Arianna HuffingtonPosted February 16, 2009 08:00 PM (EST)
It's Time to Treat America's Homeowners as Well as We've Been Treating Wall Street's Bankers
If you were to make a pie chart showing the amount of attention given to the banking part of the financial crisis -- both by the government and by the media -- and the amount of attention given to the foreclosure part, the catastrophe being faced by millions of American homeowners would barely rate a sliver.
But we are facing nothing less than a national emergency, with 10,000 Americans going into foreclosure every day and 2.3 million homeowners having faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008.
When we put flesh and blood on these numbers, the suffering they represent is enormous and so is the social disintegration they entail.
For a small sample, check out Brave New Foundation's new site, Fighting For Our Homes, where you can see video of people doing just that. People like Debra from Pennsylvania who, due to health care costs, is facing foreclosure on her home of 33 years or Penny from Texas who has been pushed to the brink of homelessness as the result of costly repairs necessitated by Hurricane Ike.
"The banks are too big to fail" has been the mantra we've been hearing since September. But when you consider the millions of American homeowners facing foreclosure, aren't they also too big to be allowed to fail?
Despite being treated like an afterthought, foreclosures are actually a gateway calamity: every foreclosure is a crisis that begets a whole other set of crises.
Someone loses his or her home. It sits vacant. Surrounding home values drop. Others move out. Squatters move in. Crime goes up. Tax revenues plummet, taking school budgets down with them. For a devastating look at what foreclosures do to a community, read this brilliant New Yorker piece by George Packer.'
But we are facing nothing less than a national emergency, with 10,000 Americans going into foreclosure every day and 2.3 million homeowners having faced foreclosure proceedings in 2008.
When we put flesh and blood on these numbers, the suffering they represent is enormous and so is the social disintegration they entail.
For a small sample, check out Brave New Foundation's new site, Fighting For Our Homes, where you can see video of people doing just that. People like Debra from Pennsylvania who, due to health care costs, is facing foreclosure on her home of 33 years or Penny from Texas who has been pushed to the brink of homelessness as the result of costly repairs necessitated by Hurricane Ike.
"The banks are too big to fail" has been the mantra we've been hearing since September. But when you consider the millions of American homeowners facing foreclosure, aren't they also too big to be allowed to fail?
Despite being treated like an afterthought, foreclosures are actually a gateway calamity: every foreclosure is a crisis that begets a whole other set of crises.
Someone loses his or her home. It sits vacant. Surrounding home values drop. Others move out. Squatters move in. Crime goes up. Tax revenues plummet, taking school budgets down with them. For a devastating look at what foreclosures do to a community, read this brilliant New Yorker piece by George Packer.'
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten