Rebecca Black abandoned her dream house on Hazelwood Road in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2010, a year after the recession ended.
As the U.S. economy grew, Black’s world shrank. Today she rents an apartment about the size of her old living room and works for the same $12 an hour she’s earned for years.
If Thomas F. Marano takes a late lunch, he makes more money in a single morning than Black does all year. Marano once led the team at Bear Stearns Cos. that bought Black’s mortgage in 2005 and thousands of other subprime loans to sell to investors.
During the 2000s housing boom, they both won -- Black got a home and Marano made millions.
In the aftermath of the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression, only one of them kept winning. The biggest lenders are doing better than ever while those with the least, many of them black borrowers, are struggling the most. One dividing line for this widening gap is the dotted one where millions of home buyers signed their names to loans they couldn’t repay. With the dream of home ownership snatched away, they and their communities may never be the same.
1 comment:
The housing woes see's no color
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