It’s Time For Alternatives
Start The Revolution In Housing & Education
The time for alternatives has arrived
As I continue to seek solutions rather than ranting & raving in social media, I present the following alternatives to the housing and education rat races and debt traps based upon my personal experiences and observations.
HOUSING
Prices keep spiraling upward making achievement of the starter home impossible and preventing the retiree to affordably downsize. The entire system is at a log jam. It’s a rigged cabal consisting of developers, financers, realtors and the U.S. government (thank you Fannie Mae, NYMBY, overly restrictive zoning and urban sprawl). The ridiculous bubble/burst cycle has become a painful reality for both buyer and seller who perpetually try to “time the market”. Americans have been fed the fantasy of the home ownership American dream. Housing has transformed into a commodified speculative venture with the vast majority of Americans financially over-leveraged, house poor and living a miserable existence of eat-sleep-work just to keep a roof over their head. I should know since I was one of those Americans who worked 2 and 3 jobs at the same time for over 30 years just for the ‘privilege” of claiming to be a home owner living in a town with good schools. I used to challenge friends posing the following question: “Where is the next Cape Cod? Where is the next diamond in the rough where I can buy low and ride the wave to high prices? There’s nothing wrong with asking these questions. It’s as American as apple pie. In fact it might be un-patriotic to NOT ask this question. The problem is that when EVERYBODYS asking that question and fueling speculative investment, that American Pie just keeps getting too expensive.
It’s time to consider cooperative housing, co-housing and land trusts as affordable, sensible alternatives for the following reasons:
Housing should be reframed as a shelter that you can reasonably depend upon living in for the long run rather than an investment opportunity forcing you up the rungs of a financial ladder.
Housing should be a place where you have a reasonable sense of security (financial & physical) and a feeling of camaraderie and community rather than living in a socially isolating dog-eat-dog suburban environment living in fear that you are only a couple of paychecks away from foreclosure as a homeowner or eviction as a renter.
Housing should be a place where you feel comfortable and supported. As someone who has lived in rooming houses, rental units, condominiums and finally owning my own house in a suburban setting, I yearn for a housing environment where there is a sense of “all-for-one” and “one-for-all” and “we-have-each others-backs” in good times and bad times. This is not to say that I have not met some good people and made friends along this life-housing journey. But in every housing situation that I have experienced, the aforementioned sense of unity, camaraderie and solidarity is lacking. The closest I came to this sense of community and unity was when I was a member of a condominium board. We worked together for the survival of the condo and the neighborhood. Unfortunately, after several years of effort, neither survived. The owner-to-renter ratio of the condo dramatically slid into a renter occupied development. This is not to imply that renters are inherently bad but they do not have the sense of roots and perseverance of an owner-occupied development. Ultimately, I ended up renting out my unit and when my elderly tenant got mugged and moved to her daughters’ house, that was the last straw for me. By the way, the neighborhood continued to slide downward despite vigorous community organizing efforts by myself and some dedicated neighbors. In sum, it’s my observation that only in a cooperative, co-housing arrangement where there is a clearly defined mission of working-residing in support of a common cause can there be a true sense of solidarity in a rewarding, enriching environment. Only when these circumstances are in place can there be real consequences for not being a team player where every member of the housing boat are rowing in the same direction.
EDUCATION
More specifically, I’m proposing an alternative to the obscene costs of higher education. Having plunged into enormous debt of the Parent Plus program while I assisted my three sons get their college degrees, I bitterly consider the term “higher education” to reflect “higher” costs. The cabal of colleges, financers/loan processing administrative middle-men and the U.S. government (thank you Sallie Mae and other well-intentioned programs resulting in unforeseen, unfortunate results) have combined to ruin any hope I had of living out my life debt free. As for my sons, the crushing college debt has put their lives on hold placing a financial sword of Damocles over their heads for a minimum of 10 years subsequent to graduation. It’s gotten to the point that I question why anybody smiles or celebrates at graduations which in my experience have come to symbolize graduation into a life of indentured servitude and debt. I missed the draft to the Vietnam war by one year since that was when the USA converted to an all-volunteer military. Coincidentally, the cost of attending college steadily escalated while military service was advertised as an affordable alternative to paying off college. Coincidence? I think not.
So, what’s the alternative?
Consider a system of certifications, online open-source learning, internships, work-study and apprentice experiences where a person can significantly lower the cost of mastering a body of knowledge and proving that they can contribute to the workforce. If achieving economic self-sufficiency and gainful employment is the end goal of “education”, then why not shift our system to this much more practical and affordable alternative.
I often ask others if they ask their plumber whether they “went to a good plumbing school” when he or she arrived to fix the toilet. When your car breaks down, do you quiz the mechanic about whether he or she attended an “ivy league” school of mechanics. If I was hiring an employee and I had to choose between a recent graduate with no practical work experience other that attending fraternity/sorority parties vs. someone who worked their way thru college getting “real world” experience, I think you can guess who I would hire.
College and a liberal arts education including the humanities and social sciences certainly are valuable, but at what cost? As a political science major and history buff, I use myself as an example. One evening I read the entire history text of one of my kids back when they were in high school. Why? Because I have an affinity for these subjects and the material comes easy to me. Evenings after dinner, now that I’m retired, I spend an hour watching YouTube videos on topics of interest ranging from economics, politics, international relations, history, etc. These are subjects that I took way back in my college years and got good grades. However, papers were churned out and tests were taken while the material went ‘in one ear and out the other”. It’s only after over 40 years of work-life experiences that I now fully understand these subjects and appreciate them. It makes me wonder if a person like me who has an affinity for these subjects could educate themself possibly with coaching/mentorship from a person like myself and then take an exam to certify that they master an understanding of such subjects without living in college dorms travelling to and from lecture halls. Understandably, there are some subjects that can only be mastered in a hands-on environment. Technical subjects and laboratory dependent subjects are an example. Just watching videos will never enable someone to be a master gardener or experienced swimmer. In both cases one would need to immerse your hands in the soil or your body in the pool. If you are interested in a subject, if you readily grasp the material and if you are willing to join a peer group of like-minded aficionados willing to take a test to verify subject mastery, then why not offer this as a college alternative?
I’m not proposing closing colleges but if there is an alternative route to joining the workforce that avoids the diploma credentialling trap, then maybe these over-priced colleges will reduce their tuition rates. If they chose not to become competitive and enrollments plumet, maybe it’s time for some of them to “die on the vine” in our all-American capitalist system. Last, but not least, if these colleges are so proud of their placement rates, let them get back to subsidizing the tuitions out of their own pockets and have some “skin in the game” like they did before the government intervened and enabled them to inflate prices in an escalating price/prestige war that got us into the current mess.
In sum…..
Stop the madness in both the housing and education markets. Reconsider subsidizing and encouraging the bloat, greed and corruption that permeates both markets. Both systems are broken and it’s time to offer alternatives to the speculative, inflationary, delusional systems that we have created under the guise of the American Dream. Only if viable alternatives are in place will the power brokers in the housing and education realms get the message and make adjustments. Any policies and procedures short of this will merely be nibbling at the solutions and result in the fluff of window dressing.
As always, feedback is encouraged and stay tuned for more blogs on Medium and my website www.dunnwriteswell.com
© Gregory Dunn 2024
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