Wednesday, Sep. 03, 2008

Our View: Cleaning up housing mess

Merced County is in the unfortunate position of being in the foreclosure spotlight but time will heal the wounds.

Merced is in the worldwide spotlight but it's not necessarily a good thing.

Our ongoing foreclosure mess is bringing plenty of attention from faraway sources.

The London-based Financial Times recently published a story about our struggles.

The Los Angeles Times has written several stories on the subject over the past few years.

The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine all have focused attention on Merced.

Our town was the subject of a lengthy Sunday New York Times story recently.

It's true, we're in dire straits, but it's mostly a one-dimensional portrait that's being painted of our Valley.

The stories seem to focus on home buyers who've been left homeless after losing the house to a bank.

Given short shrift are those buyers who bought as investments who had no intention of living in the house.

Many believe these investors are the underlying cause of the mess.

Merced is still a small town and we often get little attention here in the Valley with bigger cities to the north and south. Our plight deserves attention, but we're all a little weary of the headlines.

In the past, when the spotlight has shined on us, we've been described in almost all of those newspaper stories and TV reports as a "sleepy farm town" or "dusty farm town." Our place in the world is changing. We're waking up to new opportunities every day.

The UC campus is slowly changing our image.

We're struggling but so is a vast majority of the rest of the nation. Our town isn't anywhere near dying; to the contrary, our long-term prospects are bright.

The recent attention and real estate prices that have fallen 50 percent in recent years could bring another wave of speculators who are looking for a great investment. We don't need that. We need families buying houses who plan on living and working here. Jobs are always important.

We can't snap our fingers and make it all go away. The marketplace has to run its own course and time will heal these wounds.

Impatience, everyone seeming to need to buy a house in Merced at the same time, is what got us into this mess and patience, things should slowly get back to normal, is what's needed now.

What do you think? Comment on this editorial by going to www.mercedsunstar.com/opinion, then click on the editorial.