Distressed Homeowners Need Lots of Help
"The government's response to the foreclosure crisis is the equivalent of trying to put out a forest fire with an eye dropper." -- Senator Elizabeth Warren
HUFFPO-While the foreclosure crisis continues to ravage communities around the country there's a pressing need for homeowner education and empowerment. Maegan Nikolic, a single mom in Whittier California, can attest to that. Since 2010 she's been run through the foreclosure wringer. She's woken up to find notices of default tacked on to her door, hired a succession of lawyers to try and find some way to resolve the mess but at every turn ran into a brick wall. After the tears, the stress, the overwhelming anxiety Maegan with her small boy in tow and threatened with a forcible eviction left her house of 17 years.
Maegan's story has been distilled down to a statistic; one that shows up on industry data bases like CoreLogic and Realty Trac but like all statistics they don't reveal the faces behind the numbers. While trillions were lost in housing values the human cost, measured in lost dreams, dislocation, divorce, depression, suicide, addiction, is incalculable. Since the housing bubble burst in 2007 there are upwards of five million stories similar to Maegan's, and if you're watching too much Fox Business News and CNBC you might think that this just an old bad dream and we're now back on the royal road to economic prosperity.
Well think again...