HOUSING Affordability Index (Fixed) shows the plummet to May 2022! & US Real Average Hourly Earnings, Y over Y, it is -3.02% July 2022; Mass Evictions and Foreclosures Loom Crashing Real Wages
and persistent Inflation squeeze Americans in a financial vise (Cortez)
‘Retirees who live in the bucolic Paradise Village retirement community outside of San Diego, CA recently received shocking news. Their recurring bills for rent and other fees will reportedly vault higher by an astounding $1,000 or more per month. Prior to the increase, total costs per apartment started around $3,000 per month.
The local Fox affiliate interviewed a daughter of elderly residents who reacted with indignation: “I’m livid. I cannot believe someone would do this. My mom and her husband are 85 years old, on a fixed income.” The management company responded that the huge increases were compelled to “offset the rising cost of food, labor, and supplies.”
Unfortunately, this Paradise Valley story is hardly isolated. In fact, prepare for evictions and foreclosures to explode in America in the coming months as a toxic financial one-two punch of crashing real wages combines with sky-high inflation to force millions of Americans out of their homes.
A July survey from the Census Bureau, reported by Bloomberg News, found that a staggering “5.4 million households, or 40% of households that are not current on their rent or mortgage payments, said they were likely to be evicted or foreclosed on in the next two months.”
The confluence of severe economic pressures increasingly puts vulnerable citizens into a financial vise. On the income side of the ledger, Americans now endure 16 straight months of falling Real Wages, meaning pay adjusted for inflation. Even if paychecks tick higher, the added earnings cannot keep pace with prices for consumer staples galloping at 40 year record pace.
For example, the latest CPI report -- which the White House actually bragged about -- showed a blistering hot overall Consumer Price Index increase of 8.5%. Within that report, details showed food prices soaring at the hottest velocity since 1979.
Here is the chart depicting the plunge in Real Wages under Biden, reaching -3.02% in July:
Such a precipitous and sustained loss of real income crushes the actual buying power of all Americans, and especially working-class citizens who see their lifestyles decline measurably every single month. The weight of this destruction of prosperity compelled millions of workers to turn to the dangerous practice of loading up on high interest credit cards to cope with the inflation explosion. Total credit card debt in the Second Quarter of this year jumped $46 billion, the highest clip in 20 years.
That credit card debt becomes far more untenable with interest rates rising materially because of the Biden inflation surge. Concurrently, that massive ascent in interest rates also forces mortgage rates far higher than just months ago.
Here is a chart on 30-year mortgage rates going back 5 years, contrasting the President Trump years vs. the present Biden spike in rates’
I am currently looking to move. I am in Miami, Florida. Miami has become a hot commodity for New Yorkers and Californians leaving dictatorship like governors.
I was told my rent would increase by 10% in January. A few weeks ago I was advised that it was going up by 40%! I was given 2 months to move. Not something I had planned, but that's life in the new abnormal!
I can get something for what I was paying, but half the size or less and with zero amenities.
This is outrageous. I would not even dream of buying a place now, unless it was a tiny home. Seriously considering one of those.
They better not start evicting people after they have sent billions overseas and bailed out the financial institutions, never the common man. There better be an uprising if that happens.
We are going to need rent control, in order to avoid this continuing to happen.
Thank you for posting this!
Gut punch number one was Covid which was preplanned and man-made to control the masses! Gut punch number two is coming where the majority of middle income families have to skinny back to survive and at the same time those in the lower economic class will revolt because of their inability to survive without massive handouts! We will see urban warfare because of the Biden policies!