Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: New York Times article on the Rocky Corner foreclosure

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Feb 11, 2022, at 3:59 PM, Steve Welzer <stevenwelzer [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This article will appear in the print edition of the New York Times on
> Sunday (Real Estate section):
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/realestate/connecticut-cohousing-foreclosure.html

This is a very sad story about a failure that was more common in the 1980s than 
now. This community had been under development for 11 years and had a wide 
array of investors. The article is a good one in that it gives a clear 
description of all the things that can go wrong in real estate development. It 
has taken the movement a long time to realize that cohousing is a real estate 
development. It involves land and bricks and mortar and that is hugely 
complicated. And it takes professionals involved from the beginning to avoid 
pitfalls. The work has to happen before any money changes hands. 

One of the major pitfalls in our financialized capitalism is debt. The heavy 
carrying costs start when you borrow the money whether the house is built or 
not. You may eventually have a $200,000 house, but no matter what, the bank 
will get $200,000 plus carrying costs— the interest can be double or triple for 
the bank whatever benefit you receive from the loan. The money in capitalism is 
no longer in producing wealth with creativity, but in enticing (and even 
forcing) people to go into debt and paying interest. Debt is a much more 
lucrative business than actual construction.

As you can tell I’m been reading David Graeber who writes about how our economy 
is constructed to keep the 99% in debt to the 1%. And the 1% are getting rich 
even faster than the Robber Barons did. The Robber Barons at least discovered 
oil and built railroads. Wall Street builds nothing, and goes on vacation.

To understand what happened to Rocky Corner, start with this article, then 
read: 

“Debt: The First 5000 Years” 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

 “The Democracy Project. A History. A Crisis. A Movement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Democracy_Project

The Democracy Project is Graeber’s memoir and analysis of the Occupy Wall 
Street movement — why it was so extraordinarily successful and why it 
ultimately failed. He explains so clearly the interplay of money, democracy, 
dreams, anarchy, consensus, horizontalism, liberalism, journalism, and how they 
all trip over each other. Very insightful about how debt is used to control 
people and communities. 

The article also explains why choosing land is so hard — out in the country it 
is less expensive but you have no idea what is underground. Even in the city, 
it's iffy.

My condolences to all the Rocky Corner people. 

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org