Thaindian News

Jan 13 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The headlines have brought the bad news all throughout last year. “Bank repossessions and foreclosure auctions hit new record” has been the theme for many months, and yet those records continue to be broken. And now what some are calling “the bleakest year in foreclosure crisis” has revealed the numbers…over one million homes were repossessed by United States banks in 2010.

The meltdown of the housing market in the United States began in 2006, and lenders are standing at the ready, preparing to take back more homes from families this year than ever before. At this very moment there are over five million families who are at least two months behind on their house payments, and even more than that are soon to miss paying their mortgages as the unemployment rate stays high, and the loans are now worth more than the home.

An article posted in October shared a report from ‘Realty Trac’ which showed that at that time, there was an average of one foreclosure to every one hundred and thirty nine homeowners. And those numbers have been steady climbing ever since. Now it has reached one in every forty five US households.

As always, readers may see these numbers, shrug their shoulders, and, with a furrowed brow of concern, go on about their day never really understanding what the numbers mean. If one million homes were repossessed, and each home had a family of four, then just from last year alone, there were four million people who lost their homes. Four million who either had to move in with family members, friends, or loved ones, or four million people who are looking for a place just to sleep in a warm bed, or eat at a kitchen table. Those homeowners will likely not be able to buy a home ever again, even if the economy does come back, with a foreclosure on their credit records. This is not in a third world country. This is in the United States of America. A million homes were foreclosed, but there is much more than that going on…behind those numbers. This goes beyond politics, beyond religion, beyond race or sexuality, beyond financial statistics. It is about families..men, women, and children who are homeless right now, as this article is being written.