Earlier this year, I ran into a family acquaintance. During the course of our catch-up small talk, he told me that he was in the process of moving his 5-person household (2 adults, 3 kids) into his mother-in-law’s house one town over. He spoke quickly about why this was a good idea and how he hoped it would lead to them being able to move to another state to pursue better employment. I nodded politely throughout the conversation but inside, I was scratching my head. It just didn’t add up. I’d been to their house before and it was beautiful with an in-ground pool, 5 bedrooms, 2 ½ baths, on a corner lot across the street from the town’s schools. The mother-in-law’s home was tiny, and in questionable condition. At any rate, I brushed it off within a few minutes of departing.
A couple of months later, I happened to drive by the family’s old home and noticed signs posted on every window of the ground floor, including every window in the garage. I didn’t feel right pulling up in the driveway and getting out to read these signs, but something about it just didn’t seem right. I later realized these could have been notice of eviction or foreclosure signs. That acquaintance’s conversation made a bit more sense.
Six months since the day I drove past that house and put two and two together, the mortgage and foreclosure crisis is in the news nearly every day. It’s difficult to hear all of the stories and not feel a little bit (or a lot) depressed about the white-picket dreams of American culture.
Losing your home is not only financially devastating, it takes a toll psychologically. Not only may a home owner experience feelings of failure, blame, anger, shame, embarrassment, guilt, and hopelessness, but there are also societal views. We live in a society that tends to blame people for their own bad luck. An easy example of this is when someone is sick. It’s not uncommon for an employee to feel pressure or guilt about having to call off work sick. Sometimes employee sick days are blatantly questioned and disrespected by employers, leading to harsh feelings on both sides. In the current mortgage and home foreclosure crisis, it’s easy for people who are still able to make their payments to think, “Well, if they lost their house, they must have done it through some fault of their own.”
It’s really not just the homeowner’s fault. The entire process of finding and buying a home—all those people and businesses involved—is also at fault. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. For a long time, we lived in a little fantasy real-estate bubble that advocated that homeownership is achievable for everyone. Unfortunately, it was not.