Activity #4 Scavenger Hunt (#7)

Activity #4: Scavenger Hunt

Rosedelle A Chery

Since 2001 terror attacks the US economy has been on a downslide. Even with two wars in our pockets and unemployment increasing, the 2008 financial crisis still came as a bog shock to most Americans. Banks were going broke, businesses were failing and the worse part of it all, houses were being lost. Because the economy was so bad, business had to lay off thousands of workers and people were defaulting on loans and mortgages. Banks that were barely staying a float were desperate to collect collateral from people that weren’t paying their bills. That massive collateral collect created the foreclosure boom in the US. People were losing their houses to banks left and right, and banks were putting those houses for public auctions as fast as they repossessed them.

One of the places hardest hit in New York was Brooklyn. With unemployment, especially for African Americans and women, skyrocketing, people couldn’t keep up with their mortgages lost their homes to the financial crisis. Among the hardest hit Brooklyn neighborhoods were East Flatbush, Flatlands, East New York, and Bedford- Stuyvesant. I decided to visit Bedford because my siblings and I were born and raised there for some time. Walking through the neighborhood was really depressing, seeing the houses boarded up or with the for sale or foreclosure sign, realizing that these houses was someone’s home who was forced out of it. One can argue that the banks were just doing what they had to do to survive and the homeowners should have paid their loans, which is true but everyone is suffering from this financial crisis and people are not in control when they lost there jobs. The worst part of the financial crisis was that while people were getting fired barely any companies were hiring, so either way people were out of luck.The house in the picture above looked as those the owners had to abandon that house in hast. Its a one family 2 story house with back yard. I wasn't sure if the house was under foreclosure so I asked a neighbor, who told me that it was in deed foreclosed and that both the parents, long time friends of his, had lost their jobs.

Bed-Sty, as we called it back in the day, seemed so empty and hollow. There were people there but there was a sadness and desperation in the air. I couldn’t help but to wonder what happen to the people that were living in these foreclosed houses. Did they find another house, are they in homeless shelters, did these families have kids, where elderly people that had lost their retirement funds? All these questions went through my head as I looked at each house. I wonder if the people that will eventually by these houses thing the same. I also wondered if the method of “red lining” that James Kunstler mentioned in his book “The Geography of Nowhere” still exists today. Does the FHA still refuse to back up mortgages in areas they deem unworthy. I think it can be partly confirmed by the fact that many of the increasing foreclosure rates are in minority neighborhoods. Kunstler stated that FHA was created to back up the mortgages that banks gave to owners so interest rates could decrease and if, incase, nonpayment occurred the banks would still get their money. However, there was a catch. The FHA would only back up mortgages in places it deemed desirable, which excluded many areas in which blacks and immigrants were living. With out help from the FHA, lenders are being charged high interest rates to compensate for the banks lending them the money. However, foreclosure rates are still increasing in the suburban places, were the majority may be white. At the end of the day, no matter what race, people are still losing their homes and the economy and the spirit of Americans are still sinking into depression.