EDilTORIAL

It Gan't Happen Here?

EECENT riots in a number of European flcities remind us forcefully that man's desire for a good home of his own remains one of the strongest drives in our society..

While unemployment was, apparently, the main cause in the English riots, a general feeling of hopelessness regarding housing was very much a part of the spark that ignited the appalling violence. Living, if that's the word for it, as they do in depressing, decades-old housing left over from the early days of the Industrial Revolution, there seems little doubt that expensive, scarce and ugly housing contributed to their ugly mood.

Previous riots in Berlin directly involved housing. The causes were not complex: not enough housing and mostly unaffordable. When the Berliners became squatters by necessity, only to be evicted later by riot police equipped with water cannons, the trouble began.

In this country some statistics now indicate that more than 9090 of Americans cannot afford the median price home. Mortgages remain at record levels. Despite a pentup demand for hous-

DAVID CUTLER editor-publisher

ing most buyers simply cannot qualify. So-called creative financing has done little so far to allow people a path to home ownership. New mortgage instruments, such as the variable rate mortgage, come equipped with a number of pitfalls for buyers and have not had widespread acceptance.

Builders are scrambling to find ways to provide products that Americans can buy; some designed so that two separate families can buy one house and share common areas such as the kitchen and living room. Much is made of new smaller homes, with a "Great Room" that combines living room, kitchen and dining room, as a way to hold down costs.

Yet millions now cannot buy the house they want. Frustrations grow; children move back in with their parents; grandparents are forced to live with their children as housing escalates to ever more unreachable levels.

Could our housing crunch become severe enough to produce the social upheavals Europe faces? It couldn't happen here? Now where have we heard that one before?