The Human Cost of a Credit Crunch
With all the news about partially nationalizing banks, and with the candidates rolling out new economic proposals and facing off in a debate tonight over their
Jul 31, 20205.3K Shares760.4K Views
With all the news about partially nationalizing banks, and with the candidates rolling out new economic proposals and facing off in a debate tonight over their prescriptions for the credit crunch, it’s easy to forget that the whole mess still comes down to simple things: A homeowner, and a home.
That’s why you should expect to see more sad stories like the one Peter Viles at L.A. Land notes. A Pasadena woman, facing eviction and foreclosure, apparently killed herself. Wanda Dunn, 53, may have set her house on fire first, then committed suicide, police said.
FromThe Los Angeles Times coverage:
“„…Neighbor Scott Harden, 36, said he had heard from others that Dunn was going to kill herself because she was going to lose her house. He said he also knew that she was apparently going to be evicted on Monday, “so I was on red alert.”
“„On Sunday night, he said, he saw Dunn moving boxes and packing up her car. About 5 a.m. the next morning, he said he saw smoke coming from the house and immediately called 911.
It’s unavoidable that people are going to lose their homes; lenders can’t just give them away. But surely, in all this mess, if we can come up with a $700-billion rescue package for Wall Street, we can think of a way to add some humanity to the foreclosure process. In some Michigan counties, tax collectors use social workers to help people facing foreclosure adjust to losing their homes and move on to renting.
It’s just a small thing, and it’s not hard to replicate elsewhere. It’s a recognition that among the tangle of credit default swaps and subprime mortgage-backed securities is a person who faces the pain of losing her house.
If we can take all sorts of unprecedented steps to intervene in the private market and provide banks with capital, couldn’t we also do a little bit more for the people with their boxes on the sidewalk — and their dreams down the drain?
Hajra Shannon
Reviewer
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