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Sweat Equity Makes Housing More Affordable |
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Sweat Equity + 0% Mortgages + 0 Taxes
= Affordable Housing
The recent meltdown of the world financial systems will not be explained or understood by this humble fellow. In fact after listening to and observing all those 'not-so humble' fellows explaining what is going on, I have concluded that they don't know either. The other conclusion, is that regardless of the positive talk coming from some leaders about how good the Canadian economy is, if the other shoe drops in the USA and we do get a 'double dip' recession, things might not be as rosy as we would like to think.
In the meantime, back on point. The housing craziness which ripped through Canada and the US in recent times is no doubt a serious component in the recent fiasco that is still shaking things up. Housing prices simply were outrageous, driven by human greed and fueled by a herd mentality and facilitated by a banking system also consumed with greed.
Making Housing Affordable
When my father and my wife's father were young men with young families, they rolled up their sleeves and actually built their homes with their own hands! Neither were carpenters by trade and both relied on the help of skilled people for some parts of their construction. However, for the most part, they cut the lumber and drove the nails to create their own homes. They also did this , I might say while holding down full time jobs by working in the evening ( no four hours in front of the telly ) and on weekends.
"But they were different back then" you might say, and you would be right, however there is no reason that today's generation could not be equipped with the same skills if our educators valued those skills as highly as inputting data into a computer or any number of other jobs which don't really need doing.
So, the first step in providing affordable housing is equipping people with skills which would allow them to roll up their sleeves, get dirty and tired and sore and actually contribute something to their home except the promise to make mortgage payments. Getting this current generation off the couch and away from their video games, pc's or cellphones long enough to break a sweat is a challenge for someone else, I am just offering a valid answer to the cost of housing.