The average North Shore home may be worth more than a half-million dollars, but that hasn't made the affluent area immune to this year's national spike in foreclosures. The number of foreclosures in the area jumped fourfold, to 111, from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007, according to Jasmine Brewer, director of housing counseling for Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs, a non-profit fair housing advocacy group.
"The myth is that there are no foreclosures in the North Shore, but there are," Brewer said. "It's happening in Winnetka, Morton Grove - we never thought we'd see that."
The national rise in foreclosures began in late 2006, the product of a slow economy, plummeting home values and a surge in defaults on subprime loans. More and more homeowners found themselves unable to pay ballooning mortgages on homes that had fallen in value, according to a recent story in the New York Times. Two years on, with a recession roiling the economy, foreclosure rates are still accelerating and legislation clamping down on predatory lending has yet to be enacted. Yesterday, however, the House passed a bill that would provide $300 billion for new, refinanced loans for homeowners at risk of defaulting and nearly $4 billion in emergency aid to buy foreclosed and vacant homes in especially hard-hit areas. (That legislation is expected to be passed by the Senate and signed by the president within days, according to the Associated Press.)
But before those measures take effect, Evanston and Illinois officials hope to start saving homeowners from foreclosure with an upcoming public awareness campaign and a new state law regulating mortgage brokers.
The story is the same across Cook County, where foreclosures shot up 53 percent in June. By the end of this year, the county expects 42,000 foreclosures, about 10,000 more than in 2007. "We knew there would be increased filings, but no one anticipated to this extent," said Paul Bernstein, chief deputy clerk of the chancery division at the Cook County Circuit Court.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
WP Zeller
posted 7/30/08 @ 7:24 AM CST
Any presentation of the foreclosure situation that uses the 2004-2006 time period as a launching point for comparative foreclosure rates will be skewed so far as to be without merit. (Continued…)
Lemonade Diet
posted 8/10/08 @ 12:22 AM CST
This is a terrible situation when so many people have been able to buy a house and now they are at risk of losing their house.
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