How to Save the Housing Market: Destroy Houses

I recently read an article in Time Magazine relating perfectly to what we have been reading and talking about in class. The overall idea of the article is clear in the title, how do we save the housing market. One key way that is presented is to knock down houses that have been foreclosed. One city used as an example is Lakewood, Ohio, and average middle America town that is a working-class suburb of Cleveland. It is a common scene to see demolition of houses and the quote the mayor of Lakewood, "We're not gonna miss these houses," and he is hoping that this will save the town's economy as a whole. Another interesting fact within the article that jumped out at me was how responsible the housing market collapse was for the economic recession we are experiencing. According to economist Dean Baker, "every dollar drop in their houses' value, homeowners spend 6 cents less on other stuff, resulting in a collective $430 billion drop in consumer spending from the bubble's 2008 peak, or a 3% hit to the economy. That is huge!!! Basically, the article just continued on summarizing all to problems of the housing crisis and some additional ways that could potentially help to end this housing crisis. These includes lifting the debt burden, renting houses that have been foreclosed and letting seriously delinquent loans fail. The article ends with this quote, "getting out of this crisis will require one other thing too: perseverance by the millions of Americans who are living with the consequences of decades of cray lending and borrowing."