The loss of the American Dream

 Filed Under (New2Need Charity) by admin on 15-10-2010

Tagged Under : American dream, divorce, Foreclosure, job loss, middle class, Oprah Winfrey, poor, Poverty, Real estate, RealtyTrac, suddenly poor, suicide, Texas

Image by GreeneConnections via Flickr

The Oprah Winfrey Show that aired on February 13, 2008 was about a middle class family supposedly living the American Dream—five- bedroom house, latest clothes, fabulous vacations.  Suddenly the wife Sylvia comes home after a weekend away with her children to find her husband has committed suicide in the garage and she is left with only $72 in her checking account and over half a million dollars in debt (Oprah.com from the show: Suicide, Lies, Debt: A Suburban Nightmare).

Sylvia’s story of suddenly becoming poor is being played out all over the United States in one form or another.  Job loss, divorce, illness, accidents, suicide and death are descending upon the middle class with the fury of a tornado, unexpectedly drawing people into sudden poverty.  Jobs that college graduates thought were secure are being downsized or outsourced leaving the primary household wage earner jobless.  If the wage earner is middle-aged, finding a new job becomes even harder, taking longer to find.
While it is not directly stated in Sylvia’s story, the fact she had only $13,000 from the sale of items in her house indicates that her home went into foreclosure.  Since that was the case, she lost all her equity.  In a press release “U.S. Foreclosure Activity Increases 75 Percent in 2007” by RealtyTrac Staff; IRVINE, Calif.-Jan. 29, 2008; realtytrac.com, the company states:
RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 2,203,295 foreclosures filings—default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions—were filed on 1,285,873 properties nationwide during the year, up 75 percent from 2006.  The report also shows that more than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during the year, up from 0.58 percent in 2006.
The article also stated that Texas is among the top ten.
Related articles

• RealtyTrac: Record Repossessions reported in September (calculatedriskblog.com)
• Just In Time For The Freeze, House Repossessions Pass 100,000 For The First Time Ever In September (businessinsider.com)

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