As we enter September, this month marks the ten-year anniversary of the housing collapse. I started this blog as a result of that mess, moving from BooMan Tribune to my own place once it became clear that documenting the atrocities was going to be a part-time job in 2008.
Now in 2018, most Americans still haven't recovered from the financial disaster, and a second housing crisis now looms very large on the horizon. We're still in the same mess we were, and at every turn, corporate and Republican forces have worked to keep us in the hole. Our Sunday Long Read at the Penny Hoarder goes over the details.
Heather and Rick Little learned in court that they would have to leave their home by Dec. 10 — just two weeks before Christmas.
The Littles knew the foreclosure was coming before the October 2008 hearing.
The bank was relentless with calls and notices and big fat envelopes, Heather remembers. She called and begged for help, but there was nothing the bank could do. “Nothing they would do,” she said.
She stopped trying to stall the foreclosure.
The day of the hearing, the Littles wheeled their daughter, Emma, then 19 months old, into the Manatee County, Florida, courthouse in her stroller. Their son, John, was in kindergarten that day.
The judge was sympathetic, Heather recalls. He asked them how much time they needed to pack up and move. The hearing took less than 15 minutes.
“There was no one around, thankfully,” she said, “because I fell apart.”
Their house became one of the 9 million homes that would go into foreclosure nationwide between 2007 and 2010.
The Littles went from hosting barbecues in their backyard with a swimming pool and outdoor kitchen to taking whatever they could get from local food banks.
A decade after the height of the Great Recession in 2008, people who lost homes and careers are still recovering.
For the Littles, life is more stable now, but the swimming pool and outdoor kitchen are long gone.
Today, the family’s backyard holds plastic pots where Heather grows fruits and vegetables — signs she still remembers what it felt like to question where their next meal would come from.
“We had nothing extra at the end of every month,” Heather said of the years after their foreclosure. “Nothing. Not even a dollar.”
Trillions in wealth was destroyed, and the recovery vastly favored those who already had wealth after 2008. They got exponentially more wealthy, while the rest of us have put the American dream of homeownership and passing on a family place to our kids aside.
We're just trying to make the next rent payment.
President Obama did what he could, but it simply wasn't enough. And after 2010, we hung him out to dry in favor of the "populist" GOP. That mistake sealed the deal and left us in the lurch where we are now, ten years later.
And now Trump is in charge, and the reality is unless we break the GOP's hold on government in 2018, we're going to collapse again, and this time, America's not coming back.
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