The Faces of Foreclosure
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw... I’m glad the Tribune did this story, to put faces onto this tragedy. Often times we lose sight of the fact that, behind the sheer enormity of the staggering numbers involved, that there are real people; decent, hardworking folk who through no fault of their own find themselves in a predicament.
Some excerpts:
“The two were in foreclosure court Wednesday to show there was a cash offer for the house. It was a short sale, where the seller gets less than what is owed. The judge refused to give him another 30 days to finalize the offer and ruled the house would be foreclosed. This is the third time in a year Washick has attempted a short sale with a cash offer. Each time, the bank refused and the homes went into foreclosure. The banks later sold those same homes for less, Washick said. "What's the point?" he wondered.”
Right: what’s the point? In this case the bank would have come out ahead had they worked with them on the short sale, versus foreclosing and then selling the house. This kind of nonsense has to be stopped. If a deal can be worked out that is good for all, then the foreclosure plan should encourage, if not make it law to do so.
“He had lived in his home for 17 years before he lost his job at a printing company, fell behind on payments and landed in foreclosure court. He asked the bank to reduce payments by $600 per month, but it refused.”
This is the other side of the equation. People are losing their homes not just because of exploding ARM rates and such. What about the person like this, and there are many of them, and will be many more, who loses their job? They need help as well.
A lot of these people are seniors or close to it. So what really troubles me is that, at a time when people are losing jobs and having little other recourse, there’s now talk of “entitlement reform” to take from seniors what little security that they have left between a life in a room somewhere eating cat food or being on the street. We’ve bailed out the banks, made Wall Street worthies whole to the tune of billions more, spent upwards of a trillion in Iraq we’ve helped others and now we turn to the least of us in society and say they must sacrifice because too much money has been spent and the budget is out of whack.
Next week Obama is holding a working group with business and congressional leaders to look at “entitlements” as a means of addressing long term budget issues. The keynote speaker will be one Pete Peterson, who has put forth a billion dollars of his own money to the cause of “reforming” social security and Medicare, which to him means these programs go away. We need to keep an eye on the proceedings and be right there to tell them if they even think about it: hands off social security!
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Thursday, February 19th 2009 at 2:15PM
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