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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

There is big money in building really low-cost houses.  Can't do it the 
old 1950's way when a builder could turn almost any raw land into cheap, 
usable lots in ninety days, complete with roads, water, sewage and 
electrical utilities.  My finished lot cost never exceeded 
$1800---$50,000 is more common now.

Where and how to do it now?  In the bombed-out, tax-foreclosed inner 
cities, where there are thousands of already-surveyed, building lots, 
with roads, water, sewage and electric utilities already in place.  You 
would have to get the cooperation of a city government---no big problem, 
these lots yield no revenue, soak up a lot of taxes better spent on 
other purposes, so the lots would be either free or ridiculously 
low-cost to the builder as compared to the lot-cost of building anyplace 
else.  You might have to hop around a little to satisfy municipal 
authorities, but a large number of the foreclosed lots would be 
contiguous---a great side-effect being that a builder could set up 
onsite jigs, fixtures and other aids to mass-production that efficient 
builders employed in the 1950's---and no longer do.

Gets around that secret, nagging conscience too---builders eating up 
good agricultural land are the locusts of our time.

Housebuilding is not for everybody---including Keith Bellinger there 
were only two on the Homestead List, and a lot of one-time housebuilders 
have opted for home improvements to simplify their working lives---like 
my next-door neighbor Chris Bedard, a French-Canadian immigrant who is a 
licensed general contractor, electrician and plumber up to his ears in 
business.  He is planning a long trip by road to Alaska in June---a 
contractor who built homes would find that hard to do.

I really liked tract-building---got the same emotional lift from it as I 
got from growing corn on the farm (another destructive enterprise).