Nearly 3 percent of homes that were once occupied by their owners in the country were vacant in March. That is up from less than 2 percent three years ago and is the highest since the Census bureau began publishing the number in 1956. 

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Combine that with this.

“At one point, bankruptcy seemed beyond the pale, but it’s something that one hears about a lot more now,” said John Quigley, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley. “And in California, you hear about a lot of cities being pushed to this sort of thinking by the housing crisis.”

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Putting the pieces of this puzzle together it becoming easier and easier. If individuals don’t have the capacity to pay taxes, (taking for granted that the will is there), where will the taxes come from? Not the taxes needed to rebuild infrastructure, or to redesign our cities, the taxes necessary to keep water sources clean?