Paul Kiel: The Great American Foreclosure Story!

Sheila Ramos' grandsons, 10 and 13, started crying. They wanted to know where the house was. There wasn't one. There was only a tent. They had flown from Florida, after Ramos had fallen hopelessly behind on the mortgage for her three-bedroom home, to this family-owned patch of rural land on Hawaii's Big Island. There, on a July night in 2009, they pitched a tent and, with no electricity, started a new life. If Ramos were in her 20s, living off the land might be a marvelous adventure. Hawaii is beautiful, and the weather is mild. In the nearly three years since she moved here, her family has built a semi-permanent tent encampment, and they now have electricity. But it's not how this 58-year-old grandmother, who has custody of her three grandchildren, imagined spending her retirement after working for more than 30 years, nine running her own business. She regularly scours the local dump and recycling center for items she can salvage. The story of how she ended up in a tent is the story of how America ended up in a foreclosure crisis that has not ended, that still drags down the economy and threatens to force millions of families from their homes. Already, banks have foreclosed on more than 4 million homes since the crisis began in 2007. With almost 6 million loans still in danger of foreclosure, 2012 could very well be the worst year yet. Ramos' story is remarkable not because it's unique, but because it isn't. Her story doesn't fit any of the conventional narratives. Ramos is not a helpless victim. She made mistakes. But she didn't take out her mortgages to live the free-market dream of starting her own business. She took out later mortgages to cope with injuries sustained in a car accident. Every step of the way, from her first sub-prime loan to foreclosure, her downfall was abetted by a mortgage industry so profit-driven and disconnected from homeowners that the common interests once linking lender and borrower have been severed.