The current foreclosure crisis has led to large-scale displacement of former homeowners and their families. From 2005-2010, this crisis has produced a wave of displacement, which still shows little sign of slowing, and is predicted to continue until 2012. Research shows that those who have been the most heavily impacted by foreclosure are people of color, homeowners with low educational attainment, the elderly, and women homeowners. This paper engages the foreclosure and displacement literatures and discusses five pilot interviews to examine the ways in which households have been impacted, at the level of the individual and the household. While the popular press and academic literature have focused on the impacts of foreclosures on the financial and mortgage industries, the impacts of foreclosure and displacement on families and neighborhoods continue to be profound and are silently undermining stability and producing deep social uncertainty. The literature on displacement due to natural disaster, urban renewal, and gentrification foregrounds the ways the current foreclosure crisis may operate differently from past large-scale displacements, and provides insight into the social and equity implications of the foreclosure crisis. Interviews with individuals who have been foreclosed upon, and church pastors from communities with high rates of foreclosure, show how displacement contributes to uncertainty and hardship for many families. This paper examines the variety of realms affected by foreclosure, from the social to the spatial, and analyzes the ways in which the foreclosure crisis is becoming a displacement crisis that may be reproducing social inequalities.
Source: ISSC Fellows Working Papers, Institute for the Study of Social Change, UC Berkeley [via eScholarship Repository]
Download full pdf publication | Link to online abstract
1 comment:
THE SOLUTION TO THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS
A Workforce Housing Program which has been around for more than 30 years and actively utilized in the ski resorts and many major cities could simply be applied to resolve the foreclosure crisis.
The plan would be to offer an opportunity to all homeowners to participate in launching a National Workforce Housing Program by placing a “Deed Restriction” on their home (must live in the home, own no other home and work for a living) with a 3% yearly cap rate for sale purposes. The home would be reappraised at the new value (30% to 50% less than a similar free-market home). The mortgage would be rewritten and payments adjusted to the new appraised value.
It would not be a “give-away” or a “bail-out” since the participants would buy-in to the program by forfeiting the “free-market” appreciation value of their home and by also participating in launching a National Workforce Housing Program, which is much needed, plus there would be no negative stigma on participants since they paid to participate.
The home would remain affordable to workforce people and families forever due to the restricted appreciation and sale price (3% compounded yearly).
It would not encourage homeowners who own a home they can afford to jump in on a “give-away” or “bail-out” they don’t need, but would reward them by solving the foreclosure problem in their neighborhoods and cities and allowing their home to start appreciating again and allow the economy to repair it self.
The Plan could also be offered to bank owned and developer owned homes, which would also help the housing industry by doing away with the over-supply of homes for sale in our country which is a major problem.
It would also create and opportunity for renters and 1st time homebuyers to purchase a home at an affordable price which is also much needed and deserved.
This is a once in a life-time opportunity to create a national workforce housing program at a fraction of the cost of a piece-meal price while solving the foreclosure crisis and the homes would be scattered throughout communities instead of concentrated in projects.
It is a solution to the foreclosure crisis and one that we already understand, and know how to run and implement not one we made up for the crisis.
Families would be able to keep their homes and homes would once again become a home like in the not so long ago times of our grandparents who burned the mortgage as soon as they could and never borrowed against their home again. Scott Brown
linalsh
Post a Comment