The Human Side to Foreclosures: It’s Someone’s Home

I’ve talked a lot about the economic side to foreclosures but sometimes we forget that for many people, the house wasn’t just an investment, it was their home.

Foreclosures have been happening for decades, so it’s not a recent phenomena. But no matter how it happens, it can be devastating to some families.

This is from the Chicago Tribune, written by a Tribune photographer named Heather Stone:

I was 16 years old, living in Owensboro, Ky., on a street called Greenacre Drive, when the American Dream died for me.

We were losing the home I had grown up in.

The house, a modern split-level with 2.5 baths on about 2 acres of land, was being sold due to foreclosure. The auction price: less than $75,000, about half its true value.

The cost to me and my family, meanwhile, was immeasurable. We had to move out in a week.

I think of this now amid all the news of families losing their homes.

Her father was in the early stages of dementia. Her mother had a side retail business that was for “fun” and was in no way able to support the family. It was the early 1980s, and her mother was of an era when women didn’t really “work.”

My mother had strong attachments to her house as well. She had designed some of its architecture. She had lived there for 25 years. Leaving was such a painful upheaval of emotions.

Not to mention clutter. That was almost indescribable. I just remember a mound of memories sitting in the yard, a 10-foot-tall heap of things we did not know what to do with.

How could we fit 25 years of a house into the apartment we were headed for?

She describes throwing away cherished momentos of their family in the rush to move (as her mother was emotionally unable to do most things that needed to be done to get the family out of the house.)

All of this is certainly painful to read. A change in a family’s financial circumstances are especially hard on the children.

In the current wave of foreclosures, the foreclosures have been cause by a mixture of free credit, Americans who rolled the dice and bet on continuing appreciation, and then the usual suspects of divorce, job loss, illness and death.

On the other side of the country, in the San Francisco suburbs, sheriffs are given the grim task of following through on evictions from homes. It is these policemen, and not the banks, that see the human result of the free and easy credit.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

People get plenty of warning during the foreclosure process, which takes from six to 12 months. Then they get a “notice to vacate” from the sheriff at least six days before the eviction date.

“There are a few who are holdouts,” Custodio said. “I try to be as courteous as possible; allow them to gather a few things, a toothbrush.”

Still, the deputies draw their guns before entering a seemingly vacant residence.

“We have some where they tell you they’re not going anywhere,” Odom said. “You talk and reason with them. Most people, when they get the understanding that their other option is to be arrested and go to jail” agree to leave voluntarily.

A whole crew assembles for evictions. There are the two deputies in a patrol car - they take a “cage unit” car in case they have to arrest someone for refusing to vacate. At each property, they are met by the owner or a representative. When it’s a foreclosure, that generally means a Realtor or property manager hired by the bank. Often, the owner also arranges for a locksmith to be there to rekey the property or to gain entry if necessary.

The deputies will not kick in a door. “It is not the sheriff’s office policy to destroy property, unless it’s an exigent circumstance,” Custodio said.

Odom, who has been on eviction patrol for just a few months after nine years as a county patrol officer, had already witnessed a particularly dramatic incident with a foreclosed homeowner.

“We had one where we thought nobody was there,” he said. “The locksmith was working on changing the locks. Then a guy came to the screen door - he had slit his wrists and had blood running down both arms. He said let him alone to die in peace.”

After calling for police backup, Odom was able to persuade the man to get in an ambulance to go to the hospital. His injuries turned out not to be serious.

In the 1930s, one of the reasons many state governors put a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures was because the sheriffs were getting shot at when they went to do the evictions (usually by upset farmers.)

We could easily see that again. These sheriffs have a dangerous job.

Your home is your castle and it has many emotional ties for people.

In this “new era” of investors walking away from condos and investment homes or some buyers who have only lived in their homes for 2 years and who have little equity- we forget about the others, who for whatever reason, have gotten into financial trouble and now can’t get out.

These are their stories.

And there will be many more, unfortunately, to come- before the system is purged of the excesses.