rhythm+hue

Cashing in on the misfortunes of others

October 23, 2007

A sign of the times… seems that you can buy houses in the USA at the moment for cheap. I mean cheap. A five bedroom house went out for auction in Detroit for $35,000 as an example.The largest auction of foreclosed properties was held in Minnesota over the weekend, with homes going for $1,000 for a 3 bedroom house to $279,000 for 5 bedrooms on 11.9 acres. You can read more here from the New York Times.This is the USA but I predict that this will happen soon and is probably already happening here in Australia. Where we live, in Mooroolbark, there is already evidence of couples who bought big houses close to the city to go with their Mercedes, have had to downgrade the house to afford the cars. The area is an outer-suburban middle-class area with some areas of the suburb, more “prestige” than others.When we first moved to Melbourne back from Brisbane we found a place to rent, comparable to what we were paying in Melbourne, in the Edna Walling Estate area of Mooroolbark. When we met others parents at the local primary school and in the course of being introduced, shared where we live, it was like the mention of the address was a barrier coming down. They automatically saw us as snobs or assumed we were something based on where we lived.Since then we’ve moved into an “average” part of the suburb and it here that we’ve seen more of the hurt and vulnerability of people.  It is here that houses built in the 1970’s and 80’s have luxury cars in the driveways and hurt and broken people inside.I guess this post is almost about two topics, but really I see it as one topic.  The houses and luxuries are part of the suburban myth that big is better and that surrounding yourself with all these things will fill that emptiness inside.There are many hurting families here and around the world and the auctions are just one of the symptoms of “affluenza”  - yet I fear there is worse to come for us in the West.

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