Foreclosures have hit record levels, unemployment continues to hover around 10 percent and the outlook calls for an increase in these discomforting trends. Locally there are programs to help ease the aftermath of foreclosure.
Cobb County’s neighborhood stabilization program, at first blush, appears a wonderful plan. Federal HUD money is given to local municipalities to purchase foreclosed homes; that’s good, as foreclosures are unhealthy for neighborhoods, they devalue other properties and frequently, because they are vacant, remain on the market longer than owner-occupied homes that are for sale.
Good again, as the county then refurbishes these homes for resale, providing gainful employment to the workers hired to make the improvements. And good finally, as “deserving buyers” are given the assistance they otherwise wouldn’t have to purchase these homes.
But does anyone stop to consider what happened to the family that once occupied that foreclosed home? Did they land safely and stably somewhere else? Do their children continue to attend neighborhood schools or are they being forced to adjust to a new, unfamiliar area? Did their mortgage holder work with them in any meaningful way before they evicted them? Did the county reach out to offer them property tax relief? Did anyone offer to help make the necessary repairs that they were unable to afford?
Daily I see the bumper stickers telling me to “honk if I’m paying your mortgage,” but the fact is that the bank bailout never helped those who needed it most. Nobody has helped anyone make their mortgage payments, because if they had, there wouldn’t be the record foreclosure rate being reported now and that is forecast to grow even higher as banks remedy their backlog of troubled home loans by repossessing them. These are the same banks that were given our tax money to help offset toxic mortgages and ease consumer credit.
But credit was never eased. As I pay down balances on credit cards, my credit is cut back to where my balance now resides, effectively rendering me a debtor, not a credit customer. And when I paid off my gas credit cards at the end of each month, I received notices that they were being canceled as no money was being made from my accounts.
The high unemployment does not reflect how pervasive the situation is, as those figures don’t include those of us who have not had a full-time job recently enough to be counted, nor those of us juggling many and several part-time jobs.
What Cobb County is doing is essentially no different from banks foreclosing — spending on renovations, then selling, rather than working with the family trying to maintain residency in their home. But the loss on the sale this time is borne by the taxpayers and the family foreclosed upon, rather than the bank. It is certainly preferable to have a family in a neighborhood home, but why not first work with that original homeowner? I would feel uncomfortable building my future on someone else’s misfortune.
Vicki Griffin lives in Roswell. Reach her at vlg1230@hotmail.com
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