Foreclosure Alley

So, I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's something of a financial crisis going on due, in large part, to our current subprime mortgage disaster.

In the early 2000s, the value of real estate started going up and up, creating what economists called the housing bubble. People started buying houses left and right. In response to the rising prices, mortgage lenders lured buyers in with "teaser rates" on adjustable rate mortgages. You sign on to a 30-year mortgage at a low interest rate, but in a few years the interest rate changes and you suddenly find yourself paying monthly payments that are two, three, four times what they were initially.

This bubble, of course, burst about two years ago and the value of these houses started plummeting at the same time that the rates on these mortgages adjusted to their normal/higher rates. Oil prices also crashed through the roof, raising prices on nearly everything while most wages couldn't adjust. Suburbs all over the U.S. were hit very hard, with people struggling to pay newly gigantic payments on houses that they could not sell for half what they paid while at the same time trying to afford utilities, groceries, and gas for their cars on their now woefully inadequate salaries.

Foreclosure signs started popping up all over the place. People who had taken a gamble in search of The Good Life are now shit out of luck and the cul-de-sacs of modern suburbia are turning into ghost towns instead of the American Dream oases that they're supposed to be.

But what happens to these houses after the occupants are forced to leave? The Mother Jones Blog has a fascinating, but heart-wrenching report about a man whose company is, unfortunately, doing very well in these hard times. He is based in Southern California, one of the areas hardest hit by the crisis, and he and his men go into foreclosed homes and do a "trash out." Anything that is left in the house is tossed into a dumpster so that the house is sale-ready for the bank. The number of foreclosures has gotten so out of control that charity services can't keep up and most of the items in the houses are taken to the landfill. So this economic crisis is having rather dire effects on the environment, as well.

What's even more shocking is what people leave behind. Though they know for weeks ahead of time that they will soon be forced out, many people don't pack anything. They simply leave their lives behind. Trash out workers toss big-screen TVs, computers, family photographs, toys, clothes, furniture, food...It seems like a job that would completely wear me down after just a few days.

There are many directions in which we could point our fingers and all of them would be correct. It's the consumers' fault for taking on more house than they could afford and assuming that the market would sustain them. It's the bankers' fault for not acknowledging that the bubble would not last (and, in that respect, ignoring many of the basic elements of economics and the market which is sort of, you know, THEIR THING). It's the government's fault for not taking action years ago when experts started warning everyone that this would happen. We'll survive this, sure. But hopefully what we will take from this is a lesson that we need to de-emphasize the pursuit of The Good Life and refocus our energies toward A Good Life. For everyone.