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It's harder to make a living wage these days. The cost of living has far out stripped the increase in wages. Groceries cost more, taxes, gas, insurance is insane, all those little things that families USEd to be able to live with is almost impossible for your average family to obtain. Owning a house of all things, some people may never see that. THAT in my opinion is one of the fearfactor things that we need to look into.


I agree Verbie. Being just out of college, and with all this foreclosure stuff going on, I'm right terrified to venture out into the housing market. My mom's apartment just raised the rent $70, $35 of which is for a mandatory washer and dryer, neither of which she needs because she has her own. When she talked to them about it, they said something vague about how normally they'd evict all the residents for a month while they made the "renovations." Of course, it was nothing but a fear tactic which, given the situation, is one that has some weight. When it comes right down to it, they're raising the rent simply because they can and want to profit off of the foreclosure situation. And I don't doubt at all that other places are doing similar actions. It's incredibly scary. I mean, I wasn't planning on owning a home anytime soon, if at all, but with all these foreclosures going on, and with the increase in expense for things like insurance and such, renting's really my only option at this point, and even that looks incredibly ominous and risky. It's just frigthening...no other words can describe it.

And then, on top of that, I volunteer pretty often down at the Senior Center here in town and so I'm pretty familiar with a lot of the issues seniors have to deal with. And I'll tell you, it is so incredibly sad. And it's scary to think that might be my mom's fate, or mine. All that is compounded by the aforementioned fear and well, gee....kinda makes me wanna crawl under my bed and suck my thumb while being in a fetal position.