While viewing PBS, The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer last week I had to stop my DVR and replay this clip Southern California Hit Hard by Home Foreclosures. To say that I was dumbfounded would be an understatement.
Transcript
Foreclosure Alley, in the "Inland Empire" of Riverside County, was one of the fastest growing counties in California. It saw a major housing boom: Now, it’s witnessing a major housing bust. Home after home in newer subdivisions sits vacant and foreclosed upon. As the great American novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote: "You can’t go home again."
Foreclosure Alley
By jrnis at 2008-10-28
Why would people leave behind a big screen TV?
JIM LEHRER: Now, the impact of home foreclosures in the Southern California county of Riverside. We have a story originally produced by KCET Los Angeles for its program, SoCal Connected. The correspondent is Lisa Ling.
LISA LING: You could say that these guys are a home's most unwelcome group of guests because they're here to grab, throw, bag, haul, and generally destroy everything left behind by the owner of this foreclosed home.
The mission is to fill this dumpster as quickly as possible so it can be taken to the landfill. That's right: the landfill. Nearly everything left in this house is going to the dump.
Why would people leave a big TV like that?
By jrnis at 2008-10-28
Western Security Realty Preservation, is a company that removes belongings from foreclosed homes.
JOHN PLOCHER, Western Security Realty Preservation: Well, I think that they didn't have the money to get a moving van and so they took what they could, threw it in their car, and they're off. We don't even know where they would go, but maybe to relatives, to a hotel.
LISA LING: John Plocher owns a business that contracts with banks and mortgage companies to do this dismantling, which he calls a trash-out. The word he says he came up with because it so perfectly describes how homes are emptied.
Is this house typical of a lot of the ones that you trash-out?
JOHN PLOCHER: Yes, newer home, newer neighborhoods, over the last five or six years, those are the people that participated in these subprime loans. And they're the ones that are really taking the beating.
Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals. Vultures are found on every continent except Antarctica and Oceania.
By jrnis at 2008-10-28
By jrnis at 2008-10-28
IRS - Questions and Answers on Home Foreclosure and Debt Cancellation
Is this the best that America can do for those in financial trouble and going through foreclosure?
Why can't banks give homeowner's that are in trouble 6 months to get their finances in order and add the 6 months onto the end of the person's mortgage? Allow homeowner's to refinance at a low rate in order to keep people in their homes.
Something has got to be done!
Sources: PBS, KCET
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