With the property market woes, ever increasing cost of living and various financial institutions going under, these are clearly troubled times aren’t they?
If you need any more evidence of this, then look no further than this story, which we felt compelled to share with you all, as it reflects the desperate state of the US property market...and we could see similar things happening here.
In Akron in Ohio, a 90 year old woman shot herself in the chest as sheriff’s deputies attempted to evict her from the home where she’s lived for almost 40 years.
Addie Polk, became the sole owner of her home when her husband died in 1995. Two years later, she took out a mortgage loan, which she refinanced several times. When she defaulted on the loan, her lender, Countrywide Home Loans, filed for foreclosure. The US mortgage firm Fannie Mae bought the house at a sheriff’s auction, and sought to have her evicted.
When sheriff's deputies came to escort the pensioner from her home where she had lived for nearly 40 years last Wednesday, they heard shots from the first floor.
A neighbour found her lying on her side on her bed, a gun beside her, after shooting herself in the chest. She is now recovering in hospital.
Robert Dillon, the neighbour who discovered her after she shot herself, said: "She said it was a crazy thing to do, now that she's had time to think about it."
Local police said Mrs Polk had ignored multiple notices and letters, as well as a foreclosure action filed in court.
Home foreclosure rates are at record levels in the US, in many cases because buyers with adjustable interest rates could not keep up with sharp increases in monthly payments.
There has been a spate of foreclosure-related suicides, including a retired couple in Oregon and a 53-year-old woman in Massachusetts. The latter faxed her mortgage company: "By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead”.
In the wake of Mrs. Polk’s apparent attempted suicide, Fannie Mae has agreed to forgive the mortgage, dismiss its foreclosure action, and allow Mrs. Polk to return home when she recovers from her injuries.
"Just given the circumstances, we think it's appropriate. It certainly made our radar screen," a spokesman said.
That’s good news for Mrs. Polk. But what about the other millions of homeowners who fell prey to predatory mortgage lenders in the USA and are now struggling to meet mortgage payments they can’t afford?
The vast majority of those people won’t attempt suicide and their individual stories won’t make the news, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t every bit as desperate as Mrs. Polk was.
Her story helps put a human face on the victims of the predatory lending practices that created the whole subprime mortgage mess, and which has had a huge effect on our economy. It should be required reading for all of those clever, greedy mortgage lenders who thought they had found an ideal way to make a quick buck.
One thing is clear; when businesses act unethically, ordinary people suffer for it.
The question is, with the way things are going, will we see these sort of sad events happening here?