Some people are not doing so well handling the pandemic.
In one sad case, a Port Townsend woman was heard screaming through her open back door. A teenage girl called out to ask if she were okay. The screaming woman answered, “Yes! I’m just letting out anger. I hope all Trump supporters die!”
As documented on Facebook (and preserved by this author in screen shots), an elected Jefferson County official and other, I guess you would call them progressives or liberals, celebrated news that Senator Rand Paul had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. “Karma!” they gloated. With witty twists of the knife they shared their fondest hope that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would be the virus’s next victim. This incident negatively impacted others. Some of us who saw the exchange contracted a case of disappointment in a man we had thought was better than that. Others suffered aggravation of preexisting conditions of maliciousness and immaturity.
It is possible these people may have overdosed on agitprop and outright lies from MSNBC and CNN, as well as achieving toxic levels of echo chamber feedback with others suffering similar symptoms from similar causal factors.
But people taking the right medicine seem to be doing much better.
There is the case of a friend who came to our door to collect scraps for his pig farm. He had been depending on restaurant food waste to make his operation pencil out. With so many restaurants closing or scaling back, he was in a bind. But due to a helping hand from people across the area, he was doing better than expected. All it took was the insignificant effort of redirecting kitchen scraps into a bucket instead of the garbage.
He was struggling. He was having to work harder than ever to feed his livestock. But he was smiling.
In what could be considered a longitudinal study, New Life Church of Port Townsend has organized outreach teams. One is working its way through the membership and friends list calling everyone to see if they are okay and let them know they are not alone. Another is ready to do chores or buy groceries and run errands for people who can’t get out, or who are afraid to go out. All indications are that participants in this field test of compassion and selflessness are exhibiting signs of good mental and spiritual health. Other churches reportedly have similar efforts in place and are experiencing similar encouraging results.
I came across a woman on her way to give blood at St. Mary Star of the Sea. A plasma collection outfit comes to Port Townsend once a month and was in town. She didn’t want to miss this chance to help. She displayed a positive, optimistic affect highlighted by a big smile.
I conducted an experiment on myself. I think I’m doing pretty good, though, like everyone else, there have been some dark clouds scudding across my horizons. I had heard that the new owners of Elevated Ice Cream were quite concerned about the sudden drop-off in business dashing their hopes for starting a new life here in Port Townsend. I bought a cold armful of quarts of ice cream and, except for the Salted Chocolate Caramel Swirl (mine, all mine!) distributed them to a couple neighbors. We all smiled.
Hoping to validate the experiment by duplicating results, I dug around in my garage and found an unopened package of N95 respirator masks. I took them to the hospital and gave them to the woman working the front door with her sanitizer and thermometer and questions about recent travel to China, Iran or Italy. They need more masks, she said. Maybe I have some deeper down in those old file cabinets supporting my work bench. Maybe they can use ones from opened packages I have laying around.
Oh, and we both smiled as I handed over the masks.
My wife joined in the experiment. She downloaded instructions from Providence St. Joseph’s on how to make surgical masks and set up her sewing machine and cutting board. When she was ready, I drove her to the San Juan Commons senior facility where they needed masks for residents. She was smiling when she got back in the car.
Another field test is underway. A volunteer Pony Express to deliver COVID19 vaccine trial samples from Jefferson Healthcare to the testing lab is forming. Every morning at 6:30 a.m. we’ll pick up specimen packages at the hospital and drive them to Discovery Bay where another team coming from further west will take them through the next leg of their journey.
We need more experiments and more participants. I spoke with a scheduler at Swedish Hospital in Seattle who had the sad job of calling patients to tell them their surgeries had been cancelled indefinitely because beds were or might be needed for COVID19 patients. I felt terrible for her. She said the only way she could get through this challenging time was to look for ways to help other people.
That seems to be the key, and what distinguishes those doing well from those who aren’t. We might not yet have a medical answer for the virus, but we have some mighty strong medicine against the pandemic’s side effects. Thinking of others, finding creative ways to help in spite of restrictions on our lives–that’s a sure-fire cure. The supplies of this amazing antidote are plentiful, limited only by self choice. Wonderfully, unlike pharmaceuticals, there’s no danger whatsoever it will be hoarded. You see, this miracle medicine doesn’t work unless you give it away.
Now, for this cure’s next big test: I need to learn what kind of ice cream the screaming woman likes.
Homeowners don’t have cash to pay higher property taxes. It is tied up in their homes. Homebuyers need all their cash for downpayments and higher mortgages. Home sellers have cash only briefly. The proceeds from the sale of their home go towards buying a new place to live, and those places are also more expensive as real estate prices rise across the board.
But realtors have cash sitting on the table at every closing.
If we are going to tax anybody for affordable housing programs, tax realtors. They have money on hand and it is money that doesn’t build, buy or maintain housing.
Consider a sale I just watched in my neighborhood. A home was listed with a realtor. The owners did a lot of work getting it ready. The property received many views on Zillow and Redfin, but we saw very little activity in terms of showings. Indeed, I don’t recall ever seeing the realtor there.
Then one day the house sold to out of state buyers. It went for about $700,000. After closing costs, the state excise tax, and realtor’s commission, the owners had about $650,000. They needed all of that for their new home, the costs of moving and setting up a new residence and to recover the substantial cost of improvements over the years in the dwelling they just sold. The realtor got roughly $42,000.
$42,000 for what exactly? For advertising on Zillow and Redfin, mostly. For posting a sign at the street. For a few showings. For phone calls. For getting paperwork to the title company that really does most of the work on closing the sale.
The realtor paid the small 1.5% broker’s tax, $630, and still had more than $41,000 cash left. I have proposed a ten percent tax on real estate commissions, with the existing 1.5% going to the state and the additional 8.5% retained here in Jefferson County for affordable housing, or to tackle our homelessness needs. In the case of this transaction, that would translate to $3,570 for local housing programs from the sale of just one house. The realtor would still pocket $37,800 for not much work. For most families in our county, it takes a year of full-time labor to earn that much.
That amount of money is still plenty of incentive for realtors to continue to list $700,000 properties. They may try to increase their commission rate, but homeowners are chaffing at paying 6% and would likely resist. There may be enough competitive pressure building with on-line marketing options to prevent realtors from simultaneously raising their commission rates, in effect, engaging in illegal price fixing. As we discussed in a previous article in this series, realtors are already under scrutiny for their anti-competitive practices, practices which contribute inexorably to higher real estate prices.
Why Haven’t Housing Activists Looked at Realtor Commissions as a Funding Source?
It seems so obvious. The money is right there, on the table at every closing. It is an enormous pot of money. In 2019 Americans forked over about $75 billion in realtor commissions. That is 7.5 times the amount of commissions paid to Wall Street for stock and bond trading, even though the value of real estate traded was 2.5 times less. (Some of the statistics cited here come from a 2/15/2020 Economist article, “Tearing Down the House: Technology is Poised to Upend America’s Property Market.“)
Activists continue to seek increases in property taxes to fund housing programs, with the result that they make housing more expensive and also contribute to rising rents. Property tax increases for affordable housing have been defeated in several communities around Washington state, and are increasingly unpopular even in Seattle. The harsh reality is that Washington homeowners are close to breaking under the weight of constantly heavier property taxes.
Housing activists certainly are aware of the enormous amount of money coming out of property sales and going to realtors. They know these commissions could fund affordable housing. But they have chosen not to go there.
For one thing, many housing activists are too dependent on funding from certain realtors. Realtor trade groups also provide funding to housing activists. Considering how realtors behave as a cartel, driving prices up by restraining competition and information, their token support for housing activism could be viewed as a public relations stunt. If they were serious, they would be driving down commissions and closing costs and embracing, rather than fighting, technological innovation.
Realtors and their trade groups also possess a good deal of political influence. There are 2 million realtors in the United States. The National Association of Realtors is the nation’s largest trade group and displays its power with an impressive high rise headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Locally, some realtors not only have great political influence, they are also influential politicians and office holders. Many of Port Townsend’s problems have been caused by regulations and infrastructure strategies that favor higher end real estate to the detriment of work force housing, and blue-collar jobs. The net result biases the market toward higher real estate prices, which makes it easier for realtor/politicans to earn higher commissions with the same amount of effort.
Housing activists run the risk of losing what political clout they enjoy by suggesting that realtors should be paying more to address the crisis they have helped to create. Rather than take on realtors, activists often target property owners, a group lacking equivalent political organization and power.
One salutrary effect of taxing realtors would be motivating them to use their considerable influence to see that their tax dollars were applied with maximum cost-effectiveness. A sunset provision, say of ten years, would give realtors a target date for demanding real results so that the higher tax rate on their commissions need not be renewed.
Instead of settling for the few crumbs realtors cast their way, housing activists, perhaps gaining some insights and motivation from this series and articles we have linked, may realize that a more rational and more progressive source of funding should be seriously considered.
