When you or I can’t pay our bills, we get to sell our assets before the bank comes and takes them away. This may include our home. It doesn’t matter whether the real-estate market is up or down, or if we want to sell or not. The state of California has gotten itself into a $24 billion debt.
California covers 155,973 square miles of land area, making it the third largest of the 50 states. About half of this land is owned by the state as beaches, schools, warehouses, watershed, open space, and natural preserves, and some is owned as 278 state parks, covering 1.5 million acres. Of course, the state doesn’t want to sell any of its property and even buys more every year, though it is unable to take care of it all.
Some people have maintained that the sale of even a really small part of this unused property would not give the state money quickly enough to do any good. If your home is in foreclosure, try this argument with the bank! The state of California should bite its lip and do the right thing: Pay its bills and stay out of trouble in the future. This will be a good lesson to all
of us.
This article appears in Jul 16-23, 2009.
