By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on September 12, 2023
According to the latest U.S. Census data, the average American household size is 2.6 people. The number of renters was 114.4 million, or 35% of the U.S. population, in 2021.
The U.S. national median rent is vastly outpacing annual household income, whether the renter is a Republican or Democrat. As a result, evictions are soaring.
What is Washington doing about this problem? Absolutely nothing!
How to Make the Presidential Candidates Pay Attention to this Pressing Pocketbook Issue
I am a registered Independent voter who lives in California. I study critical pocketbook issues and practical solutions to problems that threaten our quality of life.
Blind alliance to a political party is forcing American voters to choose between a four-times indicted presumptive GOP nominee and a senile and fragile presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
I am forming a California-based Super PAC in early 2024. My PAC has identified the U.S. national median rent versus household income disparity as one of the growing and critical pocketbook issues that is choking the economic life out of over 40 million working-class Americans.
Yet, no presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has addressed this issue.
Instead, both political parties are saturating American voters with divisive political rhetoric about book banning, drag queens, the personal failings of candidates' family members, and who is using what public school bathrooms to urinate, flatulate, and defecate.
In Florida, for example, homeowners and renters are having an extremely difficult time purchasing homeowners and renters insurance policies without paying exorbitant premium prices, if they can get any insurance at all. Again, no presidential candidate, including Ron DeSantis, is addressing this problem.
My Independent Super PAC will steer the presidential debate back to the issues that directly impact the pocketbooks of ordinary Americans. We will also target the swing states to make sure that get the attention of the Republican and Democratic Party nominees in the 2024 presidential election.
What we know for sure is this fact: If Wall Street firms were suffering from this kind of economic chokehold, our national government would declare a national emergency and immediately hand out trillions of your hard-earned tax dollars to bail them out.
Watch this short, one-minute video to see this economic disparity for yourself:
As educator and activist Nina Turner @ninatirner says, "This IS NOT sustainable."
Dare I mention too that the homeless population has seemingly exploded in this region? One hour east of Mobile, AL, Nation's Whitest Beaches,(Pensacola) it is difficult to not see a connection between the increasing gentrification, the conversion of single family homes into Short Term Rentals, and people living in tents all over the place...up and down the train tracks, abandoned parking lots.
Even in Birmingham, I have never seen anything quite like this.
"In Florida, for example, homeowners and renters are having an extremely difficult time purchasing homeowners and renters insurance policies without paying exorbitant premium prices, if they can get any insurance at all. " I am a Florida homeowner and can attest that this is not merely anecdotal. Few are saying it, due to lack of awareness and understanding, but to me the insurance situation here appears to be an existential crisis. If the state run carrier aka "Citizens" stumbles, look out. But even if it doesn't, the situation is not tenable.