Devastation Coming to Your Neighborhood? Mortgage Crisis in Perspective

from HuffPost:




Linda Cronin-Gross
Devastation Coming to Your Neighborhood? Mortgage Crisis in Perspective
Posted December 17, 2007 | 12:04 PM (EST)



The current mortgage crisis is not only destroying individual families, but whole neighborhoods too. And the neighborhoods that are being destroyed, at least in NYC, are the very neighborhoods that try so hard to "make it," but can't seem to catch a break for long.

That's the very important message in a terrific story in today's NY Times written by veteran reporter and Bronx native David Gonzalez.

Gonzalez spent "shoe leather" time in the Bronx, talking to local storeowners and residents in the Williamsbridge neighborhood (and others), and what he found was alarming: people can't afford to fix their houses or buy more furniture because every cent, in many cases, is going to pay off a bad mortgage. This story is important because it's one of the first stories I've seen that actually documents the "domino effect" that the mortgage crisis has already started to have in many neighborhoods.

The math for this is really quite simple: bad mortgages = financial crisis for families = less money spent in the neighborhood on things like furniture and home improvements = businesses and shops that have to close = neighborhoods that will soon look like they did in the "bad old days" of early 80's.

Gonzalez also spent some time with a mortgage counselor at the North Bronx office of Neighborhood Housing Services of NYC. NHS, one of the largest non-profit housing groups in the City, is 25 years old and provides homeownership education, financial assistance and community leadership. It's a unique groups because NHS is led by local residents and guided by local needs. And so, as you can imagine, NHS has been nearly overwhelmed by the number of people seeking assistance; some people are already in foreclosure, some are worried that soon they'll be unable to keep up with their payments, and others come in to try to avoid trouble altogether.

And if you think this scenario couldn't possibly happen to you or anyone you know, think again. Many of the families now caught up in the mortgage mess are solidly middle class. They have jobs as civil servants, police officers, school aides, nurses. Their only crime - pursuing the American dream and believing that those who offered them a piece of that dream, home ownership, were experts and were sincere.

Read it and weep: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/nyregion/17citywide.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-gross/devastation-coming-to-you_b_77118.html

people are WAY ove that these days, so it's no wonder they have nothing left..

Instead of McMansions.

it would mean that people would have to return to the era of the single car garage, and kids sharing bedrooms & bathrooms.. would we do it? probably not unless we HAD to..
and who would be living in these monstrocity houses that are already here?

During the depression, large houses were turned into rooming houses..

Maybe they can covert them to small apartment buildings....

Between the abandoned McMansions and empty big-box stores, suburbia is going to be an UGLY blighted landscape in the not-too-distant future.

Between the school loans and the house payment, we don't have much for re-doing the kitchen like we'd planned or getting new windows.

If we're in that predicament, I can just imagine what everyone else is going through. Times are getting worse, and one of these days, things are going to blow.

With the housing market crumbling, there are millions of jobs in danger.

Construction workers
Manufacturers of tools, supplies, components for housing and construction
Transportation of housing supplies
etc

And, a lot of those workers were bamboozled into buying into the "American Dream" and won't be able to pay their mortgages or buy the stuff that makes the economy work. Or, pay as much in taxes.

If the county avoids a major recession it will be a miracle.

Seems pretty inevitable at this point. And major recession might be an optimistic.