Cason Construction

I submitted this to the Daily News Journal, but as yet they have not printed it. I suppose they accept too much money in ads from out of state volume builders and developers to print it:

In the worst economic crisis of our time, it is easy to simply blame Washington and Wall Street for our troubles, but with the overmarket of construction at the heart of the problem, planning authorities and legislative bodies at the local level must also be accountable for their role in our falling home values. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees something terribly wrong in approving a massive apartment complex on Cason Lane, one of the most congested streets in town. With major employers in the area slowing down and school enrollment increases lower than projections, you would think we would see a slowdown in sprawl, but as the Daily News Journal reported last week, planners seemingly have "no qualms" about approving anything and everything. I just moved here from the Cordova area of Memphis, and I would hate to see Murfreesboro go down the path of my former city, where corrupt developers completely control public policy. There neighborhoods now start to bust before they have fully boomed. The developers just move down the road and do it all over again, leaving the rest of us to deal with the crime, sprawl, and foreclosures that stem from growth that is not sustainable.

History Repeating Itself with the Economy

Despite the federal government's injection of 700 billion, the economy still continues to fall. This is also precisely what happened in 1929 when first Richard Whitney, and later William C. Durant and the Rockefellers, attempted to inject more money into the system to bolster confidence and stop the fall. In my opinion, the government should buy mortgages directly from the PEOPLE, not the banks. Many people facing foreclosure would like to simply sell their home at appraisal value or less to get out and purchase a cheaper home they can afford. Many people have homes they desperately need to sell so they can purchase another home in another area due to relocation. During the Great Depression, the government had to enact policies to stop overproduction in farming. With the culprit in this downturn the housing overproduction, local, state, and federal government needs to come up with a plan to deal with the oversupply of housing now and a plan to prevent it in the future. To me the glut of subdivisions and strip malls is the equivalent of the stock buying boom of the 1920's. In the 20's people borrowed money for stock that deflated, and now millions of homeowners have borrowed money for homes that have devalued. Buying homes back from struggling homeowners saves the banks and the people from ruin, whereas simply taking toxic subprime mortgages off the bank ledgers still leaves people facing foreclosure of their homes (by the government now rather than the previous private bank owner). The federal government could then use the oversupply of homes purchased for government housing programs through agencies such as HUD or property grants to the states for their own local housing programs. The government still does this for farm products now. That's what commodities are (you know, "government cheese" and the like). It's time to do something like that with houses.