Anyway, from The Atlantic:
The Next Slum?
The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today's McMansions into tomorrow's tenements.
QUOTE
Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community's 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son's bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who'd moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, "I thought I'd bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen."?
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community's 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son's bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who'd moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, "I thought I'd bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen."?
In other news, municipal wi-fi projects in the U.S. are collapsing at a death-knell rate because it's not profitable for the corporations like Earthlink to run them and cities and states with mandatory balanced-budgets and zero aid from the feds have more important things to spend their money on than such frivolity. And that was in the New York Times: Hope For Wireless Cities Fades As Internet Providers Pull Out.
And it's not like major tech corps weren't involved (just Google, Intel, MS) and large sums haven't been tossed in the dumpster. Plenty of money was wasted because, oh yeah, some contractors? They turned out to be crooked motherfuckers.