The American Dream, a.k.a. Nightmare, a.k.a. Narcoleptic Episode

On my way out to Yosemite I remember getting beyond the hills of the Bay Area into the hot, flat, boring Central Valley around Tracy, California (before reaching the Sierra Nevadas). There were dusty, crowded freeways, mini-malls, drive-thru Starbucks, and dense, virtually tree-less, housing developments in the middle of completely tree-less fields of dirt and weeds. I wondered who would want to live out here - even if they could get one of these homes - relatively large homes for relatively reasonable prices compared with the rest of the Bay Area.

Yes, even out in Northern California, developers, sprawl and home-ownership fetishism tear up the countryside with their appalling, free-market waste dumps. But now the housing market is in a slump and there is trouble in the suburban wastelands as foreclosures multiply.

It is really funny reading the story in the San Jose Mercury News that has an overall negative tone but quotes developers who, always thinking of their own bottom-line, put a rosy spin on the situation:

"Just four years into the development, about 6,000 residents live in roughly 2,000 homes. Of those, about 60 are in foreclosure, according to Sean O'Toole, founder of ForeclosureRadar. Yet the major home builders at Mountain House [a development near Tracy] - Pulte, Lennar, Centex and now Shea Homes - say the community is one of their best-performing markets. Given the Central Valley market, where sales are off by more than one-third compared with a year ago, according to the Ryness Report, that's not saying much."