Repossessed Homes
By Jayme Hanson

Foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. If your home is in foreclosure, determine whether renting or continuing to make a mortgage payment is the best route for you. Contact your lender and ask which options are available to you to stop a foreclosure. Work with your lender and see if you can delay the full payment and possibly agree to a smaller payment for a period of up to two years or more in special cases to save your home from foreclosure. The last thing the lender wants is a huge inventory of repossessed homes.

A mortgage modification or a loan modification allow borrowers the opportunity to re-negotiate the terms of their mortgage loans, thereby reducing the required monthly payment. If you are facing a foreclosure, you have to start by talking to your lender. There are steps you can take to stop foreclosure or if it’s too late, rebuild your credit slowly but surely and qualify for home ownership after foreclosure. If you are searching the Internet for ways to stop the foreclosure of your property, then you should know that there are many services on the Internet promising services they can not provide. If the offer some companies are promising sound too good to be true

It is the map that engenders the territory
<a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/">Radical Cartography</a> has made a lot more maps since <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/46676/Radical-Cartography">greasy_skillet posted it in 2005</a>, including maps showing housing prices and segregation of all kinds in <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?manhattan-heights">New York</a>, <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagorail">Chicago</a>, <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?DCrace">DC</a> and elsewhere,<a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?manhattan-heights"> counties named for Presidents</a>, <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?stars">the night sky</a>, <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?crops">the US in agriculture</a>, <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/wandering.html">the US as projected to other spots on the globe</a>, and a <a href="http://www.radicalcartography.net/atlas.html">physical atlas of the world</a>.
"It's awfully small..." "I'd say it's awfully.. cozy!"
<a href="http://www.thatvideosite.com/video/tour_of_a_house_thats_less_than_100_square_feet">Tour of a house that's less than 100 square feet.</a> [slv]
Happy 115th, Mr Fuller!
<a href="http://architecture.about.com/od/greatarchitects/p/fuller.htm">When he was 32</a>, his life seemed hopeless. He was bankrupt and without a job. He was grief stricken over the death of his first child and he had a wife and a newborn to support. Drinking heavily, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he decided decided that his life was not his to throw away: it belonged to the universe. Buckminster Fuller embarked on "an experiment to discover what the little, penniless, unknown individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity." If the architect, author, designer, inventor, and futurist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller">Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller</a> were still alive, he would be 115 years old today. Though he died in 1983, his legacy grows on through <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-938394498520786588#">recordings of his ideas</a> and <a href="http://www.bfi.org/">the Buckminster Fuller Institute</a>. Bucky did not arise from nothing on his 32nd birthday, but came from <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/221902/R-Buckminster-Fuller">a long line of New England Nonconformists</a>, including his great-aunt <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Fuller">Margaret Fuller</a>, an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement, who is credited with <a href="http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/fuller/woman1.html">writing the first major feminist work in the United States</a>. In 1917 Fuller married Anne Hewlett, daughter of James Monroe Hewlett, an architect who had created a modular compressed fiber-block building material. Fuller himself supervised the erection of several hundred houses, but the construction company encountered financial difficulties in 1927 and Fuller was forced out. With the earlier death of his daughter in 1922, and now faced with caring for his wife and a newborn child, It was then that Buckminster Fuller set a goal of making a difference in the world at large. Though he had no official degree (he entered Harvard on a legacy, but was expelled twice - <a href="http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/fuller.html">the first time for consorting with a dance troupe</a>), Bucky started designing systems to address real-world needs and demands with the minimum amount of resources, often in very unconventional ways. One series of efforts started in 1927, with the design of the <a href="http://www.bfi.org/about-bucky/buckys-big-ideas/dymaxion-world/dymaxion-house">Dymaxion house</a>. Dymaxion was a combination of three of Bucky's favorite words: DY (dynamic), MAX (maximum), and ION (tension). <a href="http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/house.html">The first (and only) model was built until 1946</a>, in Wichita, Kansas. It was supposed to cost about $6,500 in 1946, approximately the cost of a high-end automobile. Though it survived a near-miss with a tornado in 1964, the home was later abandoned. It was taken apart in 1992 and over the next eight years, <a href="http://www.hfmgv.org/museum/dymaxion.aspx">Henry Ford Museum staff researched the house</a>, and cleaned and restored its 3,000 components. On October 24, 2001, <a href="http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/dymaxion/index.html">the restoration complete and the Dymaxion House was opened to the public</a>. The Dymaxion line of creations also includes the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_Map">Dymaxion map</a> and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlLZE23EJKs">Dymaxion car</a> (wobbly YT video, featuring Amelia Earhart amongst others). The Dymaxion map was called the Air-Ocean World by Fuller, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=rG__1rhIzE0C&lpg=PA124&ots=ZAk9xgYfTt&dq=%22World%20Town%20Plan%22%20fuller&pg=PA124#v=onepage&q&f=false">based on an early effort to optimize air travel</a> based on small connecting flights instead of long trips. The resulting map was <a href="http://www.genekeyes.com/FULLER/BF-5-1954.html">a fairly accurate representation of the world</a>, though the earlier <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_J.S._Cahill">Bernard J.S. Cahill</a> <a href="http://www.genekeyes.com/CAHILL-LMW/LMW-2.html">butterfly map</a> is considered more accurate. The Dymaxion car was <a href="http://www.washedashore.com/projects/dymax/chronology.html">another brainchild of 1927 that was refined for years</a>. <a href="http://synchronofile.com/?p=329">Three cars were produced</a>, though <a href="http://www.maxmatic.com/Dymaxion/dymaxion2.htm">only one is known to remain</a>. One was ill-fated, surviving a fatal accident and being restored, only to be accidentally destroyed in a fire, and a second is lost and considered scrapped. Other items from Fuller with the Dymaxion name include his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep">polyphasic sleep</a> schedule, which he called <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,774680,00.html">Dymaxion sleep, as detailed in this 1943 Time magazine article</a>, and the compendium of Fuller's lifetime of work, notes and associated recordings that is known as the <a href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/fuller/about.html">Dymaxion Chronofile</a>. In one of his <a href="http://www.westnet.com/~crywalt/inventions/invtotal.html">last (lengthy, thought-provoking) public writings</a>, Bucky noted that the "Chronofile" consisted of 750 12" x 10" x 5" volumes in 1981. <a href="http://www.bfi.org/about-us/bfi-history">Originally the Fuller Archives were curated by the Buckminster Fuller Institution</a>, and in 1999 the Fuller archives were transferred to the <a href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/fuller/index.html">Stanford University Libraries</a>, where they are housed today. There is a lot of material online, including some fantastic audio, and though it is freely accessible, it requires you sign up for a password. If you're looking for more material, check the <a href="http://www.buckminster.info/">Buckminster Fuller Virtual Institute</a>. Warning: heavy use of dated HTML, but <a href="http://www.buckminster.info/Biblio/1-Bibliography-TOC.htm">the bibliography and itinerary is worth checking out</a>. Bucky Fuller was not only a scientific mind, but also an artistic one. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/arts/design/19nogu.html">He is cited as a vague or possibly indirect influence on Warhol</a>, through his painting of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romany_Marie">Romany Marie</a>'s restaurant with shiny aluminum paint. That act inspired <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isamu_Noguchi">Isamu Noguchi</a> (<a href="http://lisawallerrogers.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/dorothy-hale-and-the-dymaxion-car/">seen here</a> in a Dymanxion car</a>, next to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Hale">Dorothy Hale</a>) to paint his own studio silver, before <a href="http://www.warholstars.org/chron/factory63n7.html">Warhol's Factory space turned silver</a>.
Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror. I await your answer.
Mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae <a href="http://www.fanniemae.com/newsreleases/2010/5071.jhtml">announces</a> policy changes designed to encourage borrowers to "work with their servicers and pursue alternatives to foreclosure"...and threatens borrowers with new penalties for strategic default. <strong>From the Fannie Mae press release:</strong> <blockquote>Defaulting borrowers who walk-away and had the capacity to pay or did not complete a workout alternative in good faith <strong>will be ineligible for a new Fannie Mae-backed mortgage loan for a period of seven years from the date of foreclosure</strong>. Borrowers who have extenuating circumstances may be eligible for new loan in a shorter timeframe. ... Fannie Mae will also take legal action to recoup the outstanding mortgage debt from borrowers who strategically default on their loans in jurisdictions that allow for deficiency judgments. In an announcement next month, the company will be instructing its servicers to monitor delinquent loans facing foreclosure and put forth recommendations for cases that warrant the pursuit of deficiency judgments.</blockquote> "We're taking these steps to highlight the importance of working with your servicer," said Terence Edwards, executive vice president for credit portfolio management. "Walking away from a mortgage is bad for borrowers and bad for communities and our approach is meant to deter the disturbing trend toward strategic defaulting. On the flip side, borrowers facing hardship who make a good faith effort to resolve their situation with their servicer will preserve the option to be considered for a future Fannie Mae loan in a shorter period of time." Meanwhile, a recent study (<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/06/28/study-nearly-one-in-five-mortgage-defaults-are-strategic/">summarized by the Wall Street Journal</a>) suggests that nearly 1 in 5 mortgage defaults through the first half of 2009 were strategic. <strong>From the <a href="http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/analysts-question-a-threat-by-fannie/?scp=1&sq=fannie&st=cse">New York Times</a>:</strong> <blockquote>-Fannie and its sister company, Freddie Mac, control 30 million mortgages, providing liquidity to the housing market. They have been under government conservatorship since September 2008; the ultimate cost of the rescue to taxpayers might hit $400 billion. -About a quarter of homeowners with mortgages, or about 11 million households, owe more than their home is worth, and are potentially vulnerable to a strategic default -[Fannie Mae]’s delinquency rate, traditionally about 0.5 percent of its portfolio, began sharply ascending in mid-2007. At the beginning of this year, it leveled off at 5.5 percent.</blockquote>
Crack shack or mansion?
<a href="http://www.crackshackormansion.com/">Crack shack or mansion?</a> <a href="http://www.theprovince.com/health/Frustrated+couple+crack+shack+quiz+targets+million+dollar+Vancouver+homes/2911132/story.html">Frustrated couple's crack-shack quiz targets million-dollar Vancouver homes:</a> <em>Can you tell the difference between a million-dollar Vancouver property and a crack shack? Vancouver teacher Petr Pospisil bets you can’t — or at least will struggle to do so. Distraught over the city’s exorbitant real-estate prices, Pospisil and his girlfriend Ola Rogula, a lab tech at the University of B.C., came up this week with Crack Shack or Mansion? — a cheeky online quiz that challenges users to differentiate between alleged drug houses and million-dollar homes.</em> <a href="http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=ff7fd1e0-f52e-4de7-af5b-6117dc6cded5">Vancouver is the most unaffordable city in Canada for housing, and ranks 15th worst in the world</a>
Purchase risky debt on a massive scale and then place a bet that the debt will fail!
<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/04/americandream.html">Betting Against the American Dream</a>. In 2005, just as Wall Street started to get cold feet about the housing market, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar">Magnetar </a>hedge fund helped create a new wave of billion-dollar mortgage-backed securities, pushed bankers to include riskier sub-prime mortgages, and then shorted the securities, making millions when the bubble finally burst. Traders on both sides of the deals pocketed enormous fees even if their banks went under when the securities failed. <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/90976/The-2010-Pulitzer-Prize-winners-have-been-announced">Pulitzer Prize-winning </a><a href="http://www.propublica.org/feature/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble">ProPublica</a>, <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job">This American Life</a>, and NPR's <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/04/how_one_hedge_fund_got_rich_of.html">Planet Money </a>track down some of the big winners in the housing/financial crisis. No time to read or listen? It seemed so much like a scheme from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063462/">The Producers</a>, they even recorded <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/04/americandream.html">a show tune to explain it all</a>. (<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/71576/The-Giant-Pool-of-Mone">Previously</a>, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/75419/There-will-be-enormous-enormous-losses">2</a>, <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/79069/The-Failure-of-the-Business-Press">3</a>)
I should be doing my taxes
New York Magazine has crunched the numbers, Park Slope has taken the title of <a href="http://nymag.com/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/65374/">most livable neighborhood of New York</a>. Applying a 12 point metric <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked-questions-last-revised.html">Nate Silver</a> has ranked the top 50. Don't wanna do the heavy lifting yourself? Try the handy <a href="http://nymag.com/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/65355/">livability calculator</a>.
Play Houses
<a href="http://tomorrowmuseum.com/2008/06/13/the-worlds-strangest-housing-communities-2/">The World's Strangest Housing Communities.</a> Brazilian dystopia, mysterious Midgetville, mock California in China, deserted Taiwan futureland and Indian utopia [also Paulville - 100% Ron Paul Supporters].
Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?
<a href="http://www.acorn.org/">ACORN</a>, the low-income community grassroots organisation, is <a href="http://www.racewire.org/archives/2010/03/acorn_folds.html">set to close by April 1st</a>, citing "a series of well-orchestrated, relentless, well-funded, right-wing attacks that are unprecedented since the McCarthy era". Meanwhile the New York Times has issued a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/23/new-york-times-issues-cor_n_509275.html">correction</a> on the stories which led to the 87-3 vote to remove ACORN's Federal funding (<a href="http://www.metafilter.com/85090/ACORN-under-fire">previously</a>), admiting that "while footage shot away from the offices shows one activist, James O'Keefe, in a flamboyant pimp costume, there is no indication that he was wearing the costume while talking to the Acorn workers."
Bankrupt on Selling
Tishman Speyer Properties is <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703415804575023483097973538.html">defaulting</a> on its $5.4 billion, high profile acquisition of the enormous Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan, resulting in million in losses for investors and possibly <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125547827547583747.html">"signaling the beginning of what is expected to be a wave of commercial-property failures".</a> The failure is the result of an aggressive business model designed to "push moderate income tenants out and replace them with well-heeled renters willing to pay rents at a much higher price" a practice referred to as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-jones/predatory-equity_b_289172.html">Predatory Equity.</a> The same approach has been attempted <a href="http://www.save-ml.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=200">elsewhere</a> in the city such as the Riverton Apartment complex in Harlem where long term profits were expected "if they can achieve that high rate of turnover – displacing half of Riverton’s low- to moderate-income tenants in a five-year period"
Oh, Five of Them, Actually
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez23-2009dec23,0,6520136.column">The Edge, AKA David Evans, wants to build a little comppound in Malibu,</a> on "the most prominent landform along the coast between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the Ventura County line." <a href="http://www.leavesinthewind.com/WELCOME/tabid/63/Default.aspx">"In bringing together the very best environmental, architectural and design principles, the owners have sought to create homes that will both set new standards and withstand the test of time,"</a> Evans says on the website he created as part of his lobbying effort to move this project through. (Turn your sound on for the video.) "Unfortunately, it is impossible to construct the five homes strung over a mile of ridgeline and 7,800 feet of water main without resulting in unavoidable significant adverse visual and ecological impacts," writes Ronald P. Schafer, the President of the quasi-public <a href="http://smmc.ca.gov/">Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.</a> A number of local residents are wondering how building 5 houses on a high ridgeline this close to the ocean could be considered the "right thing to do" by someone with such a progressive cred. The <a href="http://www.malibutimes.com/">Malibu Times.</a> puts us right on this. <a href="http://www.malibutimes.com/articles/2009/12/16/news/news5.txt">"However, U2 is known mostly for human rights issues and not environmental causes." </a>
Homeowners! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Mortgages!
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112504186.html">The Moral Dimensions of Ditching a Mortgage:</a> University of Arizona law professor <a href="http://www.law.arizona.edu/Faculty/getprofile.cfm?facultyid=278">Brent T. White</a> has written a provocative new <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/WalkingAway1029.pdf">paper</a> (pdf) that urges homeowners with <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/24/real_estate/mortgages_underwater/index.htm">"underwater" mortgages"</a> to <a href="http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-harney29-2009nov29,0,3801270.story">walk away</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_default">strategically defaulting</a> on their mortgage debts. White argues that most "underwater" homeowners don't default on their mortgages, because "social control agents," ranging from the housing industry to President Obama, enforce an <a href="http://www.cuivienen.org/gondolin/?p=103">"asymmetry of norms"</a> that makes it immoral if an individual homeowner walks away from a debt, but allows banks to walk away from debt with impunity. Meanwhile, other <a href="http://www.financialtrustindex.org/images/Guiso_Sapienza_Zingales_StrategicDefault.pdf">economic research</a> appears to confirm White's argument that main barriers to homeowners engaging in "strategic default" are moral and social, not economic and legal.
"Donald Sterling Continues To Get Away With Being The Most Evil Man In Sports"
<a href="http://nba.fanhouse.com/2009/11/25/the-donald-sterling-rule-all-bad-deeds-go-unpunished/">The Donald Sterling Rule</a> "Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling lives by his own rules. And the only one that matters, apparently, is this: <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4187729">all bad deeds go unpunished</a>. Over the last six years, nearly two dozen L.A. residents have sued Sterling for engaging in racist housing practices and Jim Crow-style bigotry.</a> In a 2003 deposition, the 76-year-old real estate mogul admitted to paying a former employee to have sex with him in an elevator. Three years ago, the U.S. government charged him with "willful" mistreatment of African-American and Latino tenants, and earlier this month, he agreed to pay the Dept. of Justice nearly $3 million to settle a federal racial-discrimination housing lawsuit, the largest award ever for a case of its kind." So why, asks California's <a href="http://tenantstogether.org/section.php?id=152">Tenants Together</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpySSabPOHE">has the NBA said nothing about Sterling's less than sterling behavior</a>? Dan Wetzel <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=dw-sterling110409&prov=yhoo&type=lgns">asks why the landmark settlement has gotten practically no media coverage</a>. Sterling's problems extend <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2009/02/baylor-update.html">to a lawsuit from his former GM</a>, Hall-of-Famer <a href="http://www.nba.com/history/players/baylor_summary.html">Elgin Baylor</a>. The landmark lawsuit: <a href="http://www.justice.gov/crt/housing/documents/sterlingcomp.php">United States v. Donald Sterling</a>. <a href="http://deadspin.com/5398936/donald-sterling-continues-to-get-away-with-being-the-most-evil-man-in-sports">A list of Sterling's misdeeds, from Deadspin</a>.
California "City"
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_City,_California">California City</a> is the 3rd largest city in California (geographically), home to <a href="http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA4982/"> California's largest open-pit</a> <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=boron,ca&sll=35.049779,-117.712584&sspn=0.023609,0.045233&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Boron,+Kern,+California&ll=35.049041,-117.71812&spn=0.023609,0.045233&t=k&z=15">boron mine</a>, a <a href="http://www.correctionscorp.com/facility/18/">privately-run</a> <a href="http://www.bop.gov/DataSource/execute/dsFacilityAddressLoc?start=y&facilityCode=CAL">Federal Prison</a>, and only <a href="http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/SAFFFacts?_event=Search&_county=&_cityTown=California+City+City&_state=04000US06">8,835</a> residents. Originally planned as a <a href="http://www.venturacountyinfo.com/AV/communities.html">"large master-planned leisure community"</a> of up to 1 million people, such growth never materialized, and the remains of the <a href="http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/california-city.html">undeveloped streets and cul-de-sacs</a> presage images of the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/what-will-save-the-suburbs/">current housing crisis</a>, and are a modern, uniquely American version of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines">Nazca Lines</a>.
People are not where they live, or where they sleep
<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/becky_blanton_the_year_i_was_homeless.html">Becky Blanton spent a year in her van</a> grieving her dead father. Even with a full-time job and a writing career, a depression quickly set in which made Blanton feel like a homeless person. How do we define homelessness? The vast majority of homelessness is still linked <a href="http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/why.html">to poverty, lack of affordable housing and eroding work opportunities</a>. An opposing view: <a href="http://www.glowingfaceman.com/blog/homeless-by-choice/">Apartments aren't worth the money in grad school</a>.
ACORN under fire
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN">ACORN</a> already drew fire last year during the election, accused of <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-acorn-voter-fraud/">voter fraud</a>, although ACORN points out <a href="http://acorn.org/fileadmin/Vote/VoterRegistration_Myths_Facts.pdf">there was no real fraud going on [pdf]</a>. Now, they are facing controversy over a recent video showing ACORN officials offering advice to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/us/politics/16acorn.html?hp">amateur actors posing as a pimp and prostitute</a> on what to say when seeking a mortgage for a brothel. A second video captured an ACORN worker <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/09/blowback-in-the-acorn-wars.html">claiming to have murdered her husband (she later said she was simply messing with the filmmakers)</a>. As a result of these recent controversies, the Senate <a href="http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=1&vote=00275">voted 83-7 to prohibiting the use of funds to fund ACORN</a>. It's likely that a big motivation to block this funding came from issues surrounding Acorn and the Census. The Census Bureau had already decided to <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090911/ap_on_go_ot/us_census_acorn">sever ties with ACORN<a>, partially because of fears that ACORN would <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/17/lawmakers-concerned-role-acorn-census/">play an active role in the Census</a>, although this was <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/acorn-and-the-census/">not at all true</a> -- they were simply one of 30,000 <a href="http://2010.census.gov/partners/partners/current-partners.php">Census Partners</a>. The vote to block funding will mean that ACORN will <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/14/AR2009091403786.html">no longer receive HUD grants</a>, which it uses to offer <a href="http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=8145">free housing counseling</a> to lower-income individuals.</a></a>
Making Policy Public
<a href="http://urbanomnibus.net/">Urban Omnibus</a> is an online project of the Architectural League that explores the relationship between design and New York City's physical environment. They are featuring <a href="http://www.makingpolicypublic.net/">Making Policy Public</a>, a program of <a href="http://anothercupdevelopment.org/">The Center for Urban Pedagogy</a>, through their articles about <a href="http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/05/making-policy-public-vendor-power/">Vendor Power</a> and <a href="http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/05/making-policy-public-predatory-equity/">Predatory Equity</a>. <em>"Just as we were beginning our collaboration, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a predatory equity building in the Bronx widely recognized as the birthplace of hip-hop, was being overleveraged by a predatory developer. This was not only a case of people potentially losing their homes; but also of New York City losing its heritage and culture. The threats are social and cultural as well as economic. Through their work helping tenants organize and speaking to lawmakers and media sources, (we) knew that the poster would have to address two different audiences: 1) Tenants who wanted to know how the law and predatory equity practices could directly affect them and 2) decision-makers who would need inside information to take action. They imagined the publication’s goal was to mobilize tenants in affected and at-risk buildings and to convince politicians and banks to recognize the problem and take immediate action. We agreed finding a way to visually explain predatory equity was the best place to start."</em>
Demographics &amp; Depression
I have heard many explanations of the housing crisis, but First Things, A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life had one that I had never heard: <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6564"> America’s housing market collapsed because conservatives lost the culture wars even back while they were prevailing in electoral politics</a>. A number of observers have pointed to <a href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2008/12/16/household-formation-2009-housing-head-wind.html">household formation</a> as a key driver in the current and future housing markets, but no one else I have run across writes things like "the world is poorer now because the present generation did not bother to rear a new generation".
watch the american housing market spiral out of control
<a href="http://vimeo.com/4240369">subprime.</a> Beautiful animation about the US housing market.
We won't be like that again.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=2C81E75B72B97AD5">Behind The Rent Strike</a> <small>[YouTube playlist; six parts of 50ish min. documentary]</small> <a href="http://www.nickbroomfield.com/home.html">Nick Broomfield</a>'s <a href="http://www.dfgdocs.com/Directory/Titles/557.aspx">graduation piece</a>, a documentary on <a href=" http://www.lmu.livjm.ac.uk/inmylife/template.aspx?itemid=471">the 14-month rent strike by the people of Kirkby New Town</a>, near Liverpool, which began in late 1973 in response (<a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1974/apr/04/clay-cross-councillors-and-housing">it wasn't the only one</a>) to the Heath government's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ytcOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA59&vq=changing+policies+recurring+crisis&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0">Housing Finance Act</a>. Broomfield gets plenty of insight from local people and examines the social conditions behind the events. Great viewing of good film-making and <a href=" http://www.liverpooltimes.net/2007/11/07/kirkby-rent-strike-video-online/">an opportunity for a bit of nostalgia if you're a viewer from round that way</a>.
Blow-by-blow of Wachovia's Demise
<a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/408/story/427887.html">A blow-by-blow analysis of Wachovia's demise,</a> as told by the bank's local paper, <i>The Charlotte Observer</i>.
She's not a brick house
<a href="http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1996/3/1996_3_50.shtml">Thomas Edison's Concrete Houses</a> From 1902 to roughly 1917, Edison was in the <a href="http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:g35O3a-3yMcJ:edison.rutgers.edu/patents/01326854.PDF+llewellyn+park+concrete+houses&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us">concrete</a> business, and <a href="http://www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edisonia/08130000.htm">concrete houses</a> would be one of his biggest failures. Shown <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/edison/ed_d13.htm">here</a> and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenosale/2699959996/">here</a> as models, <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/edisonthemanandh002659mbp/edisonthemanandh002659mbp_djvu.txt">Edison</a> promised that they would be the salvation of the slum-dweller, priced at $1000 each (a third the cost of a new home at the time). He even made <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B04E7DA1E31E233A2575AC0A9649D946096D6CF">concrete furniture</a>. Many of the houses still stand on <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&q=concrete%20edison&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=il">Ingersoll Terrace," Union, NJ. </a>
Tanta Vive!
<a href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/07/compleat-ubernerd.html">The Compleat &#0220;berNerd:</a> a fascinating series of blog entries detailing the nitty-gritty behind the mortgage industry by Calculated Risk's "Tanta." If you're curious about <a href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/03/ficos-and-aus-we-will-add-your.html">automated underwriting systems</a> or the ins and outs of <a href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/02/tanta-mortgage-servicing-for-ubernerds.html">mortgage servicing</a> or if you just enjoy some <a href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/11/happy-thanksgiving.html">Mortgage Pig</a> Excel art, Tanta was the blogger for you. Tanta, otherwise known as Doris Dungey, passed away on Sunday morning (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/01tanta.html">NYT obit</a>, <a href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/11/sad-news-tanta-passes-away.html">CR obit</a>).
Crap - I only made $15B last year
There are still some <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120036645057290423.html">smart people</a> left on Wall St. Hedge fund manager, John Paulson, made a cool $15B for his fund as the housing market imploded. His cut? $3-4B. Not too shabby for a year's worth of work. Interestingly, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120036783112890507.html?mod=article-outset-box">Greenspan </a>was an advisor to the hedge fund. How much did he make out in the housing decline?
Say It Aloud
<a href="http://www.norfolkandholmes.co.uk">Norfolk &amp; Holmes</a> is no <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/presenters/alexriley.shtml">ordinary</a> estate agency. More <a href="http://england.shelter.org.uk/">here</a>.

then they probably are.  It seems like everyone today is trying to make a profit on repossessed homes.

Lenders usually will offer several options to a homeowner that is in default on their mortgage payment. Deferring a payment or two is an option that is now becoming available as lenders are doing whatever they can to help avoid the foreclosure process. Before trying to save your home from foreclosure, make sure the value for your home and the neighborhood is worth your efforts. If there is a large number of homes in your neighborhood that have been foreclosed on and the property has not been taken care of, maybe it wouldn't be worth your effort to save your home.  or repossessed home are not only happening in lower income households today.