Today's Mark Morford column

[static]

Always controversial, occasionally humorous, rarely politically correct though always worth reading is Mark Morford, a columnist from the San Francisco Chronicle. But that's not entirely correct: he has been banished from the newspaper itself and now only lives on the newspaper's web page.

[static]

Why buy a house?

Behold, one of the biggest myths of the American Dream

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, November 21, 2008

Amid the assault of economic horror stories of late -- entire towns collapsing, 750-home megadevelopments sitting vacant, the most severe downturn in new-home construction in four billion years, Marc Jacobs forced to cancel both the gold-dipped male strippers and his entire Christmas party -- I happened across a fascinating tidbit of blasphemous wisdom from an economist whose name I forget and whose article vanished into my brainpan almost instantly, but who dared to reiterate a grand and forbidden truth.

It's this: Owning your own home is, for the most part, just a little bit insane.

Wait, no, that's not exactly right. His comment was more along the lines of: The hard fact is, at any given time, no more than about 50 percent of the American population should own their own homes, at the very most. Everyone else should rent. Or live in a van.

It just makes more sense. He argued that any more than 50 percent ownership -- the current rate is about 85 percent for married couples with kids and 70 percent for everyone overall -- is fiscally irrational, actually does more harm than good to the economy, and that millions of Americans who own right now would've been far better off never buying at all (and not merely because all the foreclosures and lending debacles).

Could it be true? That maybe a large part of our current housing woes are at least somewhat attributable to this borderline pathological need so many of us have to go into massive debt for the majority of our adult lives, just so you can have your own little box to destroy or rearrange or paint any color you want, so long as it's beige or gray or creamy eggshell white? Could be, could be.

Just before lightning struck him dead on the spot for daring to question one of the Great American Commandments, the economist concluded that that maybe this housing meltdown will, among other upheavals, teach millions of Americans a radical new truth: that buying a house is no more a prerequisite to achieving the American Dream than is, say, opening your own steakhouse or marrying a porn star or hoarding piles of stock in GM.

Actually, as a lifetime city dweller/renter myself, I've heard it for years; renting is often better than buying. That when you sit down and crunch the numbers and factor in all the taxes and dues and interest rates, maintenance fees and termites and cracked foundations and busted appliances and the cost of that new sewage line, well, owning is far more of a hassle and a burden and a lifetime o' stress than most people ever imagine.

And why don't we imagine it? Why is owning a home still considered such a prize, such a cornerstone of what it means to be a victorious American? Simple: because that's what we're taught.

It's tattooed into our psyches from birth that a successful society absolutely depends on community, nesting, home ownership to survive and flourish. It's one of the three Grand Directives of Socioeconomic Health, right after getting married and having kids (or, if you're feeling cynical, you add: Get divorce, sell house, resent kids, die alone in Florida. Gosh, you're bitter).

Follow these directives well, good citizen, and get your reward, straight from the government and the approving church down the street. Tax incentives, write-offs, free credit, equity buildup, blessings from God himself. Choose to rent for your whole life and move around a bit and never breed? You get nothing, sinner.

It's true. To defy any of these rules of "healthy" society is not only punishable by banishment from the Garden of Normalcy, but it's widely considered just a bit ... immoral. Live together without marriage? A sin. Birth control? Still a sin (such a cute one, too). Renting instead of buying? OK, not technically a sin, but to never feel a need to buy a home because you enjoy being fluid and experimental and transitory? Sure. Something is clearly wrong with you. Better go live on a commune in Marin, hippie.

I can't count how many friends I've known over the years who say they absolutely love living in the city, but as soon as they get married and/or have a child, something clicks and their eyes get that look, and suddenly they decide they must move to suburban Ohio because, you know, "that's where we can afford to buy a house." See? Pathological.

(Of course, there are many other very important factors at play: space for the kids, tolerable schools, lower taxes, safer neighborhoods, fewer bullet casings and unused condoms in the sidewalk, and so on. I get it. But this only explains the need to get out of the City. It still doesn't explain the urge to buy.)

Here's the new wisdom: Social demographics are changing. Family dynamics are shifting. The new data reveals that we are an increasingly fluid, itinerant culture, no longer nearly as rooted to specific towns and neighborhoods as we were 50 years ago. The swell, rose-colored Norman Rockwell image of Americana, all porch swings and free parking and kids riding Big Wheels on the sidewalk next to neighbors who've lived on the street since the Eisenhower administration? Fading fast, if it ever really existed at all.

It's not easy to unpack. It's not easy to see the new perspective. For one thing, homes can be tremendously cool. I imagine designing your own to be the most gratifying form of self-expression, while providing a vital connection to place.

What's more, renting goes directly against our capitalist ethos. People like to own stuff, Americans especially so. Especially Americans who still have a sense of entitlement like no other species on the planet today except maybe Saudi sheiks and celebrity Chihuahuas and Mary J. Blige.

I've often felt the pull myself, have noticed that significant part of me that admires beautiful architecture and design, and often wants very much to invest in a beautiful space of my own and have the freedom to do with it what I want, some sort of gorgeous Dwell magazine fantasia that requires about three million and a revolving account at Roche Bobois. Someday, someday.

But it's certainly worth reconsidering. It's worth pondering that, in this time of tremendous upheaval and mandatory change, maybe we've been thinking about our identity, about the required ingredients for the American Dream, all wrong. And maybe owning a home, right along with buying an American car, is one of the great myths that's overdue for a revolution.


Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate.com. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal (i.e.; non-Chronicle) mailing list (appearances, books, readings, blogs, yoga and more), please click here and remove two more.

Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive page, which includes another small photo of Mark potentially sufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts. He's also on Facebook.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 112108.DTL

[Cindy]

From a memoir by a man who bought an old barn in New England and made it into a home. I see another (less cynical) version of the american dream in his description of his first night there (it's not always about the capitalist thing):

"The Big Dipper scooped the fishpond next to our land; in an hour, I knew, or maybe two, it would shift and spin, spilling its contents onto the summer grass. I had watched the Dipper any number of nights on camping trips, on late-night swims, and now I realized the North Star pointed past the corner of my house. I would never be able to see the Big Dipper again without believing it emptied itself each night on our meadow. It struck me that something like luck was at work here.

Then for a little longer I simply stood and listened. The old beams, cut from trees a century and a half ago, creaked in the summer breeze. I heard the dog shake her collar--her foot rattling in an ear-scratch--then nothing afterward. A minute later my son turned in his bed. The peepers wiggled sound through the screen. When I closed the French door, their sound moved and wandered to our open bedroom window. I followed it inside. A cool, pale knife a wind tucked over the bed.

I undressed, then slipped under the down comforter. Wendy, exhausted, didnt move. As I lay beside her, I thought that maybe I would be here, in this bed, for the rest of my life. In the course of a single day, that had become possible."

[Sylvester]

A rant about the folly of owning a house? I disagree, I have never had it planted in my head that owning a house is the primary directive to achievement in the USA. Maybe if you lived in a small town and never intended to leave that place, certainly. Not if you live in a large town, or have a career that demands a lot of moving (Like me in the AF).

[RSorak 71Westy]

I would have to argue against his financial argument, as by the reasoning of that article no landlord is making any money and that simply is not the case......Renting has to be more expensive. And if you never start paying a morgauge you'll certainly never finish....And never have the possibility of experiencing the joys of living in a paid for home.

[zblair]

I would have to argue against his financial argument, as by the reasoning of that article no landlord is making any money and that simply is not the case......Renting has to be more expensive. And if you never start paying a morgauge you'll certainly never finish....And never have the possibility of experiencing the joys of living in a paid for home.

Agree with Mr. Rick here...

[covelo]

I would have to argue against his financial argument, as by the reasoning of that article no landlord is making any money and that simply is not the case......Renting has to be more expensive. And if you never start paying a morgauge you'll certainly never finish....And never have the possibility of experiencing the joys of living in a paid for home.

I disagree with you on that. Most landlords either have a much greater equity share in their property or can get less expensive financing so that they can make a profit where you would not. The big winners in the whole homeownership race are the banks which rent you the money to buy a house (which ultimately still makes you a renter).

I think this article makes a nice case for being rational about homeownership. Owning your house is not a bad thing but it shouldn't get in the way of living your life.

[chitwnvw]

I would have to argue against his financial argument, as by the reasoning of that article no landlord is making any money and that simply is not the case......Renting has to be more expensive. And if you never start paying a morgauge you'll certainly never finish....And never have the possibility of experiencing the joys of living in a paid for home.

You still have to pay property taxes and upkeep. I guess one real advantage is that at least your mortgage payment is locked for those 30 years, whereas rents will continue up. I have a bad attitude, though, I have a 100 year old house that was neglected for 50 years and now every square inch of it needs help. Buy new, that's what I say.

[Adventurewagen]

I have a bad attitude, though, I have a 100 year old house that was neglected for 50 years and now every square inch of it needs help. Buy new, that's what I say.

No worries Chitwnvw, my home was built in 1907 and must have been neglected for a good 50+ as well. When we moved in the kitchen was the best room in the house. After many hours working on the house, with many projects left, I can say the kitchen is now the worst room in the house.

Stick with it. I think owning your own house is a great thing. I think it could be considered "forced savings". I mean the market is down now, but it's only gone up when you look at the last 30yrs. The world isn't getting any bigger and the population isn't in decline so buying a house can't be that bad of a goal.

[static]

Change and gratitude
How the hell can you be thankful in a time of fear and meltdown?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

They say it is the end of Wall Street. It is the end of the stock market as we know it, the end of investing with any sort of perky unruffled assurance or stability or sense that this thing called creative financial planning is somehow reliable and trustworthy and not some sort of insulting schizophrenic cosmic joke.

It is the end of a huge chunk of your 401(k), much of your home equity, the end of relying on your portfolio or your investment broker for some sort of basic reassurance that all's well, for the thinking that, hey gosh, retirement sure is going to be one spectacular, endless cocktail cruise. O, how fickle and quaint and rose-colored it all now seems.

Then, widen out. It is the end of the idea that, no matter how much raping and pillaging and looting we subjected her to, the U.S. economy would be solid and impervious and utterly unsinkable. Ha. It is very much the end of thinking the United States is the strongest and most unwavering entity on the face of the planet, because aren't you just the cutest blind jingoist ever and by the way China now owns your driveway and most of your children. Sorry.

On it goes. It is very likely the end of the Big Three as we know them, the merciful end of the laughably mediocre American car, the end of the big dumb SUV, Hummers and Escalades and Suburbans now considered about as palatable and attractive as the fat, hairy guy sweating into your margarita at the beach. All sources say Detroit's collapse is either a very good thing, or a very horrible thing. Or it's both. Celebrating yet?

How about the news that, even in San Francisco, it's the end of the wildly overblown housing bubble, the end of the blight of tract home megadevelopments, the end of Fannie and Freddie, perhaps even the end of the pathological urge to buy a home in the first place, the end of thinking of the American Dream in simpleminded big car/big house/big ego terms. Wonderful? Awful? Yes.

What about your very own neighborhood? It is also the end of countless businesses, shops, chains, restaurants both fantastic and lousy, your favorite wine store on the corner that just can't afford its rent anymore. It is the end of basic solvency for most cities and urban centers, at least for now, with slashed budgets for schools and hospitals and services of every kind imaginable. You want that pothole filled or that city park renovated or that pesky gang activity taken care of, citizen? Put on your coat and pick up a shovel.

It is, finally and forever, just about the end of Bush -- I mean thank God and praise Jesus and fall on your knees right now, the end to a truly epic, historic rapaciousness and cronyism that we barely survived and, despite the still-stunning presence of Obama, still aren't quite sure we actually have.

So then. How do you make your lists? How do you add it all up? How many times, given all the turmoil and transformation, have you heard the phrase "It will never be the same again" or maybe "It's the end of an era" used in so many ways and applied to so many cultural and political categories, it's now officially tattooed onto the cover of the 2008 yearbook?

More importantly, what do you do with this information? How do you process and hold and move forward? And how, pray tell, to you see it as any sort of positive?

Here is the obvious, but oft-forgotten truth: It's just stupidly easy to be thankful in the flush times, or to offer thanks for those things you know you're supposed to be thankful for: health and loved ones and a big bowl of spaghetti on the table, the fact you still look OK in pants, that you somehow have the means and the technology to be able to read these words right now, thanks that you aren't living in a slum in India or are one of millions starving in Zimbabwe, that you aren't struggling for survival in the rubble of the Gaza strip or tending to hardscrabble fields of poppies in Afghanistan under the watchful rifles of the resurgent Taliban.

That kind of thanks is easy. It is, of course, far more challenging to be grateful for the clenching and the downturn and the meltdown, to offer thanks for the wicked tricksters, for fate's dark side. That kind of change, they say, can be a real bitch.

Word has it that to see all the constriction and struggle as equally worthy of thanks is a form of enlightenment, a flavor of Buddhist non-attachment, a Tantric collapse of opposites, the most difficult and obnoxious and get-this-crap-offa-me kind of thanks there is. After all, this is a year, this is a world so full of mixed blessings right now it's like a half-off sale at the House of Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods. Hey, they're half price! Oh wait.

Maybe this Thanksgiving, it's all we can do to be grateful for, well, for change itself. Any kind of change. Because change is still required. Change is still the universal law. Without it, everything stops. Without it, we die. Change is the only thing we really know for sure. It's the only thing that actually makes any sense, even when it doesn't.

It is the grand rule: "Change and be grateful." Even here. Even now. Offer thanks. Even when all seems bleakest, broke, even when it feels like there's just not much left in the American buffet of dreams for you to nibble on because some jackass CEO took it all along with his $18 million golden parachute. You just grit your teeth, hunker down, sigh a lot, and do it anyway.

[static]

The last muscle car
Sexy as a swollen porn star on meth, twice as useless

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Have you seen this thing? This sexy macho bloated Hot Wheels fantasia dreamgasm of a car-like drunken child's funbot crayon sketch?

No? Because it appears to be a vehicle that at least some across the Big Autosphere are still secretly praying, despite the sudden overthrow of -- despite the deadly ultimatum for -- General Motors, might yet prove to be a savior.

Indeed, it's a car some hope will maybe, just maybe sell like crazy and restore a tiny bit of faith in big, thick, meaty, rather inane American cars that have no real place in the new millennium, but which for some reason they keep building anyway, presumably because aging frat boys you should never, ever date think they're totally wickedcool and will therefore be willing to shell out 35 grand to own, unless they won't.

Am I talking about the ugly-as-a-giant-vacuum-cleaner Chevy Volt? Am I aiming this admittedly overheated verbiage at the ruddy, useless Impala? No, I am not.

I am talking about the brand new, leering, pseudo-masculine 2010 Chevrolet Camaro.

What's that you say? You had no idea that Chevy was resurrecting this rolling mullet from the mausoleum of the '70s because, even after sucking up billions in bailout money, GM still doesn't really have a single fresh and forward-thinking idea, and hence the best they can do is scrape the barrel of macho nostalgia in a desperate attempt to cater to male Boomers who drink too much light beer and think Maxim is the height of masculinity and are still debating which Van Halen vocalist totally ruled?

Well, they did. And it's here. And they don't. And it's David Lee Roth (of course). And it's worth noting because, well, this wild new Camaro will very likely be the last you will ever hear of U.S. automakers vying to be a kickass, world-dominating force in automotive inspiration. It is most certainly the last gasp of that overblown, yet much-beloved myth, affectionately known as the American muscle car.

Is it time? Can we finally just say it outright, even as we risk invoking the wrath of every true-blooded American gearhead from here to 1965? Oh hell, let's just do it: Good riddance.

Yes, this is just a little bit sad. This is a moment to pause in fond remembrance. You could say it's the end of an era, but of course it's an era that should've ended about 25 years ago. Oh well.

Do not misunderstand. Muscle cars and their pony car brethren -- all those Challengers, Road Runners, Mustangs, Novas, Trans Ams, Chevelles, GTOs et al -- have a hallowed and well-deserved place in American automotive lore. Nothing, not even the full-sized SUV, exemplified the lopsided American posture better. Power over finesse, weight over grace, peel-out ability over handling, go hard over stop quick, sword over pen, meat over vegetable, trade school over college, violent death over aging gracefully.

Forget for a moment that they were, by and large, dangerous, horribly built vehicles with dreadful chassis and zero engineering integrity. Doesn't matter. They were fast. They were wide. They had huge back seats perfect for impregnating various small-town teen cheerleaders. They got eight miles to the gallon and about nine to the quart of oil. They were cool. Sort of.

Not anymore.

Behold this weird new Camaro. It is, in sum, exactly the wrong car at exactly the wrong time with exactly the wrong attitude attached to exactly the wrong hopeless hope for a return to a rather crude automotive golden era that never really existed in the first place.

Why does this car exist at all? No one seems quite sure. But it is, if you spend a moment in the various car blogs, all flavors of a dumb, guilty pleasure, hotly discussed and awaited like a giant extra-large triple-cheese quadruple-meat pizza, ever since GM introduced it as a crazy concept car back in one of those years Before All Hope Died.

Early reviews? Somewhere between lukewarm and "Holy crap, this thing sucks far, far more than it should, especially the cramped, stifling interior. And the handling. And the brakes. And the build quality." Which is, as far as America cars go, about par for the course.

But what about that mean-ass exterior? All the retro car dudes just love the new Camaro's snarling looks, which lie somewhere between a cool flaming dragon your high school stoner friend used to sketch on his Pee-Chee folders, and what a Vegas stripper plays whilst dancing around a pole. Upshot: It's just like the Corvette; another car for 10-year-old boys trapped in 45-year-old bodies.

What, too harsh? Too negative? Not really. It's mostly a criticism borne of frustration. I truly am (or rather, was) hoping for something brilliant and inspiring to come from all that American talent. I was honestly hoping one of these companies would come up with a new idea to save all those jobs (Ford is close), to resurrect the industry and prove we can be nimble and viable and revolutionary.

(Does it sound like I could be talking about my very own media/newspaper biz? The coincidence is not accidental. Similar infuriating problems plague both worlds, with solutions equally elusive).

So maybe what the 2010 Camaro really is, is a fitting death knell, a kitschy cool car that takes American automobile full circle even as it circles the drain. It's the final sign that it's time to look beyond Big Auto for any sort of true revolution or evolution, toward individuals, entrepreneurs, startups, inventors and aging hippie rock stars to solve it all for us.

Wait, what? Why sure. Have a glance, if you will, over at crusty ol' Neil Young, who loves his cars big and his grunge anthems bigger. Neil has already successfully converted his massive, two-ton '59 Lincoln Continental into a biodiesel/electric hybrid hellbeast of the future. His company is called LincVolt, and it's aiming for nothing less than the automotive X-Prize. Who says the future has to be all tiny and wimpy and Prius-y?

Or you could check in with someone like Shai Agassi, the 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur and CEO of Better Place, a very, very well-funded startup that aims to create a definitive, international "smart" network of electric car charging/battery swapping stations, an elegant meta-grid based around some hugely forward-thinking, Earth-friendly principles. Could it work? Damn right it could. It's already underway.

Of course, if hot, futuristic car design is all you seek, if you really want inspiration and new ideas in automotive design, you skip right past American cars and look to the same place we've always looked: Europe.

Here, for but one small example, is some odd French industrial/energy conglomerate called Bolloré, who hooked in with Italian design gods Pinanfarina to leapfrog right over the traditional car manufacturers and, well, create the damn revolution themselves.

Their invention: the B0, AKA the Bluecar, a tiny, gorgeous, all-electric thing that looks like a Ferrari smashed into a Smart car at the Apple Store.

The Bluecar was originally designed as a concept car, to showcase Bolloré's fuel-cell technology. But the thing came out so well, they decided to manufacture it themselves. And so they are. You can pre-order one right now.

Oh, not in the U.S., of course. We almost never get cars like this. Or more accurately, we almost never get ideas like this. What do we get? We get the Volt. We get the Camaro. We get buried.

But hey, at least we look sort of cool doing it, right?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 040109.DTL

[justgimmecoffee]

Man, that guy needs to get out a little more. Yea, the musclecar ain't what it used to be; neither is the price of gas.

Somebody go show him the homebrew 72 Datsun electric dragster. Its Musclecar 2.0.

[MeyerII]

I would have to argue against his financial argument, as by the reasoning of that article no landlord is making any money and that simply is not the case......Renting has to be more expensive. And if you never start paying a morgauge you'll certainly never finish....And never have the possibility of experiencing the joys of living in a paid for home.

I disagree with you on that. Most landlords either have a much greater equity share in their property or can get less expensive financing so that they can make a profit where you would not. The big winners in the whole homeownership race are the banks which rent you the money to buy a house (which ultimately still makes you a renter).

I think this article makes a nice case for being rational about homeownership. Owning your house is not a bad thing but it shouldn't get in the way of living your life.

Yes. I am a landlord myself and unless you own your house outright you had better not be in it for an immediate profit. Looking at it on an annual basis alone, with property taxes, insurance and maintenance, we're probably losing money. Think about income taxes: ALL the rent that is paid to us is considered INCOME - not the rent minus the mortgage payment - ALL of it. But of course, we're thinking in the long-term, so the whole point of it is to get somebody else to build our equity position then convert it into something else at retirement.

The article is dead on: more people would be better off renting. Homeownership, like aging, is not for sissies.

 

[Sylvester]

Forget for a moment that they were, by and large, dangerous, horribly built vehicles with dreadful chassis and zero engineering integrity. Doesn't matter. They were fast. They were wide. They had huge back seats perfect for impregnating various small-town teen cheerleaders.

Ahh, memories of my 1978 Z28 Camero, like this but with green trim and Cragars. Never did get a 'cheerleader' in there though, does any girl qualify?

[dtrumbo]

Forget for a moment that they were, by and large, dangerous, horribly built vehicles with dreadful chassis and zero engineering integrity. Doesn't matter. They were fast. They were wide. They had huge back seats perfect for impregnating various small-town teen cheerleaders.

Ahh, memories of my 1978 Z28 Camero, like this but with green trim and Cragars. Never did get a 'cheerleader' in there though, does any girl qualify?

Mine was a '79. Maroon with T-Tops. Back seat worked just fine. :)