CUL-DE-SAC

The primary election last week in California didn’t excite me much. Jerry Brown was nominated by the Democrats for governor. (Him again. Can’t that guy just retire?) Super-rich businesswoman Meg Whitman got the Republican nomination for governor, and a good thing too! She’d be right to be annoyed if she had not even won the primary after spending $71 million on her campaign. I wonder how much that election cost her per vote. Surely someone’s done the math.

There was one question on the ballot that forced me to look deep inside myself for guidance. It was a local proposition that asked if San Diego County Supervisors should be subject to term limits. Somehow, the local supervisors had evaded those political statutes of limitations… quite a feat in Southern California. I think they dodged term limits for so long because few people knew who they were and nobody was quite sure what a county supervisor did.

But last week, reality caught up with the county supes. Labor unions, who dislike the all-GOP county board, had managed to qualify a ballot question on term limits and voters overwhelmingly passed it. Two terms will now be the maximum for a county supervisor. I too voted for Proposition B.

This is curious because I had always considered myself an opponent of term limits. It didn’t make sense to me to kick people out of their jobs just when they’d gotten good at them. It’s also ironic that voters, who seem to love voting for incumbents, love term limits as well. “Please stop me before I vote for that guy again!!”

Let’s look at the example of the San Diego County Supervisors. Today, they are they same five old duffers who’ve been in office ever since I moved to San Diego in 1998. We must like them if they keep getting elected. Even so, we just don’t trust our lazy, uninspired selves to decide whether they should stay in office. 

So if term limits make me mock and sneer like this, why did I vote for Prop B?  

It’s partly because I’ve been stained by the local political culture. Term limits are how we do things here, so why fight it? But I have also come to believe that incumbency is a force that’s too powerful when political apathy is such a problem. Yes, voters should have the attention span and civic spirit to know who their county supervisor is and whether he/she deserves to be fired. But that’s just not the case. Apathy allows politicians who work below the radar to remain in office by cultivating the right contacts and getting all their buddies to make it to the polls on election day.

The result, in San Diego, is a board of supervisors whose members are all old, white and Republican in a county that’s becoming more and more diverse, racially and politically. That has caused me to buy into the arguments for term limits. Yes, we need fresh blood. Yes, we need to give challengers a better chance to hold office.

I have not entirely transformed my views on the subject. I’ll still vote for any proposition that would extend term limits for local and state offices. Why limit politicians to two four-year terms? Three or four terms make more sense to me. But all things considered, I decided Prop B deserved a yes vote.

Mind you, this proposition will have no real effect on the current stable of San Diego County Supervisors. Prop B is not retroactive, so our county supes won’t be termed out for another 8 years, by which time they’ll be  more concerned about using their Medicare benefits than running for office.

I didn’t used to believe that the short sale was the bane of the housing market. But that was before I tried to buy a house from a guy who was underwater on his mortgage. In February, I made an offer on a house in Kensington (that’s a neighborhood in San Diego). I offered less than the owner paid for the house but I figured something would be better than nothing for him and/or his lender.

But last week, after four months of watching the seller and his money lenders fight over small change, my wife and I gave up. We withdrew our offer to buy the house and moved on.

In the case of this short sale, the homeowner had seen his business go south and he defaulted on two mortgages. The primary lender was trying to get the second one to accept less than 20 percent on a loan that lender #2  foolishly gave the homeowner at the height of the housing boom. Lender #2 was determined to get as much as possible and eventually hired a collection agency to go after the homeowner. Going after him meant going after as much money as they could get out of me as I sought to buy the house.

Eventually, the short sale negotiator (the only person we were dealing with who actually had a name) was fired and there was nobody left to talk to. I assume the next step will be foreclosure. I just wish it had happened before I wasted four months trying to buy the house.

The housing market has had its gyrations and I guess we all hope we can hold onto our homes long enough to see the ups and downs come and go. We also hope there will be more ups than downs. The California housing market has been kind to me. I was lucky enough to move to San Diego and buy in the late 90’s when housing prices were still reasonable and were headed upwards. That’s why I’ve got enough equity to try to buy something bigger.

Had I moved here eight years later I would have been one of those unlucky folks who went underwater.

Home ownership is a peculiarly American thing. I was speaking to a friend about a family she knows in Germany. The family has lived in the same rental apartment for two generations. Why does that seem strange to us? In the U.S., ownership is the thing that gives us a proper relationship with an inanimate object like as a house. Without ownership, your house will belong to somebody else and will therefore be alienated from you and not be a real home… or so we think.

I believe in the American dream because home ownership is a great way of saving money. If you are forced to invest in a house every month eventually you’ll have something to show for it. Someday the house may actually be paid for. But prices don’t go up forever, even in California. If you do become submerged, mortgage-wise, hopefully your house will still be your home and still be a good place to live.