Inspired by Bill Moyers piece in January 2012, I resurrect this article from 2007, during my time as Chicago Sun-Times Real Estate Editor. Six years later, what I sensed then has been proven to be true.
Lessons on Democracy from Woody Guthrie | BillMoyers.comBILL MOYERS: I’m Bill Moyers. And welcome to BillMoyers.com. Join us over the next few weeks, because on the air and on this website, we’ll be talking a lot about “winner-take-all” politics and how economic inequality – that vast gap between the top and everyone else – is not the result of market forces.
By Sally Duros, Real Estate Editor, Chicago Sun-Times
Published Chicago Sun-Times, August 2007
Woody Guthrie is the patron saint of this real estate section.
That means this land was made for you and me. All readers are
welcome here. Everyone –not just home buyers or home sellers, not
just Realtors or builders, not just public relations execs or
marketers, not just homeowners.
We ask all of you — especially renters and newcomers — to pull up
a chair and make this section home. That’s because, like Woody
Guthrie, we intend to bring tales of truth, fairness and justice to
these pages, while having some fun and elevating your spirit, too,
We like singing a pleasant tune.
Real estate is a market. It’s an investment. It’s a house, town
house, condo or rental apartment. It’s the biggest purchase and the
largest sale most of us will ever engage in.
But it is so very much more than that.
Real estate is the rich ground that roots us all to Chicago.
Whether we rent or own — we can’t make a go at life unless we have
a proper place to live.
Real estate is a deep subject that goes to the very core of what it
means to be an American and a Chicagoan. It thrives on legend, myth
and illusion as well as commerce, dealmaking and common sense. As
proud Chicagoans, we measure our quality of life not by whether we
own, but by where we live and our connection to the neighborhood
around us.
In this section, we explore all the controversial facets of Chicago
real estate — from affordability to lending to taxes to fraud —
and the context that informs those facets.
That means we won’t back down from exploring hot-button issues like
the regulatory environment surrounding our home purchases and the
laws that affect the quality of our home lives. Our modest goal is
to cover these issues in a non-politicized, applied way, and in a
manner useful to you. We will have succeeded if we make your life a
bit easier.