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Only a few weeks after taking the oath of office, Obama is visiting my local area for a "town hall" meeting and tour of our "prime real estate" (my cheesy little joke). You see thanks to simple greed by housing developers, the area in Southwest Florida in which I live is second in foreclosures and empty houses only to Las Vegas.
Twenty thousand foreclosures took place in our county (Lee) last year thanks to predatory lending techniques, greed, and over-development. The developers and contractors SHOT THEMSELVES in the foot by continuing to build massive, luxurious gated communities with no end in sight. Of course the executives do not care, because they make money no matter how much money their companies lose. In fact, they have closed (bankruptcy) many of their companies so they could take the money from the housing boom and run. So now we have entire gated communities with a few people living in them, whole neighborhoods that pretty much emptied out to foreclosure, and thousands of half-built houses.
Obviously Obama's not going to change anything immediately. Right now all the richest of the rich in my county are buying up the empty houses for DIRT CHEAP. Sometimes I wonder if it's all some conspiracy, considering the way so many developers kept getting contractors to build the houses, even though they must have known that they would never fill them. I find it rather convenient that rich individuals are getting to buy houses with cash at around 80 grand, when three years ago they would have gone for 300 grand.
Anyways, I'm just happy that he'll be bringing his infective sense of HOPE with him. One of the most right-wing friends that I have (used to HATE Obama) texted me about the visit this morning. He wants to go to the rally with me. I am so glad that Obama is actually going to the individually affected communities in our country. Perhaps being a "community organizer" was a better job history than the Republicans thought.