Blue-Collar Workers Priced Out as Rich Snap Up Jersey Shore Homes

By | November 10, 2014

  • November 10, 2014 at 2:49 pm
    wayne smith says:
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    Someone is quoted in the story as saying they only people who will be there are people who can “actually afford it.” Um, yes, who do you expect should be there? And how would they be there otherwise?

    For too long other tax-payers have been subsidizing people living on the coast who otherwise could not afford the insurance. We still are. If Bush had bungled the re-building like what we’ve seen post-Sandy (like Obama and Christie have done), there would be outrage. Instead, Christie tells a voter/resident to sit down and shut up.

    • November 10, 2014 at 3:41 pm
      Libby says:
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      “If Bush had bungled the re-building like what we’ve seen post-Sandy (like Obama…”

      LOL! Since when is Obama a construction worker?

    • November 12, 2014 at 4:54 pm
      Rosenblatt says:
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      Christie is a Republican, so, what’s your point? That Bush, as a Republican, would get blasted but Christie, also a Republican, doesn’t get blasted because…..he’s a Democrat? Za?

      • November 13, 2014 at 4:34 pm
        Libby says:
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        He does seem more Democrat than Republican to me. If he runs, I’ll consider him.

    • November 13, 2014 at 1:59 pm
      Celtica says:
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      Oh yeah, as if New Orleans’s nine ward is now perfectly inhabitable.

  • November 10, 2014 at 3:01 pm
    bob says:
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    we need to eliminate the federal flood program and go to a private market. if the private market can’t do it, then do without it. no level of government should be in the business of selling insurance. the problems federal flood program proves my point very clearly.

    • November 10, 2014 at 3:07 pm
      agent2 says:
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      amen Bob.

  • November 10, 2014 at 3:06 pm
    agent2 says:
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    I have never owned a shore home because I couldn’t afford it in the past. So who will help me? Anyone can see that this would have happened (the demographic change). If you can’t buy adequate insurance (and flood insurance is almost never adequate) you had better have your own resources available to make up the shortfall. Life is a long hard slog and i do have sympathy for a many of these people but a lot of them had their heads in the sand.

  • November 10, 2014 at 3:39 pm
    Libby says:
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    This isn’t an article about flood insurance. It’s an article about what’s happening in America these days.

    “The outperformance of the rich on the Jersey Shore mirrors national trends since the recession ended in 2009, Gillen said. Between 2010 and 2013, median incomes fell for all Americans but the richest, a September Federal Reserve report showed.”

    We have more millionaires/billionaires now than ever before in our history. Meanwhile the middle class gets squeezed down to nothing. The people with money are gobbling up the New Jersey shore and turning what used to be a blue collar middle class neighborhood into a playground for the rich and famous.

    • November 10, 2014 at 4:49 pm
      draetish says:
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      Yes we do Libby, thanks to your President Obama and printing all that money that goes nowhere except the stock market.

      • November 11, 2014 at 9:19 am
        Libby says:
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        draetish – did you really just blame that on Obama? OMG. Read up on Reaganomics and it’s long-term effects on this country. Better yet, read the article in Stan’s link below. The richest of the rich are pillaging and plundering this country and you guys think it’s the American way. Stealing is NOT the American way.

        • November 11, 2014 at 12:06 pm
          draetish says:
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          I never have and never will think that is the American way Libby. I’m just like you, living paycheck to paycheck.

          • November 11, 2014 at 1:24 pm
            Libby says:
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            You have Ronald Reagan to thank for that, not Obama. Reagan single-handedly ruined the middle class.

      • November 13, 2014 at 2:01 pm
        Celtica says:
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        You mean that stock market that is a capitalist tool of the right? That stock market?

    • November 11, 2014 at 2:33 pm
      sandysurvivor says:
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      This is the “insurance journal” of course its an article on flood insurance. The reason being that blue collar residents are getting squeezed out has everything to do with the fact that the insurance bureaucracy aftermath is worse to deal with than the actual Hurricane itself. So much for cutting the red tape.

      • November 11, 2014 at 2:57 pm
        agent2 says:
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        And when you talk about flood insurance, you are not talking about insurance bureaucracy…..you are talking about FEMA and the federal government. They write the policies and set the rules. Hence a poor product that doesn’t meet the needs of most. The private market can take care of it. Government won’t let it. The insurance market settled their non flood claims for the large part just fine. And they do cover replacement cost and increased cost of construction due to enforcement of building codes. This is where all the problems come from….flood doesn’t cover these costs which is what will bankrupt people when a Sandy comes to town.

        • November 12, 2014 at 8:11 am
          sandysurvivor says:
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          No, I am talking about insurance bureaucracy. There is a lot of finger pointing back and forth between NFIP and private companies. It makes no sense to me that different private firms interpret the rules and bill based on the same laws. The NFIP is not going to have one set of rules of one firm and not another. Case in point, Highlands NJ resident who after lifting beyond recommended height still received a $34k insurance bill http://bit.ly/1ubIbdi where a house within one block did not with a different insurance company.

          • November 12, 2014 at 8:43 am
            Libby says:
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            Do you mean a $34k insurance claim payment? How do you know they had he same kind of coverage? Do you see the million dollar homes going up in your neighborhood? Do you like that?

        • November 12, 2014 at 11:54 am
          sandysurvivor says:
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          @libby –

          It was not a claim payment, it was their renewal bill for the year. The house is valued at $300k. How do you justify a $34k/year flood bill on a $300k house, when it meets the NFIP qualifications and is lifted above the recommended BFE height.

          • November 12, 2014 at 12:22 pm
            Libby says:
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            Wasn’t that new flood pricing structure rescinded?

  • November 10, 2014 at 4:20 pm
    Patrick R. Sullivan says:
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    ‘…median incomes fell for all Americans but the richest….’

    *Median* income, by definition is the income smack dab in the middle, with half the population above the median and half below. It has nothing to do with either ‘all Americans’ or, ‘the richest’.

    Also, I hear that the rich are outbidding blue collar Americans for Mercedes Benzes, caviar, and Rolex watches too.

  • November 10, 2014 at 7:33 pm
    Stan says:
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    Just another example of wage-theft by the 1%, right Agent?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/as-bad-as-you-think-it-is_b_6133920.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

  • November 11, 2014 at 10:35 am
    Nancy says:
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    Until we ban percentages, there will always be a 1% of something. Time to act now. Yes we can.

  • November 11, 2014 at 10:42 am
    Libby says:
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    Act now on what?

    • November 11, 2014 at 10:50 am
      Nancy says:
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      Does it really matter? Are you afraid of change or something?

      • November 11, 2014 at 11:02 am
        Libby says:
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        No. Just trying to figure out WTF you’re talking about.

        • November 11, 2014 at 12:30 pm
          CL PM says:
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          Libby – that is possibly the best comment you have ever written. Thank you.

          • November 11, 2014 at 12:37 pm
            Libby says:
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            Do I detect sarcasm?

          • November 11, 2014 at 1:45 pm
            CL PM says:
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            A small touch of sarcasm, Libby. But in a good way. I was thinking the same thing as you when I read Nancy’s comment.

  • November 11, 2014 at 3:39 pm
    T Dubya says:
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    I don’t care who lives on the coast as long as I don’t have to pay to rebuild their fancy homes the next time a storm hits New Jersey. The federal flood insurance program needs to be ended and homeowners need to find this coverage in the private market. If they can’t, then go live where floods are not an issue.

    • November 11, 2014 at 3:56 pm
      Libby says:
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      You do know there are floods everywhere and not just at the shore, right?

  • November 11, 2014 at 4:46 pm
    Libby says:
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    There’s a price to pay for living in a society. If you want to only pay for yourself, then go build your own roads and homes, home school your kids, and live off the land. Until then, that’s what a civilized society does. They pool together to help the whole.

    “1.the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.”

    This me, me, me mindset is just wrong.

    • November 12, 2014 at 1:35 pm
      txmouthbreatherboogereatertx says:
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      I see a dooms day prepper correllation there Libby. All that them there home schoolers sure have people skills. “Momma always said I was her best student” Pray tell.

  • November 12, 2014 at 5:16 pm
    sandysurvivor says:
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    Oh yeah in March of this year, however, it gave the insurance companies up to 24 months to recognize the change. That could mean 64k in insurance premiums people are potentially supposed to pay (on their 300k home) until their specific insurance company recognizes and trains their underwriters to comply with the law. FEMA has been quoted in saying the change may not fully happen until summer of 2017.

  • November 13, 2014 at 12:14 pm
    M. Prankster says:
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    My dad made about $15,000 a year in the 60’s and that was enough for my mother to be a stay at home mom and my parents to buy a nice little place down in Ocean City,NJ a three bedroom rancher. No central heating or air-conditioning. They sold the place in the 70’s for more than twice what they paid for it and took cruises instead of working themselves to death taking care of two houses when they got older.

    In Ocean City now, you are not seeing all those cute little one family dwellings but rather monstrous multi-units that sell into the millions.

  • November 14, 2014 at 2:15 pm
    Trish says:
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    We can go back to the fact that our middle class jobs are now being done overseas. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, and Ross Perot was right… the giant sucking sound of middle class jobs going overseas has occurred. Don’t blame the 1%… many of them have worked darn hard to get there. We cannot pay service workers $15 an hour (at least not in the South). Those “burger” jobs used to be called ENTRY level jobs (not minimum wage jobs). Only now that all our middle class jobs are overseas, people are trying to support families flipping burgers. I work hard, live by the ocean and take care of my family. I do not mind paying SOME taxes… but our government has become too large and over bearing. Too many regulations even for small businesses to start now. Large companies will always go where taxes are favorable. I say make the tax system more favorable here, bring back middle class jobs, and our countrymen will be able to support families, start small businesses and some of them just might become 1 percenters!

    • November 14, 2014 at 2:42 pm
      Libby says:
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      Agree with most of what you say, Trish, except about the 1 percenters. None of us can ever dream to be that wealthy. That kind of wealth usually comes in a trust fund – not too much hard work involved with that.



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