Two Philadelphia Homeowners Choose Death Over Foreclosure

[Mari333]

Run time: 02:56 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpDa5tedqoM   Posted on YouTube: March 24, 2010 By YouTube Member: mmflint Views on YouTube: 888   Posted on DU: March 25, 2010 By DU Member: Mari333 Views on DU: 879

 
jesus.

[dballance]

1. Just Walk Away. Banks and Businesses Do It all the Time

Just walk away from that mortgage. Go back to renting an apartment for a few years. It's not worth taking your own life. It's just a financial transaction playing out. You stop paying and the bank gets the property. That's the deal you signed when you got the mortgage. So let it happen. Those banks and other predatory mortgage lenders deserve to get what's coming to them.

[rusty quoin]

3. You are right of course, but myself having undergone financial failure and despair,

it can be pretty debilitating. You don't think straight. That said, these are extreme cases for sure.

[Daveparts still]

5. They will

come after you and follow you. The will threaten you with legal actions.
The will call you at all hours and if you're looking for a job you can't just take the phone off the hook. They will call your neighbors and relatives and not stop. It sounds easy enough, just walk away but the banks and collection agencies won't let you, just walk away. What this country allows banks and big businesses to do has nothing to do with you and me.

[midnight]

2. Banks are the winners....

[vaberella]

4. Then why evict them. No one has the funds to buy the bloody homes anyway.

Just let them stay there until they can pick themselves up. But compassion doesn't exist in America it seems...or very little of it.

[Hyper_Eye]

6. She was young. She had so much potential opportunity left.

I am always sad when people choose suicide. 10 years from now she could have looked back at her current situation from a real distance and her life could be completely different. 10 years ago I lived in section 8 apartments, used food stamps, my wife had a job paying minimum wage (which was less than $6.00/hr), and I earned little more than the remainder of my pell grant after classes and books were paid for. The pregnancy and birth of my first child were covered by medicaid. After school I got my first real job and was able to move out of the apartments and stop using government assistance. I got my first mortgage for a small townhouse. Then I lost that job and I couldn't find another one for 9 months. My wife and I struggled to hang on to that townhouse and keep the mortgage paid. I fell into a terrible depression which everyone recognized but me. It was incredibly difficult. But we got through and eventually I got another job. Later I sold that townhouse and I now have a manageable mortgage with a good fixed interest rate on the house I now own. I am a successful software engineer and I have good health insurance coverage which paid for the pregnancy and birth of my second child. Looking back at where I was 10 years ago and during that terrible 9 months a few years later I never would have thought I would be doing this well. My life is completely different and those problems seem so distant. Even the most hopeless situation can be turned around if you stick with it. Suicide simply cements your problems as the end of your story.

BTW, having received the government assistance that helped keep me fed through parts of my childhood and helped keep my wife and I sheltered, fed, and allowed me to pursue an education... those were invaluable parts of my story. I was at the bottom and now I am comfortably in the middle class where I pay taxes without complaint. I am happy to pay for the general well-being in this country as well as the opportunity for someone else to achieve the things I have.

[tomm2thumbs]

8. this would be a great OP - stories that show a path with obstacles is still a path somewhere good

thanks for posting

[Quantess]

7. They were very depressed, I'm sure.

They probably felt bad about themselves for not being able to pay their mortgages, and probably felt hopeless about the future. Of course I'm only guessing, but, there are people who have far worse situations and don't kill themselves. It's just very sad.