RE #40. Brenda Levy: [...] Speaking as a homeowner, it is not a good idea for poor people to own homes. Houses require a continual input of money for maintenance, and also require the expense of homeowners insurance and property taxes. [...]
Agree, and I’d add another element to this – properly owning & tending a house is also conditioned by cultural factors. That is, someone who’s at ease putting graffitti on walls and buses, who has no sense or understanding for the efforts done in order to build and create values, who has no sense for long term effort, who is used to live on handouts, sure can’t properly tend a house or make the effort for paying for it.
Some years ago, travelling in Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Northern Romania), I was shown previously tidy & pretty peasant villages which were reduced to Bambay-type of shanty-towns after the communist governments kicked out the “kulaks” and installed there gypsys – all in the name of social reparations.
Same thing here, in Lancaster, California.
