Foreclosure Crisis erases the Wealth earned by the Blacks through Decades

The foreclosure crisis has erased the wealth earned by the Blacks through decades. One of the victims is Tyrone Banks who found his future financial prospects improving in Memphis. Caring alone for his children he was engaged with FedEx and another job. Banks could by sheer labour build a brick house, maintain his retirement account and steer his first born through college.

Then the curse of recession like a great fog rolled in. He managed to refinance the mortgage on his house at a rate that spiraled upward. After that he lost a job. Now he is facing foreclosure and or bankruptcy. Banks makes no bones about his hard work of cleaning toilets and mopping floors to earn a living. He was proud of his achievements but now everything is backfiring on him.

In Memphis the majority are Blacks. It was a model city showcasing the Black working and middle class climbing up the ladder of respectability and a better level of economic comfort. Today the same city is epitomizing the story of the Blacks moving reverse gear – something grim and sad. Increasing unemployment and swelling foreclosures combing with the recession have managed to destroy the wealth of the Blacks, gnaw into their incomes and wipe out whatever they had gained during the last two decades.

The income median of the Black owners of houses in Memphis increased steadily till the last five or maybe six years. Today it has shrunk to the levels of 1990 – the number being half of that ofthe White house owners in Memphis according to the findings conducted by Queens College of Sociology. The project was sponsored by The New York Times.

The crisis has gnawed into the middle class localities. The value of property has plummeted and vacant houses are dotting neighbourhoods like Cordova, White Haven and Orange Mound, among others. The unemployment among the Blacks has gone up in Memphis in tune with the national trend to 16.9%. Two years previously it was 9%.

The White employment proportion is 5.3%. The Blacks are ruing the loss of their savings and also retirement accounts as they tried to cling on to the houses that were their homes. The foreclosure in Memphis is approximately double that of the nation.

The long lasting repercussion will be deadly in Memphis as well as the entire country. The economic divide is worsening the gap between the Blacks and Whites – does not forebode well for the future.