Why are we working at KETC on the Mortgage Crisis?
Why is the KETC Mortgage Project so important?
The CSM posts this devastating article today - this is what really confronts us:
Some 44.5 million homes in the US now stand next to an empty house,
resulting in a drop of at least $5,000 in property value per house. By
that calculation, a total loss of home value of $220 billion across the
US can be attributed to the vacancy problem.
"This is a man-made disaster that's had more dramatic impacts on real
estate markets than natural disasters [have]," says Bruce Katz, a
housing analyst at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in
Washington. "In a way, we have a lot of mini-Katrinas across the
country.
John Robb says - From
Atlanta's urban core to leafy neighborhoods filled with chirping
crickets in Charlotte, N.C., some 2.2 million homes are expected to go
through foreclosure – and stand empty – by the time the mortgage
meltdown ends, according to Global Insight, an economic research firm.
As the housing dominoes fall far from Wall Street, growing urban "ghost
towns" of vacant houses are resulting in a costly crush of weeds,
trash, and dereliction on a scale unseen in American cities since the
Great Depression, economists say.
Is this not what we are working to prevent? Is this not the greatest
threat to our way of life that we have experienced in our lifetime?
