The Left's Housing Dreams

Another Institution that receives a lot of contempt from the Left is the middle class suburb. It really bothers them that the bourgeoisie continues to escape dysfunctional cities for a better quality of life and a piece of American land. They also get tired of paying big tax bill and high prices to support bloated governments and parasites.

Here's an example of some dishonest wishful thinking on that score:

CBS correspondent Ben Tracy said. “But now the triple threat of falling
home values, empty nesters returning to the city and sky-high gas prices is
driving suburbia to the brink. Some developments are left half-built, while
other homes look abandoned. Demand for suburban housing is dropping so fast that
a recent study predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million
large-lot homes in suburban areas.”

But
according to the Orlando Sentinel, the man who made that prediction – Arthur C.
Nelson of Virginia Tech’s Metropolitan Institute – says the surplus could range from 3 million homes to 22 million home. The
“Evening News” didn’t mention the low end of Nelson’s prediction...

...Tracy based his assertions on the writings of James Howard Kunstler, an
author who told “Evening News” that he thinks “the project of suburbia is over.”
However, Kunstler also has peddled other doom-and-gloom scenarios that didn’t
come true, including cataclysmic failures surrounding Y2K and the Dow Jones
Industrial Index (DJIA) crashing to
4,000 by the end of 2005.

“Author
James Howard Kunstler has been predicting the decline of the suburbs for more
than 15 years,” Tracy said. “He says housing far away from job centers
won’t survive.”

That assumes incorrectly that the job centers will remain in the cities. They're not. Modern technology freed many people and businesses from the need to be on top of one another and suburbs are still growing as a result. Obviously these geniuses haven't travelled the Rte. 128 and 495 corridors in Massachusetts, Silicon Valley, Plano, Tyson's Corner or any of the dozens of major suburban business centers throughout the country.

“We’ve put so much of our national wealth and even our identity into the idea
of suburbia that we can’t imagine having to let go of it or substantially change
it,” Kunstler said.'

That could only happen through government force. Since World War II, Americans have voted with their feet in huge numbers, despite an all out assault on development by Eco-Marxists with "smart growth" policies, planning commissions and other economic anchors.

No blatant media bias would complete without the obligatory over the top predictions:

“It sounds hard to believe, but some experts are now predicting that this could
be the beginning of the end of suburbia – that far-flung neighborhoods like this
one could be tomorrow’s slums,” Tracy said...“A dream abandoned miles away now
beginning to fade,” Tracy concluded.

Another economic ignoramus heard from. No one's going to abandon an attractive housing option just because there's a current excess supply. Prices drop, pent up demand grows and whatever is available will be absorbed. And a lot faster than many would have you believe.