Herbert (NYT) and Homelessness -- Payback

[Mort Zuckerman]

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Subject: Herbert (NYT) and Homelessness -- Payback

Date: Oct 18, 2008 6:45 AM

We Lyme victims now feel that perhaps the wrath of God
over the abuse and neglect of Lyme victims will now be
felt by the rest of the nation.

I was complaining about these same problems to John Rowland
since 1997.

Dear Guv,
Won't you help us?
http://www.actionlyme.org/ROWLAND_AND_ME_1997.htm
(see his response)
http://www.actionlyme.org/ROWLAND_AND_ME_2002.htm

The Rotary blew us off, the DCF blew us off, the DSS blew
us off, the DPH, DHHS, and CDC participated in the crimes,
Rowland blew us off, the USDOJ blew us all off, and James Phillips
decided Lyme was instead, entirely my fault, rather than something
he could take up with Yale's administration on our behalf:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PHILLIPS_JE_PERVERT.htm

Now this poverty and homelessness is Everyday Life in America
because no one GAVE A SHIT about their neighbor, or even
their obligations.

I think it's great. This is what we deserve as a country.

Payback.

There will be even much worse to come.

Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
========================

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/opinion/18herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By

October 18, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Climbing Down the Ladder
By BOB HERBERT

I asked Kim Richardson, who is 59 and lives in a modest ranch house in
Rocky Mount,
N.C., what she would do if a hearing next month goes against her and
she loses her
home to foreclosure.

After a long pause, she said, in a voice faint from worry, “I don’t
know. I’ll be
out on the street, I guess. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Ms. Richardson, who lives on a pair of monthly disability checks, lies
awake night
after night, unable to fend off the frightening homeless scenarios
that dominate
her thoughts. “I never believed that anything like this could ever,
ever happen
to me,” she said.

If you believe Ms. Richardson’s account, and I do, she was fast-talked
into a mortgage
that would have been impossible to pay off with her fixed income.
Foreclosure would
have seemed inevitable. But Ms. Richardson and her current lawyer,
Carlene McNulty
of Raleigh, N.C., said the figures that would have made it obvious to
Ms. Richardson
that she couldn’t afford the mortgage were deliberately concealed.

While the news media have been focusing on the banks, brokerage houses
and mega-millionaires
being buffeted by the ill winds of the financial crisis, the millions
of lower-
and middle-income Americans sinking toward the protracted hell of
destitution are
getting very little attention.

Older Americans are taking a particularly wicked hit. Analysts at AARP
have found
that “Americans age 50 and over represent about 28 percent of all
delinquencies
and foreclosures in the current crisis.”

Losing a home to foreclosure is a disaster for anyone. It’s a
catastrophe for older
people. The AARP Public Policy Institute, in a recent report,
poignantly explained:
“For Americans age 50 and over, losing a house represents a loss from
which there
is limited time to recover, and for some, a recovery may be impossible
given their
age and limited incomes.”

When Ms. Richardson bought her house in December 2005, she tried to
make it clear
that she could not afford monthly payments much higher than $500.
Fine, she was
told. She closed the deal with the understanding that she had a fixed-
rate mortgage
with monthly payments of $537. Prudent and skeptical, she tried to
find out if there
were any economic bombs hidden in the confusing mass of paperwork that
she was confronted
with.

“I had all these stacks of papers at the closing,” she told me, “and
they were just
passing papers back and forth to me, back and forth, telling me to
sign. And I kept
saying, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute.’ ”

She was assured that nothing untoward was going on.

Ms. Richardson did not have a fixed-rate mortgage. Her monthly payment
rose, and
rose again, eventually passing $800, which she could not pay. There
was also a balloon
payment provision hidden in the welter of documents, along with other
obligations
that would not emerge until Ms. Richardson was waist-high in economic
quicksand.

Ms. McNulty, the lawyer, is trying to forestall the foreclosure, while
at the same
time trying to locate those who, in her view, defrauded her client.
Her attempt
to hold anyone accountable has been maddeningly difficult. As she
explained, the
original deal “was securitized into one of these now infamous trusts.”

The distress calls from despondent men and women who believed until
very recently
that they were living the American dream are coming from all over the
country. Tova
Navarra of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., was waylaid by illness. “I will
end up bankrupt,
disabled and bereft of a career,” she told me. “I’m wondering if this
will become
a bankrupt society.”

After a series of medical setbacks forced her to stop working, Ms.
Navarra, 60,
watched her standard of living deteriorate step by agonizing step to
the point where
she was forced to leave her condominium and move into a senior
citizens’ residence
that she currently cannot afford. The condo is in foreclosure, and she
is staring
at a future with no upside.

“The first time you realize that you can’t pay the mortgage — that’s
the beginning
of a very keen panic,” said Ms. Navarra. “The medical bills pile up
and that’s when
people start deliberately skipping doses to try to make the medicine
stretch out
a little more.

“You find yourself gradually climbing down the economic ladder, and
you start thinking,
‘How am I going to survive, and where am I going to go?’ I said to
myself, ‘Oh,
my God. I’m going to end up sleeping in my car.’ ”

Real people. Real suffering. We may be fascinated by Wall Street, and
bogus yarns
like Joe the Plumber’s. But the real story in this country right now
is the increasingly
dire plight of those heading toward the bottom of that ladder that Ms.
Navarra was
talking about.

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