Letter: Irresponsible decisions lead to crisis

To the Editor:

Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind recently sent us an e-mail in regard to the nation’s housing crisis.

Wisconsin is now holding workshops for people in that regard and there is soon going to be some “limited” federal (taxpayer) money available for people that meet certain criteria.

We are not eligible as we have not missed enough (any) house payments because we try to be fiscally responsible.

Here is the letter we sent back to the Congressman. We understand there are circumstances in people’s lives that cause them to be put into financial crisis, but as always, we try to address the “rule” and not the “exception.”

Dear Congressman Ron Kind,

My wife and I received your E-News letter today in regards to the housing crisis that you referred to and which you stated is presently taking place in our nation. We would like to pass some information on to you in that regard.

We have been homeowners since 1983 when we purchased our first home.We purchased a house that was a bit smaller than what we wanted for a family of six. It was actually a reasonably priced Wausau three-bedroom house.

We were a one income family at the time and I was making about $800 a month. We did not have a garage until some years later when we purchased a Menards garage kit and constructed it ourselves. (We had only one used vehicle at the time so we had no urgent need for a garage.) We had to cut corners on living space but managed to do so just fine. Our living room in our new house was actually smaller than the living room in our rented mobile home that we lived in for several years prior to this new house.

The current house we live in is a two-bedroom home and is only a few years old. It is situated on 1.51 acres of land. The kids have all grown up and long since moved on. Before we purchased any of our homes, we always ran our income and expense figures to determine what we could afford. We even managed to put a few dollars down on all of our home purchases.

The housing crisis that we see today is one created by irresponsible people purchasing houses well beyond their ability to pay for them. The financial institutions that loaned the money were as irresponsible as the homeowners. Had either of these persons done some simple math calculations, which we are sure they did, they would have noticed this before making such poor decisions.

We have never been late on a house payment since our first home purchase in 1983. We do not need the government to take care of our house payment as we have a $3 Canon brand calculator that we use when we can’t add or subtract the big numbers on paper.

We do not want our government spending our tax money on irresponsible people and irresponsible lenders as this will only enable them to continue to be irresponsible and will continue to cost all of us more money down the road. It’s a proven fact that if you give someone something for little or nothing as opposed to them having to earn it, they will not take care of it nearly as well, if at all.

Please quit wasting your time, our money and your efforts on irresponsible people in our country and put all this toward something constructive that will benefit all of us.

Go visit the troops in Iraq or South Korea or even at Camp Pendleton where my son-in-law, Sgt. Christopher Kilian, will be returning to shortly after he completes his third tour in Iraq. Talk to him about how the war is going and he will tell you the truth.

Then let the rest of us know as we can no longer count on the media to be fair and unbiased in their reporting of the news.

Good day and God bless,

Tom and Christi Wulf

New Richmond

Tags: opinion, housing, crisis