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The following is a Letter to the Editor to the "AIM West Milford" in response to a "Thumbs Down" about a neighbor that lost their house two foreclosure. I'm posting my letter here as AIM has not yet published it. What do you think?THUMBS DOWN ON FORECLOSURE
While reading the September 25th issue of AIM West Milford I was dismayed by a Thumbs Down about neighbors who had lost their home to the bank and had left “useless garbage” behind.
My dismay is not with the comment itself but the fact that it seems that we as a society has become desensitized to the tragedy that foreclosure and the loss of one’s home is. We have come to think in terms of Wall Street and Main Street, but we have lost what is means in human terms.
At the end of the foreclosure process, I can assure you that the families that are being displaced are not functioning logically. Losing your home to foreclosure is one of the most traumatic events one can face, only behind the death or serious illness of a loved one. The feeling of grief and guilt and shame can be overwhelming to people, so overwhelming that mental health professionals have likened the condition to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
In my professional life, working for a not for profit community development organization, I have the opportunity to work with people in jeopardy of losing their homes as well as dealing with the vacant homes left behind. Much of my work is in the urban centers of northern New Jersey were the concentration of foreclosure is staging. But whether in Newark or West Milford, the personal trauma of losing your home is no less devastating.
If you want to ask why things aren’t cleaned up then let’s ask where the new owner, the bank, is. They are forcing families out of their homes without a clear plan on how to maintain the properties after they own them. Then they let them deteriorate only to sell them for less than the previous owners owed.
So let us remember that foreclosure isn’t about a house, it’s about a home and the family that lives in it. Garbage can be cleaned up, but can the lives of that family be cleaned up as easily, if ever? People have literally turned to suicide rather than face foreclosure.
Dealing with this day in and day out, I know that there but for the grace of god go I.