In Depth: Hard Times

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
NBC
June 26, 2008 NBC Nightly News, 7:00 PM
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We’re back with NBC News In Depth tonight. It’s about hard times. The foreclosure crisis in this country is hitting home for a lot of people who never imagined their American dream would become a nightmare some day. Tonight our own Kerry Sanders reports on one group of people on the front lines of this housing crisis, those losing their homes while serving their country.
CATHY VERSTIG: Hey, silly girl.
KERRY SANDERS: Life for Cathy Verstig could hardly be more complicated. Her husband is deployed in Iraq, she’s battling cancer, and now after their mortgage payments doubled in a year they’re facing foreclosure.
VERSTIG: We’re down, and I have no strength to do all the fighting.
SANDERS: Military families often buy homes off base because the barracks style on-base housing is so spartan. That helps explain why home foreclosures are most pronounced near military bases. In Virginia in the shadows of Quantico.
SHELLY PLOUGH: The foreclosure rate in this area right now is over 400 percent, which is just off the charts.
SANDERS: Real estate agent Shelly Plough –
PLOUGH: These are all foreclosures.
SANDERS: – says service members were attracted to subprime loans because they offered low monthly payments. The double whammy, orders to move every few years as real estate values are plummeting.
PLOUGH: These folks are basically getting forced into a foreclosure situation. Their lenders just do this. They’re forced into a foreclosure situation. And then they’re going to go off and fight for their country.
SANDERS: In San Diego just beyond the gates of the naval base, more evidence of the growing problem.
MAN: I’ve got a client who’s facing a foreclosure.
SANDERS: Financial advisors say those in uniform are unique, especially if they’re away at war.
PATRICK CAMPBELL [Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America]: You’re talking about some of these guys who barely have access to internet. They only get access to the internet or a phone call when they get to a bigger base. All they want to do is say, “I love you,” and hear how their kids are doing. They don’t want to be talking about how to save the family house.
SANDERS: There is a law, the Service Members Civil Relief Act, which protects members of the National Guard and reservists from foreclosure while away at war.
But for those on active duty, the law delays but doesn’t stop the inevitable.
VERSTIG: These people are taking homes away like, you know, it’s baseball trading cards. And they just take them away and leave people with no place and nothing left.
VERSTIG CHILD: Marley, where’s your ball?
SANDERS: In the Verstigs’ case, the bank is now working on an exception. But for thousands in uniform it’s a battle to save home sweet home.
Kerry Sanders, NBC News, Woodbridge, Virginia.
WILLIAMS: Doesn’t seem right.
 
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