The Townless Highway

That highway to HELOC...boy, if that road wasn't paved with bad intentions. I would like to continue with my analogy.

We used to have highwayless towns. Small towns across America used to have central cores with highways that connected them with other towns, but the highways did not pass through them. To gain access to the town they were required to take on the lower speed geometries of a boulevard, like my own Franklin Boulevard, my blog's namesake.

In exchange, the town didn't grow along the highway. This is quite evident in Western Germany when I visited last year. Towns have retained their "town-ish" qualities of walkability and pedestrian scales, while when you drove on the highway between towns (or took the train) you'd have views of uninterrupted countryside.

Our country, instead, has taken the highway to HELOC approach -- take the freeway and drive it straight through the heart of the city. The clearest example is Highway 99, driven straight through south Sacramento, splitting and eviscerating entire neighborhoods. Those living in Elk Grove and working in Sacramento didn't give a damn about the destruction of that earlier suburban ring caused by the "need" for a eight-lane freeway to support their solo-occupant commuting. That they were predominately brown neighborhoods, well, white Elk Grove couldn't hardly have given a shit in 1962.

At the same time we attached commercial strip properties alongside the freeway...at least where we didn't have to build sound walls to defend the brown neighborhoods from the din of traffic -- U-Stor-It rental shacks, tile showrooms, carpet emporiums, boat storage facilities, and Target stores. All this did was to create more side traffic and the blighting of the countryside in the process. Have you ever considered how Highway 99 from Sacramento to Stockton is one gigantic sprawled out strip mall? Chicken Villa. WalMart. Auto body shops. Motor Vehicle Bureaus. We created a townless highway.

The Highway to HELOC. Consider how Highway 99 used to connect with old Elk Grove -- it didn't drive itself right through Old Town but rather it stayed on its periphery. Today, the whole city of Elk Grove is sliced in half by the freeway with the predicable result that interchanges have become so congested we are talking about future bypass highways...right through Sheldon et al. There won't be a neighborhood spared.

And all this, from 1998 to 2008, was fueled by hallucinated property wealth. Higher tax revenues from property taxes fueled the $83,000,000 Highway 99 interchange with Grant Line Rd and the $55,000,000 interchange with Sheldon Rd. And alongside all that development, my neighbors Bob and Joan bought their new Infinity QX4 in 2002 and rolled it into their home re-fi. It immediately became "paid for." Their new SUV was effectively "paid for" by HELOC...even though their $31,000 rig amortized over thirty years will cost them $64,000. Not only were our new roads funded by housal unit equity and the concomitant property tax revenues, the cars we drove on them were funded by housal unit equity. A true highway to hell.

And now, here in 2010, I the fiscally conservative taxpayer get to help homeowners such as Bob and Joan continue to live in their home through federally sponsored loan mods, tax credits for new vehicular units, and bailouts to the banks that lent them the hallucinated money to begin with. What a racket! As home ownership and housal unit values are to be preserved at all costs per Obama's planning, I stop to consider all those people (Bob and Joan and half my other neighbors) who rolled in consumer debt into their housal loans and how I get to help prop up those values through effective taxation. Obama never stopped to considered this. Neither did his predecessor. Propping up home values is nothing more than a subsidy to those who rolled Infinity SUVs into their re-fi's. And you're bitching about subsidizing transit? Please.

I cannot stop this nation's solo occupant driving down the highway to HELOC. We are on our way. I can only take personal efforts to shield myself from the inevitable economic storm I envision coming our way. Stay out of debt. Develop relationships with neighbors and co-workers who can offer value and to whom I can offer value. Gain some control over my basic necessities. Be worth more to my employer than what they pay me. And if I'm wrong about the future, well, I still won't go wrong following these principles.