Thursday, October 2, 2008

Some snapshots of the US housing crisis

A USA Today article on the human costs of the foreclosure crisis:

Nearly 61% of local and state homeless coalitions say they've seen a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a study released in April by the National Coalition for the Homeless.

According to the study, which let respondents offer multiple replies when asked where they're headed once their property is foreclosed on, 76% of displaced homeowners and renters are moving in with relatives and friends. About 54% are moving to emergency shelters. About 40% are already on the streets.

Those facing homelessness include the working poor, who were among those hardest hit by the collapse in subprime mortgages. But others are middle-class families who scarcely expected to find themselves unable to afford their homes.

"Shelters are full, and it's getting worse," says Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. "There are more homeless homeowners, people who first try to downsize, then wind up living with family and friends or in vehicles. At the shelters, there's almost no room at the inn. It's first come, first serve."

Six cities reported a rise in the number of homeless people who used emergency shelter and transitional housing programs in the past year, and 10 cities reported an increase in households with children seeking help, according to a 2007 survey done in part by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The report cites several reasons for the increase, with the rise in foreclosures at the top of the list. Many cities that have seen an increase in homelessness — among them Detroit, Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City — have also suffered sharp jumps in foreclosures.

From here.

Which also has this-- Study: Subprime mess hits blacks harder
The report also identifies greater damage among black borrowers and neighborhoods than other ethnic groups, regardless of income level. Black borrowers defaulted at a rate of 28% in 2005 and 24% in 2006 — more than any other ethnic group — and more than three times as often as white
borrowers, who defaulted on nearly 8% on 2005 loans and 5% on 2006 loans. “Income seemed to be no protector to avoid this pitfall,” Dr. Colton said.


Among high-income people, 60% of the loans to black borrowers were subprime despite their income levels, the study said. The data suggests there is a new way of victimizing black borrowers, she said, in contrast to older practices when loans simply were not made available to black borrowers and some neighborhoods were victimized through redlining.

Stupid racist mother-fuckers. The only consolation was that those assholes who set black families up for failure so that they could profit from the high interest rates they charged were going to get stung too. But here comes Barack Obama and the Democrats, joining hands with the most unpopular president in US history, to bail them out.

4 comments:

trog69 said...

I'm no economist or historian, but I was always under the impression that the Depression was something that happened to everybody; The rich took it in the shorts on the stock market, which caused the lower-class to lose jobs, and savings when the banks were overrun; What middle-class there was got it on both ends. There doesn't seem to be very many stories of how any one group made it through those times relatively unscathed.

Seems like things aren't looking the same way now, do they?

Anonymous said...

Before anyone cries too hard about "racist" banks, remember who was FORCING banks to give out riskier loans.

http://www.mediacircus.com/2008/10/obama-sued-citibank-under-cra-to-force-it-to-make-bad-loans/

This pampering and reverse discrimination has been going on for decades now, and simply does not work. Every loser will find fault in others and not themselves.

thwap said...

Knight 99,

I've already dealt with that stupidity here. I visited your link and it looks like some cobbled-together right-wing non-issue shit.

Check out this encounter for a pretty good demolition of the thesis that black people caused the financial meltdown, esp:

"Tell me you're not ashamed to put this gigantic international financial Krakatoa at the feet of a bunch of poor black people who missed their mortgage payments. The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That's like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it's all speculation by Wall Street traders. It's a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable."

Finally, I dealt with the incoherence of blaming the minority Democrats for blocking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform here.

thwap said...

trog69,

Sorry I didn't get to that earlier comment of yours. I actually think that the super-rich in the USA did all right in the Great Depression. There really weren't any stock-brokers jumping out of windows in October, 1929. That was just a myth.