Posted by
MySon'sVisitor on Friday, October 03, 2008 11:28:12 AM
I'm writing today to suggest a cause for the current foreclosure and mortgage banking crisis.
According to USCB data, in 1960 the U.S. population of 180 million people lived in 58 million housing units. Simple division reveals an occupancy rate of 3.1 people per home. According to USCB estimates for 2006, the U.S. population of 300 million lived in 126 million housing units. Again, by division, the occupancy rate was 2.3 people per home. If the 2006 population lived at the 1960 occupancy rate, we would need just 96 million homes to house them all. In other words, we have surplus housing capacity equivalent to 30 million extra homes in the United States today.
It's clear to me that we have a housing surplus in the USA, and this surplus is the cause of the banking crisis.
The housing market is a market like any other. When the supply of a commodity is increased faster than demand, price/value MUST drop. When the money available within a home falls (by loss of a wage earner's paycheck through divorce) the "market will bear" less and the value of the house must fall. When the number of people in a house falls, the value of the "shelter service" it provides falls. Our housing surplus is the cause of the foreclosure epidemic and the mortgage banking crisis.
The question is, what has caused the decline in housing occupancy over the past 50 years? I believe that the answer is found in our rising divorce rates and falling marriage rates. The simple truth is that every divorce ends with the family (from the children’s perspective BOTH parents are “family”) occupying and paying for two homes where one was sufficient before. 30 million extra homes consume about 30 million megawatt-hours of electricity each month, and an equivalent amount of natural gas and fuel oil for heat - which raises energy cost for everyone. The consumption of all this extra energy puts extra CO2 in the atmosphere, potentially contributing to climate change. 30 million extra homes must be built somewhere, increasing deforestation, loss of habitat, loss of farmland, urban sprawl and higher food prices. Government must spend extra money providing infrastructure to these extra homes, money that can not be spent fixing old bridges or maintaining old levees. Once built and occupied, these extra homes must be outfitted with extra furniture, appliances and consumer goods. As one-income homes with tight budgets, there is intense pressure to obtain these goods from low cost foreign sources - increasing trade deficit, foreign competition for energy resources, and job export.
The thing about divorce is, no politician has ever (to my knowledge) campaigned on a platform of increasing divorce - they universally and eternally promise to strengthen families. Furthermore, it is widely known that intact marriages are usually more financially stable than broken families. But, despite our politician's "best efforts" and simple economic reality, divorces continue to rise – something MUST be creating a powerful divorce incentive.
I believe the problem can be found within the fact that marriage is uncertain - "For Better or Worse". When a married worker loses a job, the whole family will feel the economic pinch. In uncertain economic times, people begin to look for an alternative, for a way to insulate themselves from the economic impact of a spouse's unemployment, injury or incapacitation. Many find this alternative within the guarantee of limited economic security provided by the child support enforcement system. It is well known in our society that most of America's custodial parents are female. (83.8% according to USCB data, see pub P60-234). What is less well known is that about 80% of divorces are FILED by women. I believe that this is a cause and effect relationship - women file 4 out of 5 divorces because they know that they will usually win sole custody and automatic child support. So, the CS system appears to be working as a state run divorce incentive system.
The federal government is engaged in this problem as well. One reason that the states operate a divorce incentive system, is because states compete for federal incentive money that rises when the state has more support enforcement cases. See 42 U.S.C. 658a for one example. These federal programs operate as federal divorce incentive incentives, motivating the states to maintain their divorce incentives.
The solution to the divorce epidemic is to end the practice of awarding sole custody to no-fault divorce plaintiffs. As a male, I understand that if I file a no-fault divorce, I will be asked "Why are you leaving the family?" THAT is the basis upon which we must consider EVERY no-fault divorce petition. The one who asks for no-fault divorce is the one asking to leave the WHOLE family.
To solve the mortgage banking crisis, we need two strategies: First, we must begin encouraging families to remain married, by reforming our family law and removing divorce incentives. This will concentrate the housing surplus into more vacant homes, while improving the prosperity of the greater number of intact families. Second, we must find new buyers for these newly vacant homes. Fortunately, millions of people are still begging for an opportunity to move their families to America, purchase a home, put down roots and begin assimilating into our society as they contribute their labor to it. We must expand legal immigration to provide a new wave of immigrants to fill the surplus homes. America has always strengthened itself through immigration. The only problem with "illegal immigration" is that transient workers are NOT immigrants - they send their money back to their families outside the USA and eventually return home themselves. If we think of a foreign family as a business, migrant labor becomes just another component of our trade deficit, a product that we purchase from foreign suppliers. The bottom line is that no "bailout plan" will fix the foreclosure and mortgage banking crisis until we recognize and fix the housing surplus – and the way to do that is to find and fight the divorce incentives embedded within our family law, which reward no-fault plaintiffs while marginalizing innocent defendant fathers and excluding them from their important role in their children’s lives.
For more information, read:
“Marriage and Divorce’s Impact on Wealth” – Jay L. Zagorsky, Journal of Sociology, Vol 41, No. 4, 406-424(2005)
“Welfare and the ‘Road to Serfdom’” – Stephen Baskerville, Ph.D.
“Federal Incentives Make Children Fatherless” – Phyllis Schlafly
“These Boots Are Made for Walking: Why Most Divorce Filers are Women” –Margaret F. Brinig
“Disenfranchising, Demeaning, and Demoralizing Divorced Dads : A Review of the literature” Dr. Linda Nielsen, Journal of Divorce & Remarriage - 1999, vol.31 pages 139-177 http://www.wfu.edu/%7Enielsen/divorceddad.pdf