Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> People can live without gas and oil. People can easily live without stocks. 
> People cannot live without housing. Air, water, food, housing.

To be sure, but people don't need much housing.  They certainly don't need 
huge cavernous houses, vacation houses, speculative houses, or rental houses. 
 
One reason housing prices are high is because so many people now of days 
think 
that it would be neat to own four or five of them.  Like everything else, as 
soon as they get to be viewed as not so bright an investment or status symbol 
and only a relative minor percent of the people dump their extra, or extra 
large, houses on the market, one of two things happens:

1)  Prices drop dramatically
              or
2)  No one sells their house

Have you ever visited the historic area of Savanah?  The old houses there are 
in a remarkable state of preservation because laking large timber but having 
lots of scrap trees for charcoal and lots of iron deposits, a lot of the 
construction such as stairs, window frames, etc. were made of iron.  Huge 
cavernous 
sweeping homes for one family during opulent times that by the 20's housed 
four to eight families each and fell into a state of disrepair.  When times 
get 
pinched, extended families tend to clump back together and share housing, as 
happens with so many immigrant families to this day.

Everyone needs housing, that will never change.  What will change is how much 
housing is viewed as "needed".

James