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FBI, IRS Raid Home of Sen. Ted Stevens
A while back we discussed the corruption investigation aimed at Alaska Sen. Ted "series of tubes" Stevens. A number of readers sent us word that the home of Sen. Stevens was raided earlier today by agents of the FBI and the IRS. The focus of the raid was a remodeling project at Stevens's home and the involvement of VECO, an oil company.
And here is a nice video explaining the whole VECO scandal.
It doesn't look good for Ted.
And by the way, do you know why it is going to cost $315 million for a bridge going across a 2000 ft waterway? Because the people didn't want it to affect cruise ships using the waterway (even though it would only cause them to go about 30 miles to circumnavigate the island) and because the planners refuse to use the shortest path to the airport. In any reasonable place they wouldn't decide to build a suspension bridge. They would use a truss bridge or a cantilever bridge with narrow spans for $5-$10 million and tell the damn cruise ships to go around. That is, unless the federal government was paying for it.
And why would a family starting out need 1.5 acre tract of land in an urban area of 260k people (http://anchorage.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm)? I don't claim to know anything about the geography of the area, but a quick search of realtor.com shows that anyone can buy a .25 acre piece of land for an average of $25k, or half an acre for $22k-$50k. As a middle income family, you can apparently get yourself a starter home of 1200sq feet for around $180k ($100k for a starter condo). If you want to consider moving to the 'burbs, just like any other city, it of course gets much cheaper.
Now lets compare this to say, many other American cities. Anchorage has an "Owner-occupied housing units" rate of 60%, which is among the highest in the country (again, areaconnect.com/statistics.htm says that Tucson is 53%, Oklahoma City is close at 59%, Las Vegas is also 59%, Orlando is 40.7%, Boston is 32%, Syracuse is 40%, Dallas is 43%, Los Angeles is 38%, Manchester NH is 46%). So this tells me that people are having less of a hard time achieving home ownership in Anchorage than just about any other part of the country.
I'm not trying to flame you as I am sure many people there go through the same struggles as elsewhere, but just trying to put everything into a bit of perspective. Anchorage isn't the $40k housing market some people in the lower 48 might expect, but it seems easier to achieve personal home ownership there than most other urban cities in the country. I suspect if you start to consider suburbs, just like any other city, the numbers skew much differently.