FORECLOSURE CRISIS GETS PERSONAL

by Leo E. Laurence, J.D.; journalist, San Diego News Service

Hillcrest -- The escalating foreclosure crisis just got very personal.
My condo complex here - the large Bridgeview at the north end of the famous Georgia St. bridge over University Avenue - is now in foreclosure.
The owners - the Georgia-Crestview Villas LLC - are over $1.7 million in default on their financing.
Suddenly, overnight, life at 3907 Georgia Street is turned upside down.
What will happen to my home?
If I have to move, how soon?
It's a nightmare!
At night when I lay down in my bed, my mind goes over and over with the nightmare that my landlord's foreclosure is creating for me, and some of my neighbors.
It's on my mind constantly.
Insomnia is now the norm.
Now I know what it is like for tens of thousands in this nation who are facing foreclosure; whether it's their own home or they are renting from a landlord who can't pay their financial backers.
Foreclosures were regularly happening to people in stories I wrote as a journalist. It was happening to other people. Not to me.
I should have seen in coming. I live in a complex of 28 units which is a condo conversion, former apartments converted into condos.
The conversions had been continuing every day by a crew of about six to eight workmen, mostly Latinos. They worked six and sometimes seven days a week.
Then, suddenly, about a month ago, all that work suddenly stopped, overnight.
I remember thinking at the time that, maybe, my landlord was having financial problems. But, I didn't want to belive it.
But, the reality or a foreclosure didn't really hit until I received a certified letter yesterday from my landlord's creditor, a mortgage fund in Concord, CA, saying that the property was in foreclosure.
My landlord owes over $1.7 million dollars. That's a large amount of money! And, as the "Notice of Default" says, that amount is growing daily with interest, etc.
Foreclosures are no longer about unknown people in news stories that I write.
It is now hitting me.
And, it is pure HELL!
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Copyright, 2008, by journalist Leo E. Laurence, J.D., leopowerhere@msn.com (619) 757-4909