My personal story is the same for everyone I know in my community of Corona, CA and other friends and relatives through out the country. If they are fortune enough to be still employed they are concerned how long they will be employed. However, all are affected by the high prices in the grocery stores, property values are up side down, city/county/state services are cut or no longer exist and elected officials so out of touch with the ones who elected them that they cannot seem to work together to find a solution.
The affect of the economic crisis on me personally; I have been unemployed since May 2007. I have been diligently seeking employment.
My husband has been unemployed since March 2007. He is also unable to find employment.
My husband has a small window cleaning business which is very slow and not able to support our family.
My husband and I collect unemployment insurance which is schedule to end in a few months. After it ends we will only have the small income generated from the window cleaning business.
Due to our unemployment we are unable to meet our obligations; we are filling bankruptcy and our mortgage has not been paid since October 2007. Although we didn’t have a subprime mortgage, we had a mortgage called a buy down. In the buy down we refinanced four times a year in 2006 and 2007 at a high interest rate with the promise from the finance company we would receive the difference in cash. We were instructed to take the cash received and send it to our mortgage company to buy down our principal balance. The process was supposed to continue until we bought our mortgage down to the original rate. After losing our jobs, we were unable to continue to refinance in 2008, we did not have enough income. Consequently we are stuck with the high interest rate and high payments. We contacted our mortgage company to refinance our mortgage. We have been turned down each time. As it stands today our mortgage is in default.
We have become squatters in our home. When the mortgage company decides to put us out we will be homeless.
My husband and I are 51 years old. We have two children; an eighteen year old that is in college on student loans and a thirteen year old in junior high school. At 51 years old not only is it hard to find a job (age discrimination is alive and well) it is also difficult to start over. We have never asked or received any government assistance. We have always carried our weight. Up until October 2007 we had perfect credit.
So many people in our state, California where the unemployment rate is 9.3 are in the same situation. I am ashamed of my elected officials haggling over providing help to us. Especially when we hear they have provided billions to big business without any questions. Providing help to little people like us should come with no hesitation.
I hope my story will help my elected representatives to see and understand Middle Americans need their help, desperately. My prayer is that God would give them the wisdom to see that their old ideals have not worked and that their minds and hearts would be pliable enough to be open to new ideals. My husband and I voted for Barak Obama because we believe in his vision and principles. He is the kind of leader we need right now. I pray my elected representatives would work with President Obama, humbly and respectfully with the acknowledgement that he is who the American people chose.
