Monday, Apr 27, 2009
How has it come to this?
BBC News: Unemployed couple live in garage
This is a short video of a couple who have been repossessed from their home in Kent (looks like Swanley from the bin bags), and now live in a privately rented garage. It doesn't go into the circumstances of their repossession, other than that they were both made unemployed, but highlights an extreme case of its consequences. Why can't we just have a nice, regulated, stable housing market that brings neither booms nor busts, savings us from such misery and insecurity and just let us get on with our lives.
Posted by hammered @ 09:15 PM (1017 views) Add Comment
13 Comments
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1. Hammered said...
Sorry I screwed that up. Correct link.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/8021251.stm
2. titaniccaptain said...
Try this fo a better link
3. Chris said...
'Why can't we just have a nice, regulated, stable housing market that brings neither booms nor busts, savings us from such misery and insecurity and just let us get on with our lives.'
The answer being that it is deliberately engineered to be a tool that traps most of the masses in mortgage slavery for their working lives and also by mechanisms of booms and busts enables the wealth of the masses to be periodically sheared from them thus preserving the place of the 'elite' at the top of the wealth and social pyramids. You don't really expect the 'elite' to get proper jobs where they actually have to do something of use rather than living parasitically off the little people do you?
4. happy mondays said...
Stability, where is the money in that! We need a housing market and constant economic growth, that the government keeps talking about, that gives us the illusion that we can become wealthy, through our endeavors to become property moguls! But through our own stupidity and greed, like a run away train, it gets out of control, which will certainly leave a trail of devastation behind, and as in most cases, it is usually the vulnerable that suffer. Not to mention the fallout IE relationship break ups, children up rooted and re housed / schooled etc.
5. watchingthewheels2 said...
The bin bags say swale council,this is north,mid kent around the sittingbourne area.....poor couple,soon even the btl landlords will be living in garages.
6. crunchy said...
It's a shame number 10 is policed and gated. I would personally help them with their bags and knock on the culprits door for a room.
7. watchingthewheels2 said...
I'm surprised the garage had not already been re-developed and sold as a luxury studio development for 90 grand under a part rent,part buy scheme.
8. drewster said...
They're too proud to ask the council for a house. I can understand that and I have a lot of respect for them.
9. Alaninstockport said...
"Why can't we just have a nice, regulated, stable housing market that brings neither booms nor busts, savings us from such misery and insecurity and just let us get on with our lives."
GREED
10. Hammered said...
Chris @ 3.
Other countries seem to be able to manage without their elites screwing everything up for everyone else. Take Scandinavian nations where the upbringing of kids is considered the responsibility of society, not just the parents you happen to be born to, and the French and German rules on property ownership and rentals which deliberately discourage housing market cycles. I agree that certain societies seem to have a greater inclination for elites to nobble the plebs but its by no means internationally universal.
This country has a long way to go as far as fairness is concerned, but the current situation gives a great opportunity to have a good clear out both economically and morally. Its part of the economic bit which is why we come to this website, right? I expect to see good progress on both these things over the coming years, but if we don't, I'm out of here to go and live in a country where fairness prevails.
11. shipbuilder said...
8. drewster said...
"They're too proud to ask the council for a house. I can understand that and I have a lot of respect for them."
Why? Does living in council housing make you somehow a lesser member of society?
12. george monsoon said...
Living in a garage in a relatively nice area, would always be preferable to living in a council house in Chav central.
13. Chilli said...
The problem is the monetary illusion. People focus on how much more money they have rather than how much wealthier they are. When houses were pensions, people were focusing on the larger number they could pin on their house, while not acknowledging that the house was the same house it was ten years before.
An the masses keep getting caught in this trap because they are being sold something they want and that is the promise of being rich.
For example; if someone 2 years ago were to look at house prices and realise that they cost drastically more than just a few years before, would he have bought? Well many did, and as long as that's the prevailing attitude we are always going to have these ridiculous bubbles. Instead they looked at the price and said, 'hey if its gained so much in nominal value since then, I could buy this and make a killing'.
Increasingly I think we should change the curriculum in schools. If we get rid of physics say (what goes up must come down) with economics say (what goes up must come down), I think we will be all better off.