Anyone who’s been in this state in late July has seen the traffic pattern – the long line of cars and trucks with boats or kayaks or bikes on the back, heading north on the highway to New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. Some folks are heading toward campgrounds or b&b’s; some others are heading toward their own vacation homes, which in the Lakes Region can be pretty substantial.
Even though the Housing Market seems to be stabilizing, foreclosures are still a major problem. Some homeowners, who have tried to negotiate with banks are now going to court, saying they’ve not been able to get any clarity. Meanwhile, Lenders say they are making efforts, as they still are wading through an unprecedented number of troubled mortgages. We'll look how foreclosures are fairing in the Granite State.
Ida Christian, who suffers from dementia, gets help from her granddaughter, Yolanda Hunter (left), in blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Yolanda quit her lucrative job to become Ida's full-time caregiver.
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AnnaBelle talks to her granddaughter Carley (right) and Carley's friends after they returned from lacrosse practice. "I'm not rich money-wise, but with my family I'm a millionaire," AnnaBelle says.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Natasha Shamone-Gilmore walks to church with her husband, Curtis (left), and her father, Franklin Brunson, 81, in Capitol Heights, Md. She has taken on the daily challenge of caring for her father, who is suffering from mild dementia. Her son Nicholas, 24, also lives in the family home.
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Natasha Shamone-Gilmore has opted to place her father in a full-time adult health center during the day while she works for a nonprofit and her husband works for a regional transit system.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Geneva Hunter (left), who runs the secretarial operations for a Washington, D.C., law firm, decided to take a hands-on approach to her mother's care and moved Ida Christian, 89, into her home.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Ida Christian, who suffers from dementia, gets help from her granddaughter, Yolanda Hunter (left), in blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Yolanda quit her lucrative job to become Ida's full-time caregiver.
Credit Kainaz Amaria / NPR
Kelley Hawkins (left) smiles with her grandmother AnnaBelle Bowers, 87, while at lunch in Harrisburg, Pa. Kelley shares full-time care of AnnaBelle with her sister-in-law LaDonna Martin. Both are nurses with two children each, and move Annabelle, who has limited mobility, every two weeks from one home to another.
The Great Recession slammed into all age groups, flattening the career dreams of young people and squeezing the retirement accounts of middle-aged savers. It financially crippled many elderly people who had thought they could stand on their own.
In Florida, the foreclosure process takes 861 days, on average.
That means houses often sit in limbo for more than two years after the owner stops paying the mortgage. Maybe the homeowner is still living in the house. Maybe he's renting it out. Maybe squatters are living there, or maybe it's empty and falling down.
Marc Joseph's job is to find out.
Joseph is a real estate agent. On the day I tag along with him, he's representing a bank that had repossessed a concrete block home in Cape Coral, Fla.
Cleveland resident Cedric Cowan was asleep on an overcast spring morning when the roaring sounds of splintering wood and falling rubble jolted him awake.
Cowan lives in a neighborhood hit hard by foreclosures. He initially thought someone was moving into the house on the other side of Fairport Avenue.
Instead, he woke that morning to find a crew tearing down the two-family house.
Over the course of three hours, an excavator smashed, crushed and ripped apart the abandoned house while a worker sprayed the rubble with a hose to keep the dust down.
To learn more about the mortgage settlement and its potential effects in New Hampshire, All Things Considered host Brady Carlson talks with Dean Christon, executive director of the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority.
Since 2005, the number of foreclosures in New Hampshire has increased 700 percent. Last year, more than 3,800 families were forced out of their homes due to foreclosure.
