Lederman reports: "More than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says."
Seniors have been hit hard by the foreclosure crisis. (photo: AARP Magazine)
Foreclosure Crisis Hits Older Americans Hard
19 July 12
ore than 1.5 million older Americans already have lost their homes, with millions more at risk as the national housing crisis takes its toll on those who are among the worst positioned to weather the storm, a new AARP report says.
Older African Americans and Hispanics are the hardest hit.
"The Great Recession has been brutal for many older Americans," said Debra Whitman, AARP's policy chief. "This shows that home ownership doesn't guarantee financial security later in life."
Even working two jobs hasn't been enough to allow Jewel Lewis-Hall, 57, to make her monthly mortgage payments on time. Her husband has made little money since being laid off from his job at a farmer's market, and Lewis-Hall said her salary as a school cook falls short of what she needs to make the payments on her home in Washington.
Lewis-Hall and her husband have been making their payments late for about a year, but panic didn't set in until recently, when the word "foreclosure" showed up in a letter from the bank.
"You're used to living a certain way, but one thing leads to another," Lewis-Hall said. "It's not like I have a new car or anything. I'm driving one from 1991."
According to AARP:
—About 600,000 people who are 50 years or older are in foreclosure.
—About 625,000 in the same age group are at least three months behind on their mortgages.
—About 3.5 million — 16 percent of older homeowners — are underwater, meaning their home values have gone down and they now owe more than their homes are worth.
AARP said that over the past five years, the proportion of loans held by older Americans that are seriously delinquent jumped by more than 450 percent.
Homeowners who are younger than 50 have a higher rate of serious delinquency than their older counterparts. But the rate is increasing at a faster pace for older Americans than for younger ones, according to AARP's analysis of more than 17 million mortgages.
Americans who are 50 or older are hard-pressed to recover from the collapse of the housing market that started in 2006 and was compounded by the recession that started in 2007. Eight in 10 of them own homes, but many live on fixed incomes, have little savings or have already burned through much of their retirement savings. They also have fewer working years left to build back what they may have lost.
And those who are forced to re-enter the workforce often find they can't command the same salary that they did in the past.
Older minorities are facing foreclosure rates that are almost double those faced by white borrowers of the same age, mirroring a nationwide trend seen in other age groups as well. Among older African Americans, 3.5 percent were in foreclosure at the end of 2011, and the rate was 3.9 percent for Hispanics. Just 1.9 percent of white homeowners were in foreclosure.
The issue has become so dire in Rep. Elijah Cummings' Maryland district that he has assigned one of his 20 staffers to work full time to help struggling homeowners, and his office holds regular foreclosure prevention workshops. He said the federal government can do its part by promoting principal reduction and loan modification programs.
"These are people who in many instances have never missed a payment in 20 years," Cummings, a Democrat, said in an interview. "You see grown men crying because of the potential loss of a home."
Among older homeowners, those who are 75 or older are in the worst shape when it comes to foreclosures, the report showed. In 2007, one out of every 300 homeowners 75 or older was in foreclosure. Five years later, about one in 30 face that same fate.
Many of those oldest homeowners may have lost income they were counting on, such as the retirement benefits of a deceased spouse. In the meantime, their mortgage payments have stayed the same.
The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better, AARP officials predicted, because of a housing market that is recovering at a snail's pace.
"This crisis is far from over," Whitman said. "We need to think about more creative solutions now that we have this data."
___
Online:
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
 16 June 2013
|
 16 June 2013
|
 17 June 2013
|
 16 June 2013
|
 16 June 2013
|
 18 June 2013
|
 18 June 2013
|
 16 June 2013
|
 19 June 2013
|
Comments
We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.
General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.
Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.
- The RSN Team
There statement being....... the community reinvestment act and other governmental action inspired the banks to lend money to peoples who basically had not the means to repay..and thus the crisis.
There is some truth to it...as minorities were most susceptible to being defrauded....bu t many mangy of the homes foreclosed were not low income properties located in minority areas......in fact less than half of the loans associated with subprime were even written by banks in any way affiliated with the community reinvestment act...
Banks lacked regulation and thusly could write loans to anyone(minoriti es being most susceptible) and not suffer the consequences of those loans as they were packaged and sold to others..no loss to them, profit actually.
Most susceptible certainly they were targeted in that fashion but really anyone was target...anyone they could defraud was their target.
His wife was given some financial support by Ventura County Occupy who organized a garage sale. luvdoc
I have yet to hear of a Republican politician who's devoting significant energy to helping older constituents, as Cummings is. Can anybody name just one?
And yet, a majority of older Americans still vote Republican.
Mind-boggling.
Take your money out of these banks. Vote with your wallet while you still have one.
There is a particular philosophy that Capitalism has become ruled by. If I can make a profit by saving a child I will, but if I can make a greater profit by letting that child die, I will.
Ethics and morality are irrelevant, profit above all is the arbiter of value.
The reason there has been so little prosecution so far is not only because the politicians are bought and paid for, but that even the honest ones know that Free Market has devolved into a Ponzi Scheme. A scheme upon which the financial industry rests.
Now America is a Ponzi Scheme in support of a war machine.
Where is the application of law, ethics, honesty?
So they have in a sense been thrown under the bus in the interests of helping other segments of the economy.
So they have to eat into their capital, and after a bit that of course is gone...no funds they have to default on the mortgage...afte r a while.
The baby boom generation(this is the lower end of that spectrum) is just now coming to the realization...y ou cannot work forever. It is not for want of a vacation peoples stop working as elderly(retire) ...it is that physically for most it becomes impossible.
So they can't work, it is not a choice, to not to.
So they don't quite worry yet(most of them) about social security and such things...they will just work forever....unfo rtunately for most of them...that is not a option.
A stark realization awaits most of them.
The societal consequences of that are not yet even considered. It is just starting this thing.
RSS feed for comments to this post