Foreclosures are Not Just Figures and Charts but Something Personal and Real
Foreclosures are not just cold impersonal figures and charts but something personal and real – the stuff that go to make novels.
One such couple in California in the past few months had lost everything – motorcar, boat, house, their cell phones and even their dogs. Their teenage sons were too traumatized to talk about it. Especially moving is the story of Juan Rodriguez.
Juan Rodriquez was brief and to the point in his sorrow – he said he wanted to die in the place where he was born. Juan with some others had set up camp in a wooded area near Sacramento. The number of residents of the camp had increased in tune with the spike in foreclosures. Now an agitation is taking shape to get space sanctioned by the city where they can survive without being harassed by the authorities. Oprah Winfrey’s television show has focused on their plight.
One could read the hard times of Sacramento looking at the thin stretched face of Juan limping along on a cane fighting terminal cancer without a proper roof above his head. In the dim camp people fought for sandwiches and bread while courts ruled foreclosures. There were beggars everywhere. Many think stealing is a better option than begging. Juan lives in his motor home. All his earnings go to sprucing it up so that he can somehow earn few dollars but then too the problem is who will pay him in this neighbourhood?
All around Juan are people who look more like rats than human. After dusk they slip into the woods. Juan sighed that people are afraid of death but here he and the others are afraid to live. The only thing positive about Juan’s life is that nobody is waiting for him – he has no family. His closest mate is Tiger a Chihuahua.
These people cannot be wished away. Camps without any facilities or cooperation from the authorities are mushrooming along the railway tracks or any open spaces. It is a matter of climbing down the ladder. The upper class and middle class have climbed down niches but those on the lowest rung are out in the open wandering and wandering. America is fast beginning to look like the second world if things are not tackled on a war footing. The housing shelters are full to capacity and funds are at an all time low making future prospects bleak for Juan and his tribe.
