Foreclosing On A Dream

I may talk about the economic numbers on this blog in a clinical manner, but it's important to keep in mind there are real people whose lives are being affected by these numbers, and they are making up the new ranks of America's growing homeless problem.

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.

At a shelter for women and children run by the West Side Catholic Center in Cleveland, where Ms. West now lives, foreclosure accounted for zero arrivals in 2007, the center’s executive director, Gerald Skoch, said. Last year, two cases emerged. This year, the number has already reached four.

Similar increases have been reported at shelters in California, Michigan and Florida, where a combination of joblessness and the real estate bust have generated unusually severe rates of foreclosure.

The banksters are still reporting record profits and making record bonuses. The ashes of the lives those banksters help to ruin aren't even cold yet. And the best part is with the shape state and local budgets are in, resources to help people like Sheri West here are vanishing like water into the desert.

When I talk about America's residential real estate depression, I'm talking also about the growing numbers of Americans who are on the streets because of it.

And it will only get worse. There but for the grace of God goes this blogger.