All across the United States there are tens of thousands of homes, condos, townhouses and property that now sit abandoned because of the economic crisis. There are also many properties that have been abandoned for a variety of reasons and they just sit there with nothing happening to them.
I have a plan. Let people homestead them. If we as a society let people homestead these properties we could have a cultural shift in America. People all across the land would move to places that they desire to live in and be a productive part of that community.
There would be many details to work out but I think this would be a great way to let many people in on the American dream of owning a home and rebuild many communities across this land.
Would this ever happen?
3 comments:
That is a very good idea, Mark.
If—as tax payers and citizens—we are going to own these properties, I agree we should use them. Like you say about details, it will have to be done with caution and wisdom, which are two unknown concepts in DC.
We seem to have been born too late for the homesteading but if the houses belong to the banks, and the government bails out the banks, the houses really do belong to the taxpayers. It might be feasible. I'd heard that if you occupy a property or dwelling for seven years, you have squatter's rights. I don't know if that's true or not...
Well my plan would start something like this.
A list of all foreclosed property would be turned over to the gov't. Then they would be assigned a value based on real market values.
The next step would be all people who have never been home owners could apply to be someone who gets to obtain a foreclosed home. They would get rated based on their current credit rating and their current salary. This would then be assingned a point value.
Once this has been done your point value would determine the value of the home you could obtain.
This would give some measure of control to the program. Since people would be getting free land I think there should some measure of repayment.
It could be $100.00 a month for thirty years, give your whole income tax refund back for 15 years.
If you sell the home during this thirty years the amount of the home value at the time of homesteading would be given back to the gov't and you would be able to keep the rest tax free.
I picked thirty years since that is the standard years for a traditional mortgage.
I think matching the home value to a credit/salary rating would put people into areas where they would surrounded with people who share some of the same values.
For areas where people do not want to move we could add incentives to help restore population growth to those sections of the country.
As for squatting it does not work so well in the U.S.. There are groups that do this around the country and it has very limited sucess. Although if abandoned for some time why not let people make use of it. I see no reason to let it sit and rot away.
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