From Maggie Gordon, Hearst Connecticut Newspapers:
With 42 percent of homes underwater in the city of Bridgeport, the Park City has the nation’s tenth-highest concentration of homes worth less than what is owed on their mortgages. But Bridgeport isn’t the only local spot that’s drowning.
“There are millions of people around the country who are underwater, but they’re not randomly distributed,” said Occidental College Professor Peter Dreier.
Dreier, who focuses on politics as well as urban and environmental policy, recently published the study that named Bridgeport as the city with the 10th highest saturation of these underwater homes in the nation; his analysis also found that Hartford has the highest concentration of all the nation’s cities. While Bridgeport was the only southwestern Connecticut city to make Dreier’s Top 100 list for the nation’s hardest-hit cities, there are pockets of southwestern Connecticut that rival the rates of many of those areas.
Full story here.
I HAVE WRITTEN THIS BEFORE AND WILL CONTINUE TO WRITE: Build casinos in this town and there will be underwater geography at high tide only. Don’t the dumbass politicians realize you cannot keep begging money from the State without financial disaster coming?
Casinos reshuffle American dollars. The bigger dollars are overseas, thanks to our raging deficits. Capturing and returning those dollars to our shores is a better topic.
(wink)
Casinos are a bad idea. You can read about Atlantic City NJ forever.
www .wsws.org/en/articles/2014/07/14/casi-j14.html
www .nocasinoerie.org/jobques.htm
Sorry charlie,
Connecticut wants casinos with good taste, not tastes good.
The casino gold rush is over and has passed B’port by. Massachusetts is opening up three, New York a half dozen and you can be sure if Bridgeport opened one, New York would put one in Westchester County.
Instead of underwater homes we will have underwater casinos.
Underwater home prices underscore the lingering problems Bridgeport faces from the crisis that started in 2008. Mayor Fabrizi didn’t face these problems. It also highlights the hurdles Mayor Finch and Bridgeport confront on a daily basis–it’s a headwind. The Fed bailed out investment bankers but left homeowners holding the mortgage.
That entire bank bailout was a bad idea. It seems the less desirable houses popped up the most during the rise, dropped the most during the crash and are the slowest to recover. Who would have guessed? You can’t really blame the banks for all the problems. At some point an individual had to think if I make $2400/mo and you make a $2000/mo mortgage, what am I going to live on? When I bought my house I thought these guys were crazy or thought I was stupid to go for a deal like that.
New book –> davidrbell.com/book/
Where you’re located is where people look.
(wink)
Before there were underwater homes, there were underwater investment banks. At the flashpoint, the latter were saved while others were not. What was good for them then is bad for Bridgeport now. It might be a good reason to expect a slow and uneven recovery. However, Bridgeport’s Mayor has several upcoming projects (that’s what life is about, right?) that offer additional residential, retail and office development. With purposeful input from other bloggers, maybe that’s all the help we’ll need.
It is easy. Auction city-owned property. Owning property is not an asset for the city. Let the people who buy it worry about what they do with it. If the city undertakes any projects they should be houses designed for lower to middle class, regular working folks who pay taxes. Make the lots large enough to allow for additions to the house in the future. A few high-value houses are better than several cheap houses. More houses means more trash, more utilities, more school kids, etc. Plan your city project to enlarge the ‘nice’ areas into the struggling areas. Make the first lot on the street a lot and a half. On the street behind the last house should be a lot and a half. That way when you look out your back window you can see through the back yards to the back street, giving the impression of a very large yard.
The city should only engage in programs that aim to put or keep people in houses. Either build houses the city will finance at a point or so over the city’s credit cost or offer mortgage relief at the same rate. People stay in their house for 12 years on average. In that time they upgrade, downgrade, get transferred or something that causes them to move. If the city offers mortgage relief or houses at 1/2 point over the city’s credit cost and extends the mortgage out to 40-50 years, people could afford the payments. Since they will move in 12 years the city will make money on the mortgage and get all its money back in 12 or so years. Even if you get some defaults the city is making money on the mortgages, property tax and can repo the house.
Consumers encourage business, the city should work on bringing in consumers. The city has a higher responsibility to the people than it does to the business. City programs should be self-supporting (no actual cost to the city), they should build value for the city, they should have a 15 years or less investment depletion (the city should get all their money back in that time), the rest of the time is collecting profit.