Feeling the toll of foreclosure

Since the country’s foreclosure crisis began in 2007, at least two million people have lost their homes. In the Bay Area, more than 70,000 homes are currently in some stage of foreclosure. And even though the economy might be getting better, they’re still happening.

Both here and around the country, these foreclosures are disproportionately affecting low-income and minority communities. These communities are less likely to have a financial safety net, who are more likely to have been targeted by predatory lenders. Preeti Vissa works for Greenlining, a nonprofit in Berkeley tracking the effects of the crisis across the nation.

PREETI VISSA: At this point half of all foreclosures in California are going to be among Latino borrowers, two-thirds among communities of color. We’re worried that it’s going to be devastating in terms of building wealth for communities and watching this wealth gap from between communities just grow.

Wealth loss isn’t the only consequence of foreclosure. Vissa says others are more difficult to measure.

VISSA: There’s stress and anxiety that comes from the foreclosure process – and this isn’t just a month or two. The average foreclosure takes something like 400 days. That’s over a year of racking your brain, trying to figure things out. And the anxiety that comes with that has real health impacts.

Research has begun to show the potentially devastating effects of foreclosure on the health of homeowners and their families. KALW’s Casey Miner went to San Jose to see how one family is recovering from foreclosure stress.

*     *     *

ROSA FERNANDEZ: I got this house like seven years ago. At first it was like whoa, this is the American Dream. You want a house and we got the house, we were looking for a long time.

CASEY MINER: The house where Rosa Fernandez lives is in a quiet neighborhood in San Jose, right on the corner of two small streets. Lining the edge of the house, bordering the small front lawn, are a few ceramic planters shaped like animals: a swan, a little sheep. The walls in the living room are painted brightly, orange and blue, and covered with framed photos of her kids – she’s got four sons and a daughter. It’s early evening, and the kids are home. If we listen hard, we can hear footsteps and giggling upstairs.

FERNANDEZ: When I got married I said, “One day I have to have a house, one day I have to have a house, my kids and a dog.” Which I did! I went to Mexico and got a dog, a tiny little dog. And I had my dog, my five kids, and I bought my house.

Fernandez bought her house in 2005with a short-term fixed-rate mortgage, because she didn’t qualify for a long-term one. But when she tried to refinance a few years later the bank wouldn’t let her. Her monthly payments jumped to where she couldn’t handle them, even when she was working two jobs – as a social worker during the day, and at night doing customer serviceat the San Jose Airport. By that time she was a single mom, and it didn’t make things any easier. She went back and forth with the bank for months but in the end they said they couldn’t help her. Her house was scheduled to be auctioned on December 25, 2009. She remembers talking with the man from the bank.

FERNANDEZ: I just started crying. I started crying. I said, “I really really need your help,  I have five kids, where the hell do I go with five kids?”

The kids didn’t know where they would go either. And Fernandez says the problems started almost immediately.

FERNANDEZ: I’d have to get them up in the morning and have to yell to them like, “Get up, you have to go to school! There’s nothing I can do, and I have to go to work.” There was a lot of crying in the morning, a lot of stress.

The youngest boy, Dominique, took it the hardest. He stopped talking to anyone at school, stopped doing his work. His teacher wanted him to see a counselor. He was nine years old.

FERNANDEZ: So I spoke to my son and he says, “No mom, everybody at school’s going to make fun of me. They’re going to think I’m crazy.” And I said, “Mijo, in a way you are. In a way you’re going crazy.” Because he wouldn’t eat. For like three months he had a stomachache. I took him to a doctor and there was nothing wrong with him, he just didn’t want to go to school. He just kept saying, “Mom, my tummy hurts, mom my tummy hurts.” I didn’t know what to do.

JANIS BOWDLER: It’s hard not to just be shocked by the depth of anguish that families experience when they go through this.

Janis Bowdler is a researcher with the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy organization that recently released a study about the effects of foreclosure on Latino families around the country. The study found that going through a foreclosure affected every aspect of family life. People were depressed, fighting with their spouses and children. They skipped medication to save money. They divorced. They lost their jobs. And their children suffered too – their grades dropped, they withdrew from their friends and acted out in school.

BOWDLER: Of the people that we interviewed, we didn’t talk to anybody who did not have some sort of health concern.

La Raza’s study was based mostly on interviews, but there’s some data to back up their conclusions. Last fall, the Alameda County public health department collaborated with local nonprofit Causa Justa: Just Cause to survey nearly 400 families in East and West Oakland – mostly African American and Latino – about their experiences with foreclosure. The results were the same: depression, illness and stress, compounded by financial trouble that made treating those problems very difficult. But because there’s not very much research about how foreclosure affects health, right now communities aren’t very well-equipped to deal with the issues that are coming up.

TAMMY LEE: That’s really an epidemic, and it’s a public health epidemic.

Tammy Lee led the data collection for the study.

LEE: Just providing housing services is a challenge. Just providing mental health services is a need and a challenge. Bringing the two together? It doesn’t happen.

Janis Bowdler, of the National Council of La Raza, says part of the problem is that the worst part of the foreclosure crisis isn’t over. And it won’t be for a while.

BOWDLER: The policy debate right now is still very much focused on how do we stop the bleeding. As it should be – we’re still only halfway through this crisis.

As more research comes out, some people are trying to address these problems. Lena Robinson does community development outreach for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Recently she’s been holding workshops for housing counselors, nonprofits and community leaders in hard-hit places to try discussing solutions. She says there are cultural issues at play that make this even more difficult.

LENA ROBINSON: For many cultures, for many individuals, the idea of talking to a mental health professional or airing your shame around losing your home or losing your job – that’s really for some people something they’d never think about doing.

Robinson says an important part of starting that process is to help people put foreclosure in context, so that the experience doesn’t take over their entire lives.

ROBINSON: People have got to recognize that this isn’t just a financial disruption in their life. It has emotional ramifications. And while you may not ever be able to get back those assets or be able to financially recover, it’s important to remember that there are other things in your life that are important.

By her own account, Rosa Fernandez was lucky. Through a colleague at work, she found a nonprofit that dealt with the bank on her behalf. She ended up getting a modification – a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage, with low interest. She and her kids could stay in their home.

FERNANDEZ: After six months making payments, I said to my kids, “Let’s celebrate, it’s our house again, we’re going to be here for many, many years. “

She invited friends over for a barbeque, beer and carne asada in the yard that was still theirs. She says everyone was happy. But it would be a long time before everything was back to normal.

FERNANDEZ: That’s my youngest one, Dominique.

DOMINIQUE IBARRA: You said I didn’t have to talk!

Dominique is 10 years old now, in fifth grade. He’s a small kid with messy hair and a big grin. His sister Roxanne is 12, and they tease each other like any siblings.

DOMINIQUE IBARRA: She also scares me, like one time when I was making a sandwich, I didn’t ask her for anything, and she said, “Oh my mom poisoned that ham…”

ROXANNE IBARRA: No I didn’t!

DOMINIQUE IBARRA: “…and that’s going to give you cancer!”

ROXANNE IBARRA: No I didn’t! I told you that about soup, I was telling you facts about the soup!

Dominique is a little shy, but not overly so. Mostly he seems like a normal kid, even a pretty happy one. But Fernandez says he still worries about losing the house. Roxanne notices too.

ROXANNE IBARRA: When we would buy something he’d say, “Mom, you’re spending way too much money, and he’d say you’re gonna lose the house, you’re gonna lose the house!” And he would just freak out all the time.

Fernandez says she thinks she understands what her son was going through.

FERNANDEZ: You look back and think I was losing it, I was going crazy. I used to cry like every day and night. I’d go to work, act like nothing was happening, only a few people knew what I was going through. I used to come home, cook dinner, go to my room, lock my door, and I used to cry. Every night, every night. And that’s something I couldn’t let my kids see. Because I knew it was really hard for them, and if they would see that that was going to make them feel worse than they were. So it’s something that you carry inside. And it’s really, really hard.

When we talk about houses, we’re often talking about money. We use words like “commodity,” “investment,” “collateral.” But sometimes a house is just what it’s always been: a corner of the world you know is yours, and the peace of mind that comes with that knowledge.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Casey Miner.

This is the first of a two-part series on the long-term effects of foreclosure. Part Two will air next week on Crosscurrents. In the meantime, tell us what you thought of this story on our Facebook page.