Many of the people who were being evicted in 2008 deserved to be evicted. That's not something most people want to hear nor even consider, but it's the truth. If you buy a house for more than it's worth and more than you can pay, you can't keep living there indefinitely.
Many of the people who were being evicted in 2008 deserved to be evicted. That's not something most people want to hear nor even consider, but it's the truth. If you buy a house for more than it's worth and more than you can pay, you can't keep living there indefinitely.
It seems as if you both agree that many people being evicted had chosen to attempt to buy more expensive homes than they could truly afford. The difference seems to be in who you want to blame.
Nate seems to want to put the onus on the homebuyer in many cases, and feels that it's not sustainable for the public to bail out such poor decisions.
You prefer to emphasize "misleading sales practices". Those could come in two major flavors: somebody, say a mortgage broker seeking higher fees, pushing somebody who could have qualified for a lower interest loan into a sub-prime higher-interest loan for which they were more than qualified. That's clearly unethical and a failure to be addressed.
The other major flavor of marketing problems is just encouraging people to take out maximal loans for overpriced property period - no matter what class of loans they use. That could be the real estate agent, the buyer's friends, the mortgage company for not turning them down, the media for emphasizing buying a home to gain access to the inflation in values, etc. Responsibility gets a lot more diffuse.
When the mortgage industry tightens up credit, they are oppressive because they are not helping poor folks enough; if they make credit more available, then they are exploiting the poor and leading them into a debt trap. The missing ingredient here is accounting for the agency of the buyer. I think we have to acknowledge Nate's concern that it's unsustainable for the government to bail out poor decisions.
(We can definitely criticize other bad government actions too; but having made a bad choice in the past doesn't make a future unsustainable policy into a good one. If you want to encourage the government to bail out homeowners on a broad scale, you'd do better to find similar bailouts which you DO support, which DID work and were positive and worth emulation, rather than pointing to past actions which only call into deeper question any currently proposed bail-outs).
Your challenge to Nate to provide numbers of "evictees deserving eviction" is not unreasonable, but you fail to similarly provide numbers for "evictees not deserving eviction". And that's understandable, everybody prefers to choose the scenario to be treated as "typical" and few want to justify why it's typical. Providing numbers is going to be hard when the difference depends on how much agency you assign to homeowners. If somebody buys a bad car because they let themselves be talked into it by the salesman, is that something the government should fix? Well, if there is outright fraud, maybe so (at least in terms of punishing and regulating, if not "making whole" the buyer). There's going to need to be a lot more careful nuancing and defining before any numbers (of deserving and undeserving) would have meaning.
I totally agree that there were a lot of deceptive sales practices going on, and even outright fraud on the part of the banks and the mortgage companies. but that doesn't affect whether or not people should have been evicted. It affects whether or not other people should have also gone to jail.
Or been sued to recover damages (putting somebody in jail is sometimes appropriate as punishment and warning to others, but doesn't redress the economic damages they've caused others).
I think we are basically agreeing. Separate problems which need separate solutions.
Many of the people who were being evicted in 2008 deserved to be evicted. That's not something most people want to hear nor even consider, but it's the truth. If you buy a house for more than it's worth and more than you can pay, you can't keep living there indefinitely.
I'm trying to consider your view and Nate V's.
It seems as if you both agree that many people being evicted had chosen to attempt to buy more expensive homes than they could truly afford. The difference seems to be in who you want to blame.
Nate seems to want to put the onus on the homebuyer in many cases, and feels that it's not sustainable for the public to bail out such poor decisions.
You prefer to emphasize "misleading sales practices". Those could come in two major flavors: somebody, say a mortgage broker seeking higher fees, pushing somebody who could have qualified for a lower interest loan into a sub-prime higher-interest loan for which they were more than qualified. That's clearly unethical and a failure to be addressed.
The other major flavor of marketing problems is just encouraging people to take out maximal loans for overpriced property period - no matter what class of loans they use. That could be the real estate agent, the buyer's friends, the mortgage company for not turning them down, the media for emphasizing buying a home to gain access to the inflation in values, etc. Responsibility gets a lot more diffuse.
When the mortgage industry tightens up credit, they are oppressive because they are not helping poor folks enough; if they make credit more available, then they are exploiting the poor and leading them into a debt trap. The missing ingredient here is accounting for the agency of the buyer. I think we have to acknowledge Nate's concern that it's unsustainable for the government to bail out poor decisions.
(We can definitely criticize other bad government actions too; but having made a bad choice in the past doesn't make a future unsustainable policy into a good one. If you want to encourage the government to bail out homeowners on a broad scale, you'd do better to find similar bailouts which you DO support, which DID work and were positive and worth emulation, rather than pointing to past actions which only call into deeper question any currently proposed bail-outs).
Your challenge to Nate to provide numbers of "evictees deserving eviction" is not unreasonable, but you fail to similarly provide numbers for "evictees not deserving eviction". And that's understandable, everybody prefers to choose the scenario to be treated as "typical" and few want to justify why it's typical. Providing numbers is going to be hard when the difference depends on how much agency you assign to homeowners. If somebody buys a bad car because they let themselves be talked into it by the salesman, is that something the government should fix? Well, if there is outright fraud, maybe so (at least in terms of punishing and regulating, if not "making whole" the buyer). There's going to need to be a lot more careful nuancing and defining before any numbers (of deserving and undeserving) would have meaning.
I totally agree that there were a lot of deceptive sales practices going on, and even outright fraud on the part of the banks and the mortgage companies. but that doesn't affect whether or not people should have been evicted. It affects whether or not other people should have also gone to jail.
Or been sued to recover damages (putting somebody in jail is sometimes appropriate as punishment and warning to others, but doesn't redress the economic damages they've caused others).
I think we are basically agreeing. Separate problems which need separate solutions.