Jun262015
Flipside of declining homeownership rates: relentlessly climbing rents
As more families eschew homeownership in favor of renting, the cost of renting residential real estate continues to rise.
In the depths of the Great Recession, incomes dropped and many people lost their jobs and many others barely hung on. Ordinarily, such circumstances would cause rents to weaken as fewer workers with less money bid on the available rental housing stock, forcing landlords to compete with each other for tenants. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happened.
When the housing bust began, lenders foreclosed on the subprime borrowers whose loans blew up first. This displaced a great many people who were forced to search for rentals. In an efficient market, each new renter would have matched by a new rental unit as the foreclosed home was converted to a rental unit; however, many of these properties were not processed quickly, and vacant homes abounded, particularly in the fringe markets. A vacant home is not an available rental unit, so the number of renters exceeded the number of rentals, and rental rates actually went up quite dramatically during a time when rents should have gone down.
The REO-to-rental movement brought many more rentals to the housing market, but not enough to bring rents back down to reasonable levels. The result was rising rents on stagnant income, a problem that persists to this day.
Rent inflation shows no signs of letting up
Ruth Mantell, Published: June 18, 2015
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—Landlords keep cranking up rents, with annual increases far outpacing price growth elsewhere in the economy, according to data released Thursday.
Rents in May were up 3.5% from a year earlier, while a gauge for overall consumer prices showed no growth, the U.S. Labor Department reported.
Rent and other shelter costs make up a substantial chunk of a consumer’s budget, and pulled up expenses over the past year. Offsetting that inflation, prices for gasoline and other energy plunged in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, prices for food rose 1.6% over the year through May, while clothing costs dropped 1.5%.
Annual inflation for rents has been running faster than overall consumer-price growth for three years. Many U.S. families are unwilling or unable to buy a home, plunging homeownership to the lowest rate in a quarter of a century and giving landlords pricing power.
California has several markets with particularly fast rent growth, such as Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, San Francisco and Riverside, according to Axiometrics, a Dallas-based firm that specializes in apartment and student-housing analysis. Several other areas with relatively speedy rent growth are Portland, Denver and Seattle. These cities all have an apartment-occupancy rate above the national average.
Rising rents are squeezing already-strapped individuals and families.
(See: It costs too much to live in California)
“Not a single county in the United States has enough affordable housing for all its extremely low-income renters,” according to a new report from the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Developers, seeing an opportunity, have ramped up their plans to construct apartments. But it will take time for units to become available, and, meanwhile, landlords will be able to keep rents high.
Unfortunately, it takes two or three years between when developers get the proper market signal to provide rental units and those rental units coming to market. This delay inevitably causes a spike in rents followed by a bust when too much supply hits the market all at once.
We are still in the initial stages of the next rent expansion. The first market signal came from the collapsing home ownership rate and the spike in rent caused by the housing bust. It too was followed by a bust, but that one was not from oversupply but a contracting economy.
This most recent signal is due to an improving economy, and since it is based on fundamentals, it should be much more durable. However, it will still be subject to the same problems of overbuilding as too many apartment developers will chase the same niche. We won’t have too much supply overall, but we will have too much supply in several markets all competing for the same demographic. The best projects will win, and the worst projects will be devalued to a lower economic strata of renters.
So how bad is the rent problem in California?
The Silicon Valley housing crisis is epitomized in this listing for a $899/month tent
Shane Ferro, Jun. 25, 2015
You may have heard that real estate is expensive in the Bay Area.
This is how expensive: A 9′ by 7′ tent someone has pitched in their garden is currently going for $899 per month (or $46 per day) in the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View. A tent. In someone’s garden. Rents for nearly $900 a month.
$46 per day to live in a tent? If I were vacationing in some exotic paradise, perhaps this rate makes sense, but to have a plot in some residential back yard, this is insane.
And this is considered a steal.
Does anyone doubt we have a chronic shortage of housing supply in California?
The listing on Airbnb says that “the tent comes with a shower per day.” It’s also specified that the renter “can eat inside.”
The crazy thing is that if you spend enough time researching Silicon Valley housing, this does start to look like a steal.
Buying a pretty basic house in the area, within a good school district, costs over $1 million these days.
However, if you are the type of person considering pitching a long-term tent, living at the gorgeous Big Sur campground seems like the better option, for just $11 a day more.
Unfortunately, the Big Sur campground is probably a long commute to wherever someone works.
With the ridiculous cost of rents and home ownership, the tepid wage growth and rising house costs prices out low-income households, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise when many of them leave.
[dfads params=’groups=23&limit=1&orderby=random’]
[listing mls=”OC15134304″]
Report Finds Mortgage Concerns Are One of the Top Financial Reasons Americans Lose Sleep
More Americans are sleeping better at night knowing that the economy is recovering. Those Americans that are losing sleep over financial stress is declining in the U.S., according to a new CreditCards.com poll.
The national poll, commissioned by CreditCards.com, also found that 62 percent of adult Americans are losing sleep over at least one financial problem. This is 7 percentage points lower than the amount in June 2009, the last time this poll was conducted, but higher than 56 percent in 2007.
One of the top insomnia-inducing issues that worries many Americans is how they will pay their mortgage and monthly rent bills, the poll determined. Twenty-seven percent indicated that home and rent payments block sleep at night.
“Many Americans are still struggling financially, even as the economy rebounds,” said Matt Schulz, senior industry analyst for CreditCards.com. “Twenty-seven percent of Americans are losing sleep over mortgage or rent payments—about the same number as in 2009, in the throes of the Great Recession when we last did the survey. And 1 in 3 Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 are losing sleep over paying their rent or mortgage.”
“Ultimately, it’s about income. They say money can’t buy you love or happiness, but according to our survey, it can sure as heck buy you a better night’s sleep. Those making $75,000 or more per year were the least likely to be losing sleep, while those making less than $30,000 per year were the most likely.”
California housing market slows considerably
California’s massive housing market is slowing down in almost every way imaginable, according to the latest California Real Property Report from PropertyRadar.
California single-family home and condominium sales dropped 3.5% to 36,912 in May from 38,249 in April.
However, the report explained that what is unusual this month is that the decrease in sales was due to a decline in both distressed and non-distressed property sales that fell 8.6% and 2.5%, respectively. The monthly decline in non-distressed sales is the first May decline since 2005.
On a yearly basis, sales were up slightly, gaining 2.3% from 36,096 in May 2014.
“With the exception of a few counties, price increases have slowed considerably,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of economic research for PropertyRadar. “You cannot defy gravity.”
“The environment of rising prices on lower sales volumes was destined not to last. Higher borrowing costs since the beginning of the year and decreased affordability was bound to impact sales sooner or later. We may also be seeing the fourth year in a row where prices jumped early in the year, only to roll-over and head lower later the rest of the year,” Schnapp continued.
Apparently “slows considerably” is the new plummet. A monthly decline of 3.5% isn’t very considerable, especially when you consider that YoY sales are up considerably (by their definition).
A drop from April to May is contrary to the normal seasonal pattern. If this change were seasonally adjusted, the decline would look like a “plummet.” Also, it doesn’t match the optimistic reports of increasing sales reported when the “months of supply” indicated a rally.
Bay Area housing crisis may cause NIMBY attitudes to wane
Housing woes in the Bay Area have become so severe that two out of three residents now believe it’s tougher to find a place to live, and at least half are ready to embrace higher-density housing in their neighborhoods to help tackle the problem, a poll released Thursday shows.
The poll by the Bay Area Council found that 67 percent of residents in the nine-county region believe finding a place to live is more difficult now than it was a year ago, and 50 percent support more housing, even if it means their city might become more packed with residents.
“The economy in the Bay Area could be hurt by the lack of affordable housing,” said Tracey Grose, vice president of the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute. “It will be harder for employers in the Bay Area to recruit people. We are already seeing some evidence of that.”
What’s more, 76 percent of residents want policy makers and developers to direct their efforts toward the creation of certain types of housing. Specifically, respondents want the focus on housing for low- and middle-income people.
It’s another sign that some Bay Area residents are willing to jettison their long-held anti-growth sentiments that are often dubbed “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY.
“It’s good that residents are willing to embrace higher density,” said Christopher Thornberg, a founding partner with Beacon Economics. “That should have been happening a while ago.”
You can rent a tent in Silicon Valley for $900 a month:
“Because we’re in Mountain View, next to a lot of jobs and train tracks that people use to travel to San Francisco, you can get a lot of money renting anything here,” Potter said.
He put the listing up last week after joking about it with his brother and a friend. Potter says the idea was that in Silicon Valley people would literally pay anything for a place to live. At first, he listed it for $20 a night, but there was so much demand that Potter decided to increase the price to $46.
So far, Potter has had three people stay in the tent, usually for one- or two-night stints. And he has about 20-30 people who have requested to stay there, with a handful of people asking to stay for a month or longer.
“Because we’re in Mountain View, next to a lot of jobs and train tracks that people use to travel to San Francisco, you can get a lot of money renting anything here,” Potter said.
He put the listing up last week after joking about it with his brother and a friend. Potter says the idea was that in Silicon Valley people would literally pay anything for a place to live. At first, he listed it for $20 a night, but there was so much demand that Potter decided to increase the price to $46.
So far, Potter has had three people stay in the tent, usually for one- or two-night stints. And he has about 20-30 people who have requested to stay there, with a handful of people asking to stay for
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102788577
Largest Share of Households Is Wireless-Only
In the last half of 2014, Americans crossed a threshold. The plurality of households now has only cell phones, surpassing for the first time the percentage with both cell and landline phones. In July-December 2014, fully 45.4 percent of households were wireless-only and 42.7 percent had both landline and cell phones. Only 8.4 percent of households are landline only and another 3.2 percent have no telephone. By age of householder, these are the wireless-only households…
Wireless-only households, July-December 2014
Total households: 45.4%
Aged 18 to 24: 58.0%
Aged 25 to 29: 69.2%
Aged 30 to 34: 67.4%
Aged 35 to 44: 53.7%
Aged 45 to 64: 36.8%
Aged 65-plus: 17.1%
Rising Mortgage Rates Will Begin to Impact Home Sales by Mid-2016
It will actually happen much sooner
* As mortgage interest rates rise, they will begin to adversely impact the number of existing homes sold in the U.S.
* By 2018, rising mortgage rates could drag down existing sales by almost 7 percent from current levels, or more than 350,000 units (SAAR).
* Rising mortgage interest rates will begin to impact the market by mid-2016, though housing affordability in most places is unlikely to suffer until 2018 or later.
For more than 30 years, consistently falling mortgage interest rates have helped spur more home sales. But in about a year’s time, that decades-long tailwind will likely shift to a housing headwind.
By all expectations, as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) prepares its retreat from recent, extraordinarily accommodative polices, we are approaching the beginning of the end of the era of falling mortgage rates, and entering a period in which rates are likely to rise over the next several years.
This Problem Is Unexpectedly Crushing Many Retirement Dreams
Housing is most Americans’ most important source of retirement security. So a sharp reduction in the rate of ownership, coupled with rising rents, is taking a toll.
The housing bust of 2008 touched every homeowner. The subsequent recovery has been selective, mainly benefiting those with the resources and credit to invest. This has had a more damaging effect on individuals’ retirement security than many might expect.
For a quarter century, home equity has been the largest single source of wealth for all but the richest households nearing retirement age, accounting for 44% of net worth in the 1990s and 35% today, new research shows. The home equity percentage of net worth is greatest among homeowners with the least wealth, reaching 50% for those with median net worth of $42,460, according to a report from The Hamilton Project, a think tank closely affiliated with the Brookings Institution.
By comparison, the share of net worth in retirement accounts is just 33% for all but the wealthiest households, a figure that drops to 21% for low-wealth households. So a housing recovery that leaves out low-income families is especially damaging to the nation’s retirement security as a whole.
There can be little doubt that low-income households largely have missed the housing recovery. Homeownership in the U.S. has been falling for eight years, down to 63.7% in the first quarter from a peak of over 69% in 2004, according to a report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Former homeowners are now renters, frozen out of the market by their own poor credit and stricter lending standards.
Meanwhile, rents are rising, taking an additional toll on many Americans’ ability to save for retirement. On average, the number of new rental households has increased by 770,000 annually since 2004, making 2004 to 2014 the strongest 10-year stretch of rental growth since the late 1980s.
Old economy: Immobility = asset
New economy: Mobility = asset
Since many seniors live on social security, and since social security has a cost of living adjustment with a heavy component for rent, rising rents shouldn’t be a scary prospect for seniors. For most, this won’t be a rising cost eating away at a fixed income. It will be a rising cost, but it will be compensated by a rising income thanks to their COLAs.
At this stage of the game, clinging to old theory and going all-in because you think you have to be (based-on an opportunity of the past) will only increase the levels of future losses.
Soaring home prices not a ‘bubble’: Realtors
“This is clearly not a bubble.” -Lawrence Yun
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102777708
Bubbles are characterized by accelerating prices in a market that is already severely overpriced. Right now prices are somewhat overpriced but not to the severe levels we’ve seen in the past, and price increases are not showing acceleration. So factually the realtors and Yun are correct, even if there is an agenda behind their words. Facts are stubborn.
Unfortunately, realtors are the boys who cry wolf. Even when they are right, since they have no credibility due to their obvious conflict, nobody believes them.
+1
Looks like my compadre MR has decided to dust off/don his ‘troll el O’ party hat once again. Too funny!
Considering mortgage rates are only 4%, they aren’t much higher than the lows earlier this year. In 2013 rates rose from 3.5% to 4.5% in about 6 weeks, and that stopped the housing market in its tracks. A rise from 3.8% to 4.0% isn’t very much, and shouldn’t be expected to have a large immediate impact
Rising mortgage rates aren’t deterring buyers
Mortgage rates have risen this spring, but there is no indication that modestly higher rates are sidelining buyers, according to RealEstate Business Intelligence Inc., at least in the Washington market.
Freddie Mac says the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.02 percent in the week ending June 25, up from 4 percent last week. Thirty-year rates began creeping above 4 percent in May.
RBI says the number of contracts signed to buy a house or a condo in the Washington market in May was up 8.4 percent from a year ago. A total of 6,158 purchase contracts were signed in May, representing $2.6 billion in sales. New contracts have now risen year-over-year for seven consecutive months.
“Consistent with the top-line national and regional statistics, we’re seeing robust growth this year ideal for both sellers and buyers in many local subdivisions and neighborhoods, and May turned in the best results in nearly a year, a clear sign that buyers are unfazed by rates in the vicinity of 4 percent,” said RBI’s John Heithaus.
Pending sales are a better gauge of the impact of rising rates, since contracts are typically signed a month or two before sales close.
“It’s important to keep any discussion of rising rates in perspective, at leaf for the foreseeable future,” Heithaus said.
May contracts in the Washington market exceeded both the five-year average and the 10-year average.
[This article is a classic example of wishful thinking. They hope rising rates won’t pummel housing, but all evidence is that it will.]
Moderately rising rates are actually motivating people to buy. Most prospective buyers don’t view the relationship between prices and rates as a zero sum game. Instead they believe rates will rise to more normal levels without affecting home prices, so it only makes sense to buy now before the larger rate increases occur.
It’s a matter of sustainability. Small home price and interest rate increases can be absorbed by rising wages. Double-digit jumps in home prices or borrowing costs can’t. A slow and steady rise in monthly payment from higher rates, prices, and rents makes a fixed mortgage very desirable.
More astute buyers allow themselves to know that the housing market is fundamentally different now then it has been the last two decades. A lot of the speculative risk has been wrung out. Monthly payments are in an affordable zone where they are neither cheap nor expensive. The trough in the rate cycle will keep prices from skyrocketing, and rates will-be-allowed to rise with wages and economic growth (by fundamental economic laws, and a dovish FED).
Timing becomes less important when prices aren’t being artificially inflated by universally-available-cheap-credit. Housing prices have been rising since early 2013, even though borrowing costs are 14% higher (4.0/3.5=1.14).
What’s even more encouraging is that the right kind of buyer is now buying, and the wrong kind is not. A slowly appreciating housing market will have fewer Ponzi borrowers and more long-term owners. These long-term owners are more interested in using amortization of a FRM as wealth creation than appreciation.
I hope we have a stable housing market where timing isn’t so important in the future. Unfortunately, realtors won’t like that nearly as much because they won’t be able to use crumbling affordability as an inducement for false urgency.
Reality check….
Yep.
I assume that you are implying that homeownership rate and price are correlated, and that a fall in ownership predicts a fall in prices. Therefore, prices are inflated since they diverged upward from falling home ownership rates? Is that about right?
What’s missing from this chart is the previous three decades where homeownership rates were around 63-64% (63.1% 1964; 64.0% 1994). Correct me if I’m wrong, but home prices still rose over that period despite ownership rates being flat.
You aren’t seriously stating that home prices were flat from 1964-1994 when home ownership rates diverged. Are you? What this chart shows is the effect on unsustainably raising the homeownership rate above the long-term average. Reality? Check.
Maybe not right now, but 2016 things might get mighty intereSTINK.
Some interesting remarks from Wells Fargo Securities on the state of US household balanced sheets, especially the declining debt service ratio and the potential ability of households to weather higher rate hikes in the near future:
“In sum, household balance sheets are in a much better position now than the years immediately following the crisis.
Households strengthening their financial position contributed to the slow recovery, a typical feature of a balance sheet recession. Now that households have solidified their personal finances, we expect the economy to continue to expand, despite the modest increase in interest rates we are expecting later t
his year.”
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/docs/2015/06/Interest%20Rate%20Weekly%2006242015.pdf
The overhang of debt that was not purged during the recession will force the federal reserve to keep rates low for longer than anyone currently acknowledges. If we really had purged the debt, the economy could handle higher rates because people wouldn’t have to spend so much on debt service; however, since that debt was preserved, any uptick in rates is going to distress the marginal borrower, and since there are so many of them, rates simply can’t go up very far or very fast.
I have it on good word that down payment loans, similar to the old 80/20’s, will be making a comeback soon. The only difference is these will go to 95 LTV, leaving a 5% equity cushion, but there will be no PMI required.
The hedge funds said “let it be so” and it was so.
Given the high cost of PMI, a lender can make a second mortgage loan with a 10% interest rate and it’s still a better deal for the borrower than PMI. As long as the risk is priced appropriately, these loans won’t be as destabilizing as the ones made during the bubble.
I first wrote about this back in late 2012. I’m surprised its taken this long for hedge funds to fill this void.
FHA = subprime, 12.4% interest cost of FHA insurance, 50% risk premium
I think the uncertain regulatory environment was a big hindrance. Nothing could happen until QM was finalized, implemented, and tested. It took a full year after the rules went into effect to be fully baked into processes and procedures for many lenders.
After that I think it took the crowdfunding platforms, Lending Club and Prosper, to wake the hedge funds up and realize they were leaving profits on the table. Why should they leave 10-12% returns for the little guys?
That’s a good point. The fog of regulatory uncertainty probably did inhibit much of this activity. As the post from late 2012 shows, this opportunity has been around for quite a while, and it was obvious even to lowly bloggers like me.
Perhaps the resurgence of second mortgages will be the big story of 2016. And the big legal problem will be the desire of lenders to make these HELOCs so they aren’t subject to QM rules.
Higher LTV loans don’t concern me too much. These 80/15s will be going to qualified borrowers based on their real income and using the real fully-amortized payment to qualify. As that payment increases due to the lower downpayment, the income requirement does too, to keep the back-end DTI near 43%.
It’s a matter of risk assessment. Probability and consequence. If the probability of default is lessened by fully qualifying borrowers, then the amount of equity cushion can be reduced because a lower foreclosure volume won’t impact profits, taken in toto. Hopefully the hedge funds are aware that negative equity affects both the consequence of default and the probability (i.e. strategic default).
These piggybacks will be targeted at the higher-end jumbo market, to the dismay of the Left that wants more mortgage credit extended to the non-jumbo market borrowers.
If you can’t save 5% for the downpayment on the house you want, then it’s likely your income isn’t sufficient to qualify you for the 80/15 mortgage on the house you want.
Hopefully an attractive 80/5 or even 80/10 option will be available by late 2015 when we’ll be getting a mortgage. Today, the only option available according to the pre-qual creditor is an 80/5 with the second being a HELOC (fixed for ten years at 5.25%, IO payments, and a three-year prepay penalty).
Here’s how gay marriage will improve housing
Today’s announcement by the Supreme Court making gay marriage a right throughout the land will be heralded, derided and debated for months and years, but there’s one thing that’s inarguable – gay couples have a positive impact on housing.
A 2012 study summarized by the Harvard Business Review confirms that an old stereotype about gay couples gentrifying neighborhoods and improving homes has a strong basis in reality:
The addition of one same-sex couple for every 1,000 households is associated with a 1% increase in home prices in U.S. neighborhoods that are socially liberal, but a 1% drop in neighborhoods that are extremely conservative, say David Christafore of Konkuk University in South Korea and Susane Leguizamon of Tulane University. Their study of more than 20,000 real estate transactions in Ohio in 2000 supports previous findings that migration of same-sex couples to an area increases home values, in part because these residents tend to develop or enhance cultural amenities. But the new research suggests that in socially conservative areas, housing prices reflect prejudice against gays.
Furthermore, Trulia just completed a survey last month that showed that neighborhoods with more gay people tend to be pricier:
For each ZIP code in the U.S., we calculated the share of households that are same-sex male couples and same-sex female couples, based on the 2010 Census. Then, we combined the Census data on where gay people live with median price per foot of listed homes in each ZIP code on Trulia over the past year.
(The fine print: The Census doesn’t ask sexual orientation, of course, so the only way to measure gay neighborhoods is based on where couples live. The Census data requires some corrections and adjustments, described here. Finally, ZIP codes don’t line up perfectly with neighborhoods, but we did our best to use the closest neighborhood names that correspond to the ZIP codes in our analysis.)
Will the ruling result in more gays forming households? The housing industry can only hope so.
Regardless of your opinion on gay marriage (I happen to support it), it is absolutely hilarious reading the dissent’s opinions. Strict Constitutionalists are insane. The Constitution is a living breathing document that changes as bigotry subsides. That’s a good thing.
I think many strict constitutionalists use that idea to support their own agenda. For example, the right to bear arms is held by strict constitutionalists to mean that anybody can have any firearm they want at any time. They ignore the context of the statement “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” A strict constitutionalist should read that to say that anyone in a well regulated Militia has the right to bear arms, but that’s not the interpretation they want to have, so they ignore it.
This is one of countless examples where (HORROR!), opinion, analysis, and yes, modern social mores are required to interpret (or give meaning to) intentionally vague clauses and terms in the Constitution.
I agree. Where the meaning isn’t readily discernible from the text, then some interpretation has to be performed in order to resolve the dispute. The difference between constructionists and those of the living-breathing ilk is that the constructionists try to determine what the writers of the Constitution actual meant, while interpretists say what they think the writers would say if they wrote the Constitution today. Both approaches are stupid, but one is grounded in fact, the other in speculation. One looks to resolve the dispute as if it occurred when the law was enacted, the other as if the law were enacted today.
But, you have to settle the dispute, so what do you do? It’s unclear from the text what the law really is, so you have to dig into what it could say, and what it couldn’t (but not what it should or shouldn’t). The legislative history can be illustrative of meaning, or the plain meaning of words at the time the document was written – no different than contract law.
The interpretists understand what the law says, they just don’t like what it says, so they write their own version.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure the preservation of a free state. In order to preserve a free state a well regulated Militia is a precondition. Well regulated means well run. An unarmed militia is not a militia, and is also not well run. At the time the Constitution was written, the revolutionary war had just ended which was fought by a militia of ordinary citizens against their own tyrannical government.
The militia, being composed of ordinary citizens, is not well organized under normal circumstances to throw of the chains of oppression from their own government. So, there aren’t really any militia out there to be well regulated if the people don’t have the right to have guns in their own homes.
Your interpretation of the Second Amendment completely defeats its purpose: to preserve a free state. Unless of course you are in favor of creating and arming local militias – although I don’t think that will make you feel any safer.
Again, there is an amendment process if a modern society no longer believes the Second Amendment is necessary.
+1
The right to bear arms is not conditional on belonging to a militia. That would completely defeat the purpose of the amendment. How are you going to join or form a militia if the government has confiscated your weaponry?
The second amendment is a good example of how times changed and the original purpose and intent of the law no longer applies. We aren’t a society of farmers who will get called up to military service and provide their own firearms. When those circumstances were the norm, the second amendment makes perfect sense. Realistically, the second amendment ceased to function as it was intended the moment the military began developing its own weapons that it provided to its soldiers. Do we really need to amend the Constitution again to recognize this fact?
When you look at society as it exists today, unlimited gun ownership is a recipe for senseless acts of violence from too many people with too many guns. Rather than protecting us from the State, these guns make it nearly impossible to protect us from ordinary citizens who may want to shoot us, often for no reason at all.
The interpretation of the second amendment as an unlimited right to own any weapon a citizen desires is a tool of a gun lobby who wants to profit from the violence, a violence that results from people given easy access to guns.
Times have only changed because the federal government has over stepped it’s authority (due to the legislature being asleep) and has kept a huge standing army. Our country was never meant to have such a large standing military force which enables all of these non declared “wars” all over the world at the whims of the President.
There is not suppose to be unlimited gun ownership but all citizens are expected to have at their disposal any weapon which is fit for service in an army. Just look to NATO approved small arms for those which are fit for service.
Gun ownership isn’t unlimited, or even unregulated. We can disagree on what reasonable limits should be, but there do need to be limits, and there are. Should there be a higher bar to own a firearm? In my opinion, yes, there should. Every effort should be made to restrict ownership to those who are capable of self-control.
Psychological screening should be performed by an independent agency certifying gun ownership capacity. Continued ownership should be dependent on yearly reevaluations. Psychologists and medical doctor’s should have mandatory reporting requirements when any change of mental condition or medication would preclude continued ownership. Response teams should have authority to impound the weapons after showing probable cause to independent judiciary. Impounded weapons should extend not only to those owned by the individual, but also those he/she has access to. Due process rights must be preserved for the individual to show why the firearm should be returned.
The same argument can be made for driver’s licenses for cars, airline pilots, etc. Even if every gun were banned, we would still have an epidemic of crazy. More people are killed or injured in car accidents every year than from gun violence. Do we ban all cars or planes because 0.001% of the population can’t be trusted?
Like cars and planes, guns have a useful purpose – they provide protection of life and liberty. If you make it illegal to own a gun, then only criminals and police will have them. The only way that someone of smaller stature can defend themselves from a criminal is by using a force multiplier. If you remove the ability of people to defend themselves in their own homes, you embolden the criminals. Police response times are insufficient in even urban areas (1 hour in Detroit?), much less rural areas of the greater US.
Dystopian lives often result from utopian desires – making the people more fearful and the criminals more fearless.
Unfortunately, the gun lobby and its “strict interpretation” of the constitution won’t allow even the common sense restrictions you agree with.
They fear the general erosion of gun rights. What they fail to see is that common sense restrictions make the fundamental right stronger, not weaker. Failing to allow necessary and proper modification is the quickest route to wholesale repeal. If the gun lobby won’t allow common sense changes to make the citizenry safe, then they leave no other option.
Right now civilian ownership of arms is only regulated by how much money is in your possession and your criminal record. Yes if you have enough money you can own a tank with fully operational artillery and fighter jets with bombs.
This situation is no different than at any time in the history of the world. The economic and political elite always seems to keep a monopoly on arms.
“Do we really need to amend the Constitution again to recognize this fact?”
Yes, when stripping citizens of their Constitutional rights, I believe an amendment is necessary. What else separates us from a dictatorship?
I’m a Libertarian, so I really couldn’t care less what kind of relationship two adults choose to have, as long as they don’t tax me to subsidize their relationship.
But, I do think there is a danger in allowing The Supreme Court to legislate from the bench. I gather that you’re alright with the Constitution being a living, breathing document subject to judicial interpretation as a society becomes less bigoted, but what if it became more so?
Allowing 5 people to alter the fundamental playbook without the say of the people is definitely not within either the four corners of the Constitution or a reasonable interpretation of the founders’ intent (separation of powers, and all).
The job of the Supreme Court is to say what the law is, not to make it. That is the job of the two independent branches of the Congress and the President. There is an amendment process to change the Constitution as the society evolves. This amendment process sets an intentionally high bar to prevent the very bigotry you are applauding the Supreme Court for eliminating.
If only it were so easy. SCTOUS didn’t “change” the Constitution with this ruling. They interpreted it. That’s what courts do with laws that can’t possibly account for all circumstances.
The only logical conclusion listening to the dissent’s arguments, is that a state is free to allow or disallow “marriage” for certain genders, and not for others. What would Scalia say, if California banned marriage for everyone? Would he argue that’s within the state’s rights? No, he wouldn’t.
What is the legal basis for the theory of a “living, breathing Constitution”? Is there a passage of the Constitution that outlines this?
My understanding is that Article III establishing the judicial branch is the smallest section of the Constitution because the Founders wanted the powers enumerated to the judiciary to be the most limited. They saw the potential for unrestrained judicial overreach as a real threat to this nation so they intentionally sought to limit the scope of their powers as a group of unelected officials.
Conversely, they wanted the Legislative branch to have the most power as a body of elected representatives, which is why Article 1 is the longest, with the greatest number of enumerated powers. Therefore, the Constitution is living and breathing in the sense that our elected officials have the ability to amend the document and make changes based on people’s changing sensibilities about bigotry, as they did by passing the 13th and 14th amendments.
Nowadays we bypass the amendment process and let the Supreme Court find new meaning in existing passages by placing them into whatever context suits the prevailing winds of political popularity. That’s why Obama was directly lobbying the Supreme Court in the recent Obamacare case. I think that’s what you mean by a living and breathing document. It’s essentially a code phrase that means “political document”. The Supreme Court has become a shortcut to getting legislation passed when you don’t have the votes.
There is nothing in the Constitution that informs us how it should be interpreted. That means there is absolutely nothing in it that says we need to consider what the original drafters thought and considered and judge its words using this method. Also, there is nothing that says it’s a living breathing document. These are the two schools that have developed since the Constitution was ratified.
The problem with the living, breathing theory is that it’s a moving target with nothing concrete to refer to when making a decision. The original intent theory is much easier to interpret because there are many historical sources to reference.
While I could care less about gay marriage one way or the other what does concern me is the violation of the tenth amendment. If the federal government wishes to gain the special powers over marriage, health care, and education then they need to amend the constitution by a two thirds vote.
You could argue most issues decided by SCOTUS over the last century are issues reserved for the states to decide. Just remember with whom this argument places you.
What I have seen is the Executive and Judicial branch seizing power from the legislature and states. This worries me greatly.
And by extension from the People…