US mortgage crisis forces homeowners to take refuge in their cars

[Warpy]

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=457122007

THEY are victims of the United States' growing mortgage crisis - low-paid workers whose homes have been repossessed amid rising interest rates, a stagnant property market and a lax lending regime.

But in Los Angeles, where having a car is as essential as owning a home, many are sleeping in their vehicles to ensure a roof over their head.

The trend comes despite the fact that sleeping in a car is illegal in the Los Angeles area.
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This has turned into a shameful country. The only things this article didn't mention is what's happening to wages as a result of offshoring, an artificially low minimum wage, and sheer stinginess on the parts of employers.

[AngryOldDem]

1. How many of these are families, I wonder?

The burgeoning number of homeless families will be the next crisis we will face. Loss of jobs combined with loss of homes just makes me sick.

The homeless shelter I work at houses, on average, 11 families a night. That has been as high as 25. The main causes of this, as far as our intake info shows, is 1) loss of job followed by 2) lack of affordable housing. A lot of the low-income housing in my city (located in the Rust Belt, with a rapidly declining manufacturing base) is either being boarded up or razed. What's left is in such decrepit shape that some families who get housed often come back weeks later with horror stories of insect infestation, no plumbing, and other disgraceful, inhumane conditions. The shelter is safer and better equipped, and their kids are better off there.

Our shelter is in a converted warehouse that was once owned by a department store. I'm not sure of the exact square-footage, but we house upwards of 200 men, women, and children on both floors of the facility every night. This week, it was "hypothetically" proposed that our shelter be converted to a women's and family shelter only. (Typically, we have 50 women a night.) That sent chills down my spine -- that was an admission that things here are going to get A LOT worse, and the only solution that they're seriously considering is to put the men somewhere else -- like a human shell game. No discussion of ways to get funding for affordable housing. No discussion of rehabbing the housing stock that exists. No real discussion of why this problem is occurring, and why it's getting so out of hand.

Already I'm seeing a lost generation of kids who are growing up in the only home they know -- the shelter. And unless we get serious as a nation in addressing the core issues that have led to this (low wages, lack of affordable housing, health care) we are only going to condemn many more generations to the same fate. I find that unconscionable.