I was unable to obtain a government backed mortgage for a decade because LexisNexis Risk Solutions was reporting a judgement inaccurately on my risk profile that they would not remove until I had a lawyer file suit against them and notified the CFPB. I received a $600 check as part of a $21M class action settlement [1]. I was lucky, and had the means to obtain creative financing (non-QM) when needed. Others are not so lucky.
I share this story because once you have experienced something like this, it is totally understandable why people want to burn parts of the system down. Sometimes, they’re not wrong. There is a special place in hell for the people behind these corporate transgressions, who seemingly never face sufficient punishment for the harm they cause.
The CFPB is so good. It's one of a small number of federal agencies that actually has teeth. I went 30 rounds with PNC after they devoured what was left of Simple before someone suggested filing a CFPB complaint. Basically, I received some mail for the account despite being assured it was closed before the Simple closure.
I asked for a letter stating in no uncertain terms that the account was closed and that I wouldn't be liable for anything if they screwed up. They bombarded me with emails and calls for a week trying to avoid working through the CFPB before finally answering the complaint with what I asked for. I was adamant that it happen with the CFPB so their statement would be on file. Now the PDF is there if the bank gives me any trouble.
People report similar success filing FCC complaints to get action from phone companies and ISPs that otherwise ignore them.
You’re not going to like my answer. I don’t like my answer. It’s never ending work.
Always vote, run for office if you can, and/or become and stay engaged as a citizen activist. See something? Report it to regulators. Think something’s up? Go digging. Engage with other folks who are doing the same and provide logistical support if able to.
I spend thousands of dollars a year on FOIA fees and attorney opinion and correspondence costs, but I have the means and the time. Overarching thesis is “Find someone to help and help them.” -DeviantOllam [1] of “Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun.” Saintcon talk fame [2].
I think the answer I was expecting was that it's a two-step process: 1) Be lucky, and 2) Don't be unlucky. My next-door neighbor is actually a local politician, but her party affiliation is the one I dislike, so I'm getting a life-lesson in humility.
I’ve never been good at delivering bad news, my apologies.
Talk to your neighbor and explore a run for office if it interests you. Actually wanting to be engaged is the first step, and it sounds like you want to. No one is coming to save us, it’s just us.
I don't know if this is what you intend, but it sounds like you're baiting an answer about vigilante style "justice" to the executives/board members of these misbehaving corporations.
That would be counterproductive and probably only cause them to treat us with less empathy than they do already.
I'm not advocating for "vigilante justice" either, but if that's the clearest / first thought you have when someone authentically asks "what can I do," that's probably a problem :P
If possible, leave USA. There are political systems around the world that aren’t broken and there are some that are actually being fixed by voters (e.g. Australia). But USA is broken for at least our lifetimes.
The reason those other places around the world aren’t broken* is because people had the mentality of putting in hard work toward the future. If everyone shared what you thought and fled at a moment of hardship, the whole world would go to shit really fast.
*your opinion, not mine. I don’t think USA is that bad of a place and I don’t put Australia on a pedestal.
I’m leaving for Western Europe, all of the tools I need for advocacy and accountability work just fine from over there (laptop and mobile device are all that is required). I’m unable to run for office, I am not an ideal candidate for various reasons. I want the country improved long term, but am unwilling to suffer in the short term because of, for lack of a better words, the malevolent and troglodytes. In the case of voting, you can’t persuade some people even with evidence and data. You might just have to wait for old people to age out (1.8 million voters over the age of 55 age out every year) and younger folks (open to new ideas and mental models) to come of age, before there are improved chances of success. If you have to wait somewhere, don’t wait here if you don’t have to (life lesson: never suffer needlessly).
(I also contribute time to helping anyone wanting to expat out of the US get to higher quality jurisdictions, Europe, Australia, etc)
I don’t anticipate taking advantage of the advice, but can you share any references on navigating such a long term move to Europe? I’ve been told Portugal is a good starting point.
Enjoy (genuinely). I don’t know where I’ll die, I just know where I don’t want to live as someone with substantial empathy. I don’t have much hope near term here, and hope is everything.
Solid jurisdiction to consider but too cold for my tastes and parts are expensive. If you can afford Vancouver or Toronto, or don’t mind living in Calgary or Montreal (one of my favorite places on Earth when warm, also the safest city in North America) instead, it’s a fine place to expat to while remaining close to US soil.
They often do say "burn it all down".... But in the process of losing their home and car they end up homeless or in public housing. Since "everyone" knows folks on the streets and on welfare/assistance programs are just scum who are gaming the system to take away what hard-working, honest people earn (in the form of taxes), their pleas are ignored.
Ever wonder why the rich folks are often the loudest about that sort of framing? It's (in part anyway) because it lets them get away with the sort of shenanigans Well's Fargo just got slapped on the wrist for.
I'm sorry but if one thing America should have learned over the last six years is that the two parties are nothing alike, equating them as the same and making a poor faith effort that voting is useless is extremely moronic.
Neither party is willing to solve homelessness by actually fucking housing people, and you're calling a homeless person a moron because their assessment of the two parties which, to avoid disturbing the existing economic order, mutually assent to that permanent state of crisis, doesn't include enough conciliatory language for you about how Orange Man Bad? Jesus Christ.
So to be clear, you are saying my tax money should be used to house the homeless, at exorbitant rates, while I cannot afford to buy house myself.
I don't agree with this. I don't think homelessness can be solved by building more housing. Not sure if you have lived near homeless encampments before. If you know you know.
> So to be clear, you are saying my tax money should be used to house the homeless, at exorbitant rates
Yes.
> While I cannot afford to buy a house myself
Affordable housing should be a right to everyone. Anyone, including you, should have the option to live in affordable housing that is nice, ideally with amenities and gardens and common areas if they cannot afford to pay for that on their own. Public housing, like it is in some other countries, should be not a stigmatized fallback but the normalized default. And that’s what the property taxes on the home I currently own should be paying for, so if — for whatever reason — I can no longer afford it or no longer want it, I can move into a dignified public housing accommodation too.
> Not sure if you have lived near homeless encampments before
I have. And my conclusion doesn’t change— they should have housing. Nice housing and the help they need to get back on their feet. We all should.
Treating the "homelessness" as a single problem is naive. I live near homeless encampments and near people who have been quietly living out of their vehicles for 5+ years. Some percentage of the homeless population can be fixed with cheaper housing. Some percentage of people can avoid being homeless altogether with cheaper housing. And some percentage will be homeless regardless of how cheap the housing is (i guess unless it's free and they agree to not break whatever rules/laws apply to them).
Meanwhile both sides just shout at each other and funnel millions of dollars into groups that don't make any real progress and have no accountability. It's the same useless polarization that exists in politics except I'm not even sure it's a political issue at this point given how 1-party the place i live in is.
> So to be clear, you are saying my tax money should be used to house the homeless, at exorbitant rates, while I cannot afford to buy house myself.
Who says it has to be your tax money? There are plenty of millionaires and billionaires in this country, and yet for some reason the only solutions that ever get traction are to put the tax burden on literally everyone other than the people with the most wealth. Hmm, gee, I wonder why? Probably nothing to do with the political duopoly said millionaires and billionaires bankroll, right?
> I don't think homelessness can be solved by building more housing.
It definitionally can and is solved by building housing for the people who lack housing.
> Not sure if you have lived near homeless encampments before. If you know you know.
I'm happy to put it all out there so people can judge where I'm coming from.
I'm not an expert on homelessness, either in a scientific sense or a first-hand one. I have a few long-term friendships with people who have at various points been homeless for a year or more (some traveling, some local to an area). For a couple years, I worked near a few hotspots for where homeless people would gather during the day and/or sleep at night in the downtown of a relatively small city. In college, I often had neighborly chats with the local homeless people who regularly went through the dumpsters in my apartment complex's parking lot. We'd chat whenever we met while I walked out there to take out the trash or let my dog go potty. Shortly after I graduated, some friends (now moved away, employed, and safely housed up!) who were homeless (then as well as when I first met them) moved in with me for a few months when the weather around us was utterly brutal and physically dangerous for them. When it feels safe (and I'm not on my way to appointment), which is pretty often, I stick around to chat a bit when a stranger approaches me to beg or vent about their life or meet my dog or whatever, whether they seem likely to be homeless or not.
I have seen people violently raving to themselves or at passersby, and I have seen people fight viciously over spaces in which to sleep or beg. I've conversed with people who seemed very lucid and insightful in some ways and paranoid or mentally disorganized in others. I have nervously avoided some people who were so agitated and incoherent that it made me feel unsafe. But admittedly, I have not ever lived in a huge city which has truly massive encampments of desperate people.
Over the years, I have talked in depth with people, including presently and formerly homeless people, about housing, employment, physical health, mental health, capitalism, familial rejection/abandonment, drug addiction, etc., and how those things relate to homelessness.
Personally, I think homelessness is a problem that requires a multifaceted approach to make people physically and financially secure, and to embed them in meaningful personal and professional supporting relationships in their communities. I think that approaches to addressing homelessness falling under the broad banner of 'housing first' are humane, scientific, and workable. And to me, access to housing as a public good is indeed way more important than promoting individual ownership of single-family homes (fwiw, like you, I'm a renter who'd rather not be).
But my main point in that remark you're replying to is that it's useless and incredibly tone-deaf to scold someone who is currently struggling with that level of hardship and societal rejection/abandonment for not buying into the prevailing political system, or for having a perspective in which the important similarities between the two parties are more salient than their differences.
This is an insane statement. Abortion rights do matter. Voting for veterans and 9/11 firefighters to get healthcare matters. Restricting voting right matters [0]. Not giving in to radical christians (as a christian myself) matters.
Don’t you see the game they’re playing with you? All those things listed in the thread they haven’t passed. It’s not because one party wants it any other party doesn’t. It’s because they both don’t want them and they play the game of “we don’t have enough votes“. It’s like how Obama could’ve codified roe versus wade in the law, but never did.
> All those things listed in the thread they haven’t passed
He says while confronted with a list of every Democrat voting for important things, and important things ultimately not passing because Republicans block it.
> It’s not because one party wants it any other party doesn’t
It's literally only that. You can look at their voting records.
> It’s like how Obama could’ve codified roe versus wade in the law
Obama had a 2 month window of a supermajority, which he used to push the biggest healthcare reform the US has ever seen.
It's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs...if you're wealthy enough, you can afford to distinguish between the two parties; if you're not, the two parties are the exact same.
I sympathize with that view, but nearly every decision you make, every day, at every price level, about everything, is a choice between flawed alternatives.
