PBS – Bill Moyers Journal – America is leading the world in a way it would rather not. The meltdown in the mortgage market has triggered turmoil on Wall Street and in banking establishments around the globe. THE ECONOMIST labels the root of the problem “America’s deeply flawed system of housing finance.” RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of default data, said that by July 2008, more than 252,000 properties, one in 501 U.S. households, had entered a stage of the foreclosure process. Some blame the banks, some blame the borrowers, some blame the bubble mentality. Was it a matter of giving credit where no credit was due or something more?
On the ground in some American towns and cities the figures related by financial news service Bloomberg on July 10 — Foreclosures Rose 53% in June, Bank Seizures Tripled — are manifestly visible. Correspondent Rick Karr journeyed to Slavic Village, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods in the nation when it comes to the spate of foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage crisis. There, more than 1,000 homes stand vacant and decaying in a neighborhood that once thrived with families living the American dream of home ownership.
Cleveland city leaders have been dealing with the subprime mortgage fallout for several years and can enumerate the ways it has cost their city:
* Lost property tax revenues
* Foreclosures are straining Cleveland’s police and fire budgets, too, as drug dealers and addicts gravitate to abandoned homes
* In 2007 and 2008 the City of Cleveland will have spent $12 million demolishing foreclosed and abandoned homes.
* The number of homeless students in Cleveland’s public schools has increased by 40% over the last yearhttp://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch.html
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07182008/watch2.html
