Grim Perspective on Mortgage Crisis in Poor Nabes
Former FT scribe and Bed Stuy resident James Doran has a powerful piece on WNYC this morning about how the combination of lending abuse and outright fraud are combining to hit the borough’s poorer neighborhoods like Bed Stuy and East New York particularly hard. I wish I could say that the worst is over but…
Former FT scribe and Bed Stuy resident James Doran has a powerful piece on WNYC this morning about how the combination of lending abuse and outright fraud are combining to hit the borough’s poorer neighborhoods like Bed Stuy and East New York particularly hard. I wish I could say that the worst is over but the projections for NYC are not good,”says Sarah Ludwig, director of Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP). “What you see is that the foreclosure actions filed are overwhelmingly concentrated in New York’s neighborhoods of color.” Doran reports that the number of mortgage fraud cases on the FBI’s plate quadrupled over the past year. One victim is James LeSure, who’s on the verge of losing the building he’s owned on Bushwich Avenue since 1969. After paying off his mortgage completely, LeSure refinanced a few years ago when, with medical bills starting to pile up, he received a cold-call from a mortgage broker promising to solve all his problems with an expensive ARM that would, the broker said, be refinanced into a fixed-rate loan within a few months. That never happened, and now LeSure is in the process of having his one asset taken away from him. New York Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) did one study of Bed Stuy that “almost every other house on the block had risky loans that were likely to default.” Update: The transcript and audio are now available on the link.
Housing Crisis Hits City Hard [WNYC]
NEDAP: Foreclosure Map [WNYC]
I love how the same people that are espousing this “they were illiterate, uneducated poor people and we need to help them” are the SAME ones ripping on some posters’ grammar. Oh the liberal hypocrisy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
4:53’s addition…
This is getting positively hysterically funny.
Laughing through the tears,
FortGreener
yah, you be right 4:25.
forget the message, it’s all about diction!
thou arst a douchebaggery.
Montrose Morris is right, if you REALLY care (like The What tries to claim) then you’d make suggestions and brainstorm to help people. Not just try as hard as you can to make people afraid and miserable. It’s that very intent that undermines everything you say and do, The What. It shows us you are not a good person.
Has there been a study nationwide, not just citywide, on foreclosures and age of homeowners of all races? That study would be more revealing to me about who was targeted by these lenders, than just looking at NYC where there may be a concentration of elderly black homeowners. Could be something cultural, like they are more likely to stay in NYC after retirement instead of leave for Florida.
Companies who take advantage of seniors are disgusting. These companies knew full well what could occur.
4:00 PM (Consequentialist Libertarianism!):
Don’t be so jerky and cockeyed…throwing around big words that don’t mean anything in this discussion. Montrose Morris is not writing a novel but an essay.
4:10 PM Thanks for that addition.
Monsieur Le What…yes, please, you really need to write coherently. You don’t do your argument(s) any service by writing the way you do. And, BTW, I don’t disagree with most of what you write. You know the old addage: more flies with honey…? That might help too. Otherwise, your comments look like so much sputtering to many people (not me…I am just looking at it from the PR side of it) which shuts down their receptiveness…but you probably know this already. 😉
FortGreener
Good God, What. If it’s all a huge scam, then just opt out, pitch a teepee in the woods of Manitoba, and live off the land. Fact is, the majority of us have to function in this society as best we can, and that involves playing the money game with the hands dealt us. Most people just want to be able to pay their bills, put something aside, and have a bit extra for some niceties in life. What’s wrong with that? Not everyone can convert their assets into diamonds and gold, or figure out the convolutions of thought cooked up by the economic think tanks and Nobel Prize winners. How about some practical suggestions, instead of striding up and down Main Street with a sandwich board announcing the end is near?
Dr. Ron Paul for President!
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
“The way I see it, it’s not even a race issue. This is a national issue with great implications of America in a globalized world. This housing bubbles started with Greenspan & Co leveraged by easy Chinese credits.”
You’re not alone, What, and I’m taking back my earlier compliments. This guy is as semi-literate as you are! Not surprisingly, his message is similar. I find it hard to take you guys very seriously considering you don’t have command of your own primary language.