More Homeowners Taking in Boarders

The New York Times has a story today on a growing trend: homeowners taking in boarders in order to help make financial ends meet as their incomes decline and/or their mortgage payments increase. Actually, this is something I have done myself as have several friends and clients. In my case, it is also nice to not be alone in the house all the time. My current roommate is in the Navy and works crazy watch schedules so often we barely see each other for a number of days when he is working evening to early morning watches. How McCain and Phil Graham can believe that the current financial strain so many are feeling is only due to "whining" when people are being forced to rent out portions of their homes is a bit frightening. The country cannot afford another president like the Chimperator who has no clue of reality. Sadly, McCain looks more and more out of touch - as one blog has commented, he still thinks Czechoslovakia is a country even though it ceased to exist 15 years ago when the country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Here are some highlights from the NYT story:

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With residential mortgage foreclosures still on the rise, more homeowners nationwide are considering Miss Terry’s choice: whether to take in a boarder to keep their homes. Modest but growing numbers are turning to agencies nationwide like the St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center Homesharing Program in Baltimore, which screen boarders to find appropriate matches and relieve some of the fear of strangers.

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In some communities, local zoning laws or homeowner associations may limit the number of nonrelated people who can live in a house. Ms. Brennan said that home-sharing could help some people caught in the housing downturn, but that its benefits were limited. “Where we see it being of value is if someone is having short-term problems,” she said. “The average stay of a sharer is about a year, and some are much less. It’s good for someone leaving a marriage or a relationship, or going to school. You can’t count on it as a regular income. It’s a stopgap.”

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Renée Drell, executive director of HomeSharing Inc., in Bridgewater, N.J., where home-shares rose 14 percent last year, said that as mortgage payments, heating costs and taxes have all risen, homeowners are asking for higher rents to share their homes, often more than seekers can afford.

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But Ms. Dunn, of HomeShare Vermont, said people should not look at home-sharing only as a last resort or a financial Band-Aid. “When you look at the data on people living alone, they tend to die younger and be sicker. We’ve done surveys, and people say they’re happier, sleeping and eating better, and feel safer in their homes with someone around. If I sold you that as a drug, you’d pay thousands of dollars.”

The Taliban’s Rising Tide in Pakistan;Rampant GOP Delusion at Home

One has to question whether or not there is any aspect of the USA as a nation that the Chimperator and his regime/policies have not utterly f*cked up. The housing industry is in a meltdown, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are teetering on possible insolvency, the fiscal budget has been blown to Hell and the national debt has mushroomed, Iraq is a sink hole in terms of money and military personnel, and Afghanistan - what should have been the focus after 9-11 is falling apart, a new International Red Cross report finds the USA guilty of torture and there are questions as to whether the Chimperator could face war crimes charges, the constitutional protections of U. S. citizens have been undermined, and Americans are subject to domestic spying as if the country were China or the former USSR. Yet the Chimperator thinks history will be kind to him, no less. A new New York Times column had this to say about Afghanistan and Pakistan:
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The swelling forces of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan’s border region pose a grave threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. They also pose a grave threat to the Pakistani people. Pakistan’s Taliban militias, like their Afghan counterparts, are trying to impose their harsh medieval version of Islamic law.

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Sending United States troops into Pakistan’s border regions to try to clean out Taliban and Al Qaeda forces is also not the answer — and would provoke even fiercer anti-American furies across Pakistan. The poorly paid, ill-trained and uncertainly loyal Frontier Corps in Pakistan is not up to the job.

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Washington has made a lot of policy mistakes in Pakistan — most notably supporting Pervez Musharraf for far too long. It has forfeited most of its credibility with the Pakistani people and reinforced their belief that the fight against extremism is “Washington’s war” and not also their own. Both countries have a common and increasingly urgent interest in rolling back the power of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and working together to promote democracy and development in Pakistan. President Bush needs to persuade Pakistan’s leaders of that — and he needs to do it now, before Al Qaeda and the Taliban get any stronger.

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The Chimperator, however is not the only member of the GOP who has not kept his eye on the ball or failed to remain even remotely in touch with reality. John McCain's top economic advisor, Phil Graham, said yesterday that the United States was only in a “mental recession” and that it had become a “nation of whiners.” I guess we are just imagining all of the foreclosures and it is just a delusion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are on the ropes. It would seem that McCain and company cannot be trusted to correct the problems that thety don't even see as existing. One commentator on MSNBC dubbed the Graham/McCain approach as the "Marie Antoinnete economic policy." It is hard to disagree with that assessment and I have to wonder what mind altering drugs Graham has been taking. Here are story highlights from the New York Times:

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BELLEVILLE, Mich. — Senator John McCain has spent the week trying to tell people that he feels their economic pain. So it was more than a little unhelpful when one of his top economic advisers was quoted Thursday as saying that the United States was only in a “mental recession” and that it had become a “nation of whiners.”

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But it was too late to keep from complicating things for Mr. McCain, who has been trying to strike a more empathetic tone after sometimes struggling to maintain a balance between displays of optimism about the nation’s future and demonstrating an understanding of Americans’ economic hardships.

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Senator Barack Obama, . . . seized on Mr. Gramm’s remarks, made in an interview with The Washington Times. “You know, America already has one Dr. Phil,” Mr. Obama said at a campaign stop in Fairfax, Va. “When it comes to the economy, we don’t need another.” Mr. McCain himself repudiated Mr. Gramm’s comments.

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And when he was asked whether Mr. Gramm — McCain campaign co-chairman, UBS Investment Bank vice chairman and former economics professor — might serve as treasury secretary in a McCain administration, the candidate replied with a flash of his sometimes tart humor. “I think Senator Gramm would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus,” he said, “although I’m not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that.”