From the Tree at Rockefeller Center to the Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to, well, the tree at Grand Army Plaza in Park Slope, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
For Wall Street, Christmas came early this year when the greed merchants were bailed out by American taxpayers.
By contrast, thousands of New Yorkers, including some living on Main Street in Flushing, won’t be wrapping presents this year. Instead, they’'ll be packing boxes as they join the ranks of the 2.5 million homeowners facing foreclosure.
Yesterday, I attended a panel discussion, “The Impact of the Foreclosure Crisis on Women and Families in New York,” organized by the New York Women’s Foundation®. Ana L. Oliveira, NYWF’s president and CEO, observed that the financial crisis is “creating a new group of people who are losing what they had and becoming more financially vulnerable.”
Nichole Mason, executive director of the Women of Color Policy Network at NYU Wagner, noted that “single women, head of households straddle the border between economic well-being and poverty,” adding:
The dream of homeownership has turned into a nightmare for so many women.
The subprime crisis was 15 years in the making, according to Sarah Ludwig, co-executive director of Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project.
Ludwig noted the crisis is concentrated in black and Latino neighborhoods, including middle-income communities like St. Albans and Cambria Heights. Some facts:
- The number of foreclosure filings doubled between 2004 and 2008.
- Mortgage brokers targeted seniors who lived alone and had built up a lot of equity in their homes. They refinanced with a predatory loan to pay off an existing mortgage.
- Seventy percent of foreclosures went into default within the first two years of the subprime loan.
- African American women, including those with upper incomes, were five times more likely to get a subprime loan; Latino women were four times more likely.
A soon-to-be released report by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys finds that “foreclosure prevention programs that rely on 'voluntary modification' of mortgage loans are failing to put any kind of dent in the foreclosure crisis that is fueling the financial meltdown in the U.S. economy.”
Indeed, HUD Secretary Steve Preston told the Washington Post the federal response has been a “failure”:
What most people don't understand is that this program was designed to the detail by Congress. Congress dotted the i's and crossed the t's for us, and unfortunately it has made this program tough to use.
The “consequences of unbridled greed” require a systemic response to help homeowners who are drowning on dry land.
So Oliveira has sounded a call to action. She hopes to leverage the “attraction of possibilities” to catalyze a response from the philanthropic community.
For info on resources available to distressed homeowners, contact the Center for New York City Neighborhoods.
Outside NYC, free housing counseling is available at 1-888-995-HOPE.
