Its been said that when America catches a cold, minorities get pneumonia. The current economic meltdown is just another example of this. Aside from the unemployment rate for minorities being significantly higher than any other racial demographic -- currently the unemployment rate for Blacks hover at around 12%, and 9.2% for Hispanics while the National figures are about 7.2% -- one can only expect the ripple effect to carry over into the housing sector.
With foreclosures at a record high, one can expect minorities to feel the brunt of the fallout as usual. In the third quarter of 2008, more than 700,000 Americans faced foreclosure -- a new and troubling record.
Having said that, take a look at this...
Yes folks, that was depressing. I've never been evicted from anywhere I've ever lived before, but I can assure you that getting kicked out of an apartment is nothing like being evicted from your home. A home for most, is the ultimate investment. For many, its the culmination of hard work in an attempt to grab a piece of the American dream. Sadly, the dream has become a nightmare for many all across this great nation of ours.
So who's to blame? Well, let the uninformed tell it, its the fault of individuals who sought to live beyond their means. That's right, once again, its the fault of all those undiciplined minorities and their inability to pay their bills. Yup, never mind predatory lending; that whole idea is a myth. That's right, according to "them", the idea of banks motivated by greed as they sought to plunder a certain demographic is a lie. Yup, that never happened according to them.
"According to the 2007 Annual Minority Lending Report, about 47 percent of Hispanics and 48 percent of Blacks who purchased mortgages in 2006 got higher-cost loans, compared with about 17 percent of whites and Asians. The predatory lending that targeted minority communities has now resulted in “extreme geographic concentrations of foreclosures,” said Jason Reece, a senior researcher at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity.
Cities like Baltimore, Maryland, have initiated lawsuits against lenders for targeting Blacks with sub-prime loans. Two-thirds of the foreclosures related to Wells Fargo in that city were in census tracts where Blacks account for 60 percent of residents."
SOURCE
So this week Barack "Super Nigga" Obama is back on the campaign trail to push the idea of legislature to aid families caught up in the Mortgage Crisis shit storm, by way of a $50 billion rescue & prevention plan.
""Our focus will be on using the full resources of the government to help bring down mortgage payments and to reduce mortgage interest rates," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said last week as he announced the administration's financial stability plan."- SOURCE
According to Realty Trac, there were 2.3 million foreclosures in 2008 alone. Estimates point to another 2 million this year alone. That's right, things are bad out here, and something needs to be done. The irony of all of this is that Obama will be announcing details of his plan in Arizona. So what's so ironic? Well, its the state that leads the way in home foreclosures, and just happens to be the home state of Senator John McCain. To me, I find it very appropriate that Obama is using this state as the backdrop for his announcement. This way his detractors -- namely republicans on Capitol Hill -- even in their defiance, will be put on front street.
One can only wonder how they are going to spin this at the end of the day. If were up to me, there would be at least a six month moratorium on foreclosures. Especially for the banks who are now surviving on tax payer dollars. I think its only right in an attempt to give people some breathing room as they get themselves together. But hey, that's just me, and I know to many out there, this would be too much like socialism.
RECOMMENDED READING: Communities Foreclosed
QUESTION(S): Who do you think is at fault for the Mortgage Crisis? Do you think it's the fault of individual home buyers or bankers? Do you believe the gov't has a hand in the current situation? What do you think, if anything, the gov't should do about the problem?
5 comments:
i kno ive commenting on this before (cant remember which blog) but i blame the bankers and i kno people will say that the homebuyers should have been aware of what they were getting themselves into BUT the bankers lied and swindled people into these homes outright. they fluffed peoples incomes and everything just to get that money. they made people believe that they were getting into a situation that they could handle knowing damn well that 6 months or a year down the line the homeowner was gonna be shit outta luck when their mortgages doubled and tripled. i mean when u go to closing u dont read that big ass stack of paper u just sign where they tell u to sign and believe that these people on the other side of the table know what business ETHICS are and have ur best interest in mind....but they didnt. anyway im just glad im not caught up in all that but hell they can give us renters a 6 month break to "get ourselves together" too lol
I say it's the lenders whom are at fault. Prime example: How the hell are you gonna offer homebuyers and homeowners "interest only" loans? Everybody knows that when you borrow money (I don't give a flyin hoot which institution it's from) that you have to pay interest as well as the principle on a loan. I'm sure somebody around this camp took Econ 101 in high school or something. LOL.
But it's just sad to say that what these lenders are doing is trying to keep everybody but the upper-middle class and rich white people from achieving the so-called "American Dream". I think in essence that dream is a dillusion and fraudulent on so many levels. White America doesn't want to see other races get ahead, and so they do what they can in every way possible to cheat us out of reaching higher goals to be homeowners. Fucked up. And yes, that video was mad depressing. To go from having a house, to having nothing?! DISTURBING.
Mainly, I blame the GOP's loopholes in quasi-regulations and the last 8 years of Bush policies and war mongering.
I see no solutions because this is no longer a problem. I think it's a chronic condition that inevitably will be fatal to American life as we knew it.
I believe that the responsibility for this problem lies with both the banks and with people across the board living beyond their means. We all had a role to play in this crisis. More than anyone though I blame middle-class Americans who buy 4500 sq ft homes when all they need is a small 3 bedroom house. This is the problem. People in America who "need" a bigger house. That's B.s. They don't "need" a bigger house. They want a bigger house and will do anything to create the illusion that they can afford it and "Keep Up with the Jones!"
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