Many others suffer from foreclosure
Here’s one on the 500 block of W.61st. And other on the 5500 block of Normal Blvd. And nearby on the 5600 block of S. Throop and over there on the 6400 block of S. Sangamon and down over at the 7100 block S. Peoria.
Gone. Busted. Homes foreclosed. No other community tops Englewood for foreclosures in the last two months in Chicago, according to figures from Chicago.everyblock.com
But how do you tell this story after you count up the numbers?
You go back to the numbers and explain what is happening now. Are they declining? Not in Chicago or nearby. Are they changing? Yes, more condominiums face foreclosure and many more homes have been lost in the suburbs lately.
How about the programs to help homeowners facing foreclosure?
By most accounts, they are not working nationally. See this excellent article in the Nation magazine: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090518/wright.
But what is happening here in Chicago? There’ve been efforts to protect tenants in foreclosed buildings in Cook County? But what is happening elsewhere in the Chicago area?
And how is somebody just scrapping by able to detect a fraud from a real helping hand; how can they tell the difference between people taking advantage of desperation, and others trying to stem their despair. Apparently, the swindlers are as sharp as ever.
What do you do when somebody calls your newsroom and says they have been cheated out of their home? How do you make the story bigger or more local or more meaningful?
There is a special meaning for this mortgage crisis for many in Chicago’s ethnic communities. Their home is their only savings. As modest as it is, it is their only foot on the first step of the stoop leading up to middle-class life.
Knock them back down and they and their children may not climb back up for a long time. And that’s a tumble only decades will undo.
We’ll be talking about these and other ways of reporting on the mortgage crisis here in Chicago on May 14 at a news briefing specially created for the ethnic new media. The 11 a.m. Thursday session will be held at 3200 S. Kedzie, first floor. Experts from the Woodstock Institute http://www.woodstockinst.org/ and National Training and Information Center http://www.ntic-us.org/ will talk about what the numbers mean, what is happening and what homeowners and communities here in Chicago have been doing.
The meeting is free and so are the coffee and donuts. Bring your notebooks and questions. We’ll also hand out some guides to help you report this story.
This story matters.
Update:
As the economy has collapsed, the gains made by African-American and Latinos homeowners is being erased fast. But the situation for Latino immigrants is different. Their rate of home ownership has not changed.
Black and Hispanic homeowners in these last few years were more than twice as likely as white homeowners to have subprime mortgages, and that was even in the case when they earned the same as whites.
In 2006, 17.5 percent of white home buyers used subprime loans as compared to 44.9 percent for Hispanics and 52.8 percent for blacks.
These figures are from a report released May 13 by the Pew Hispanic Center. Here is a New York Times story and then the report itself:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/us/13homeowner.html?th&emc=th
