file photo by Boyd Loving
The main industry that was the lifeline of a place like Ridgewood – Wall Street – is hemorrhaging jobs left, right and center. People no longer have the ability to sustain the on-going costs of homeownership while also saving for retirement.
In the past, people may have still swallowed the running cost as you were at least sitting on an asset (the home) that would increase in value, making for nice savings into retirement. That is done – home prices are going nowhere.
So unless there is a compelling reason, people are not going to sit around paying those high property taxes and maintenance costs, on top of ever increasing state and federal taxes.
