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What a Waste: New Homes Demolished By Bank

May 5, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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Here on this blog, there's a lot of talk about waste: How not to waste food, old electronics, energy, and more. But this story about waste may be the most egregious - a bank has decided to demolish new homes in Victorville, Calif. because it was cheaper than selling them in this market. As my colleague Luke Mullins pointed out, it's a sign of just how bad the housing market has gotten. It's also a troubling example of our American culture of disposability.

Says the Wall Street Journal:

Demolishing vacant houses in economically troubled, inner-city neighborhoods is common. But the demolitions in Victorville show how the housing market is weighing on lenders even in once-booming suburbs. The houses were built by a California developer less than two years ago, according to city records.

Because the homes were vacant, squatters had moved in, and the bank says that they tore them down for safety reasons. The demolition was estimated to have cost $100,000. Appliances were removed from the house before the demolition (either by the workers, or by vandals - the article doesn't say). Fortunately, some of the wood will be reused for construction projects in Mexico, while the rest will be ground up for mulch. You can watch the demolition crew move in here:

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they should have donated them to non profit orgs for housing and rehabs in return for tax write offs. win win.

chuck of CA 2:20AM February 24, 2010

Victorville is a brutally hot place in the hight desert of Southern California. It was pure foolishness on the part of the original bank and developerto have built these silly McMansions in the first place. If the homes were not finished and simply left open to the elements, there is no way that the houses could have completed and sold. If the empty hulks were housing transients, prostitution, drug deals and out of control parties, then the bank did the rest of the area a favor.

Lynn of LA of CA 2:05PM June 21, 2009

The destruction of wealth due to the recession gathers pace.
US banks given trillion of dollars in tax payers money to let them off their own bad debts, are showing no such mercy to unemployed, or otherwise impoverished home owners who fall behind in their mortgages.
In the latest trend from America, banks, after throwing the former inhabitants on the street, are instead of letting these houses stand empty - Are rather demolishing perfectly good, and often brand new homes.
This in a country where tens of thousands of Americans and homeless, and many, many, more are forced to live in sub-standard, overcrowded and unhealthy housing.
This modern tactic, is the 21st century version of the burning of wheat and the driving of cattle off cliffs that was used to keep profits up, and bolster unafordable prices in the 1930s.
-While the poor starved.-
The only result of these brutal and wasteful tactics will be to make the recession worse.
Americans should be demanding that the taxpayer money gifted to the banks, instead of being used to bolster their profits, is used to lower mortgages to affordable levels. And/or, in case of default, due to no fault of the home owner, a moratorium on mortgage payments until the homeowner is back on their feet.
Here in New Zealand this was done in the 1930s when the government mandated a universal moratorium on mortgages.

Jenny 9:23PM May 30, 2009

What a Waste: New Homes Demolished By Bank

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