Foreclosure Workshop With The Blessings Of Nancy Pelosi

April 30th, 2008

The weekend foreclosure workshop at San Francisco City College’s campus had the blessings of the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi. She spoke to those who had been badly hit in a San Francisco locality. She infused energy into them by saying that foreclosures are a challenge – a challenge that they are not facing alone. It is affecting the economy of the entire country. The problem has to be tackled on an individual basis – then only will the nation recover. It is the tiny drops that make the ocean. Dozens of counselors came from regional non-profit organizations to help the foreclosure victims.

Nancy Pelosi was pleased to hear the hum of talk going on between the counselors and the help-seekers. It meant the move of holding workshops was paying dividends. She reiterated that local elected personnel were making efforts to stall foreclosures and contacting the banks in San Francisco.

There were three such workshops being held in the Bay Area – the other two being at San Leandro and Santa Rosa. In California one out of 20 house owners are scheduled to be hit by foreclosures within next two years.

The first quarter of this year has seen foreclosures rise four times in the Bay Area - it rose by 30%. Experts opine that things are going to get worse this year and even beyond it. Foreclosure activity has not peaked as yet. This year lenders repossessed 6,579 houses in nine counties in Bay Area during the first three months of this year. It was 1,493 in 2007 in the first quarter and 4,573 in the fourth quarter. The figures for California show that the numbers went up in a year from 11,032 to 47,171. It is the highest spike in the last 15 years.

Figures do not clearly show the impact this is having – material and emotional, on the individual families. The snow balling effect is telling on the national economy. With real estate markets further tumbling there will be more foreclosures. Another result of this is the increasing number of fraud cases. The vultures are picking the bones of the victims already hal- dead by the lashing waves of foreclosures. Many measures are being taken to mitigate the crisis but so far no noteworthy result has been seen. The usual targets are the minority groups not conversant with English as well as the senior citizens.