearly 11 percent from the year before, including a startling 50 percent rise in the lakeshore counties, according to the Michigan State Homeless Management Information System, a program aimed at better assessing how many are without a residence.
The statistics do not account for thousands who go unnoticed each year because they don’t seek help, choosing instead to move in with friends or family.
Experts believe the total will grow by the end of this year, perhaps leveling off after 2010, when the true effect of the economic meltdown is known.
In a state ranked fifth last year in homelessness, affecting 86,000 people, a coming wave of expiring unemployment benefits could compound that amount.
-- Article
Wow. Thousands of homeless? Tens of thousands of homeless. But there are all these empty, repossessed homes! How about this...how about we condemn them and hand them over to people who need them? You know, like we did for Sam's Club. We wouldn't even have to kick anybody out of their houses.
But, you know, I'm not a huge fan of seizing private property so let's do this. Let's figure out our share of how much we lent to the banks and subtract the home values from their tab. We'll buy the homes at condemned value though. That sounds about right. Put it on our tab.
But no. Somehow I don't imagine that's going to happen. We can't do that for people but we could do stuff like that for a mall development...though Target has long moved out and relocated to another part of town and Circuit City is now gone forever, leaving two huge empty buildings where good, occupied homes used to be.
At what point do we call an emergency? At 18% poverty? At 20%? 25%? When the increasing numbers of homeless are employed full time with multiple jobs but can't get a place to live...When exactly do we move to use the vacant resources that exist, but are owned by banks that owe US trillions of dollars?