Housing? How About Roofing?

There’s a lot of talking about houses – single family homes – being unaffordable. It’s not just the house that’s unaffordable. Have you priced a new roof lately?

I have a friend who runs a roofing business. He told me the other day that a new roof that cost $10,000 to do circa 2004 would cost $25,000 to do today. The roof – today – costs more than a single family house did back in the mid-1960s. The cost of a new roof is going up, too. Asphalt shingles are a petroleum product, meaning it takes oil to make them. Oil that has gotten a lot more expensive as a consequence of Trump’s catastrophically reckless (and evil) decision to attack Iran on behalf of Israel. It is not “anti-Semitic” to say so, either.

It is just the fact.

Iran is far away from the United States and in no position to attack the United States. More to the point – if you care about moral considerations – the Iranians hadn’t attacked us. The moral onus is on the attacker – at least insofar as the unctuous history books tell the kids (viz, the perfidious Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which Trump seems to admire based on his comments about it as well as his sneak attack upon Iran). The kids are told it is bad when one country sneak attacks another – especially without first declaring war, so as to make clear its intentions. Well, who didn’t do that?

Never mind.

My friend tells me the cost of shingles is going up like the cost of gasoline – and diesel. Enter the double whammy. My friend has several big trucks that have big tanks that hold a lot of gas and diesel. He needs these rigs to carry the heavy loads of shingles (and to haul away the old shingles). The cost he has to pay to fuel his work trucks has gone up by 40-50 percent. Who do you think is paying for that?

The roofing crisis – for it is exactly that, or will soon be one – goes largely unnoticed, so far. That’s because (unlike gas and diesel) most people do not need a new roof right now, so they have no idea what they’re in for when the day comes that they do need a new roof and discover they can’t afford one. What are people gong to do? Well, it’s either tarps on the roof and old pots and pans on the floor – to catch the dribbles – or it’s time for a second (or third) mortgage, to finance the roof that few will be able to afford to just pay for.

Soon, we’ll all be paying for it – via the cost of home insurance. It is going up like a V2 rocket, just like the cost of car insurance. Why? Well, leaving aside the mafia aspect – as in, we’re gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse – the cost to repair damaged roofs has massively increased due to the massive increase in the cost of everything that’s tied to the cost of oil. It’s not the actual cost – of say a tree falling on a house, or an EV burning down a house, though those costs are huge. It is the potential cost of lots of trees falling on lots of houses (and other potential big losses) that are driving up the cost of home insurance, which most “homeowners” have to pay. The air fingers quote marks are used to highlight that if you have a mortgage, you don’t actually own your home. The lender does – and the law says you have to “cover” the lender’s property. If you do not, it is cause to void the mortgage and kick you out of what isn’t really your house.

Of course, it is true that even if you have paid off the mortgage, you still don’t really own your home. Not in a truly meaningful sense. No one who can be evicted for failing to pay rent – which is functionally what property taxes are  – is the owner of the house he occupies. The true owner is the one who can evict you for non-payment, the same as any landlord.

But at least you don’t have to pay for the home insurance – if you have paid off the mortgage. That small liberty is still allowed and it is surely why many “homeowners” manage to avoid eviction, by using the money they saved by not buying home insurance to pay the rent; i.e., the property taxes. It is very likely that this “loophole” (the state refers to any small liberty we’re still allowed as a “loophole”) will be cinched tight, using the same pretext that is already used to force people to pay for car insurance. The assertion that those without insurance are “free riders” who impose “costs on society,” even if they never actually do.

Anyhow, even if not there is still the cost of that new roof, which is going to drive many American homeowners into the poorhouse. It will be particularly hard on older, retired people who can’t just get a second job to offset the cost. They’ll have to sell – and take the loss, too. Because a house that needs a new roof will sell for a lot less than one that does not.

All of this because Trump chose to ruin everything. God damn him for that.

. . .

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