DESERT RATTLER: Your Latest Trick
By Ken Layne
As the American financial system finally collapsed and the investment experts swore they never saw it coming, the apocalypse continued out here in the Mojave, slow and steady.
Twenty years ago, the only people who moved to this unloved chunk of inland California were misfits and military and the poor trying to escape the crime and horror of L.A. slums. Then, improbably, absurdly, stupidly, the High Desert on the other side of Cajon Pass became an “exurb,” one of those ugly stucco grids dropped on the ground with feeder roads to the I-15, instant fake luxury, only two hours from the office, when traffic’s good.
And every little chunk of non-government-owned sun-blasted creosote – from the prison-covered hellscape of Adelanto to the trailer-park junkyards of Yermo – suddenly became valuable real estate. Dirt lots you couldn’t give away in 1999 were selling for half a million in 2005, at the insane peak of the bubble, complete with a three-bedroom cardboard castle in the middle of the scraped-bare lot.
There are dozens of these abandoned new houses around me, in these desert foothills that deserved a better fate. The financial wizards could’ve predicted the entire apocalypse had they simply walked around the Mojave and watched the sad routine that’s been going on since at least last year.
First, you see the people and their goddamned “toys” – motorboats, jet-skis, RVs, ATVs, OHVs, SUVs – on the side of the dusty highway all weekend, For Sale signs on everything, an ice chest of high fructose corn syrup for refreshment. There’s usually a box of unwanted puppies out there, too, baking in the sun. They’ll be dumped at the end of the road soon enough, all of them, until they wander back to the blacktop and get smashed by a speeding pickup and eaten by the ravens.
A few weeks later, the big propane tank that heats the water and fuels the furnace has a new little friend. It’s a portable, the kind you hook to an outdoor grill. This means the people can’t pay the $400 for a refill, so they’ve picked up a $35 BBQ tank from the Circle K.
The real-estate sign usually goes up around this point, and on some of these dirt roads there’s a For Sale sign for every property, far as you can see. But it doesn’t mean they’re all really, technically for sale. When the local real-estate offices close down, they don’t always bother to retrieve the heavy things.
Then, under cover of darkness, the family leaves. Sometimes they disguise this escape, coming by once a week to change the lights left on and blinds left open, maybe parking an old camper or beat-up car in the driveway. Other times, nobody bothers. The coyotes and vermin knock over the trash cans, a kid’s bike with training wheels is grown over with the invasive weeds that love dead bulldozed desert.
One sad stretch of nearby road – really a beautiful walk through a small forest of stubby Joshua Trees and gnarled Juniper – has seven vacant houses in a row, nobody around for a mile on either side. Where did they go? What about the kids and their schools? Who even owns the mortgages, if the mortgages could even be pieced together from the “collaterized debt instruments” that brought down everything from mighty Wall Street investment houses to chickenshit little construction firms in the grandly named Inland Empire?
Lehman Brothers was out here, with $250 million in exurb developments here in the desert. Two weeks before Lehman vanished, on Sept. 2, those lots were being valued at $29,500 apiece. Guess what they’re worth today.
The whole Global Financial Crisis will not end before this insane situation plays out across the Mojave. Nationally, one in 10 mortgages is already in default or foreclosure. In San Bernardino County, August foreclosures rose 98 percent over a year ago. The official unemployment rate just hit 9.2 percent out here. Even professional realtors don’t expect things to hit bottom before 2010.
Lately, the escapees are trying a new trick. From my desk outside, looking up the road, you can see the charred skeletons of two half-burnt stucco dumps of recent vintage.
Published: 09/24/2008
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Gee Ken, you really do sound like a total LOSER!!!