Many of our wealthiest citizens are hurting.
Folks, there’s a
serious housing shortage in America these days. The stress it’s creating for
needy families is approaching heart-attack levels.
Did you know, for
example, that the inventory of million-dollar homes in Carmel, California, dwindled to only four properties at one
point in late May?
But the tragedy
doesn’t stop there. This is a national crisis. Consider the poor people in Old
Greenwich, Connecticut, where only 10 homesteads in the million-dollar range
were recently on the market.
What’s happening?
There’s a surge of multimillionaire hedge-funders, Silicon Valley high-techers,
oil and gas frackers, and other super-richers. Their frenzy to snap up luxury
second, third, and fourth homes is crowding regular rich people out of the
market.
More disturbing is
the influx of flashy Russian, Middle Eastern, and Asian
tycoons grabbing
high-end homes like they’re M&Ms. Those foreigners are creating a housing
crisis for our home-grown rich.
So, where the heck is
Congress?
Why can’t that
immigration reform effort protect our own by taking aim at this emergency? And
doesn’t this luxury housing crunch just cry out for a mansion-construction
subsidy? If our national leaders won’t help the most privileged among us, who
will they help?
The situation is so
dire that many of the moneyed elites are scrounging around like commoners to
find rental properties. Luckily, there are some swell homes still available out
in the Hamptons, renting for about a million dollars. For the summer, that is.
Yes, that’s almost $10,000 a day — not counting utilities and the pool boy’s
salary.
But in tough times,
the rich tend to toughen up, reach for their wallets, and do what has to be
done.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is
a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He's also editor of the
populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org