MORE than a million homes have been lost to foreclosure in the last two years. And according to data from Mortgage Bankers Association, banks are now in the process of foreclosing on 1.5 million more.
The impact of the mortgage crisis has been obvious in both the worldwide credit crunch and the presidential campaign, where there has been a lot of talk about the plight of overextended homeowners. But the specific personal costs of home loss have been less evident, at least to those not paying them.
Not surprisingly, the forced loss of a home — the place where many of the memories that define a life and a family are made — is deeply traumatic, according to Dr. Robert Gifford, an environmental psychologist at the University of Victoria, Canada. This is true, he said, even when the loss is due in part to a homeowner’s own financial mismanagement.
“When you choose to move, of course you have to pack up and move, but you’ve probably chosen a better job, a better place, there’s an upward trajectory to your life.” Dr. Gifford said. “When someone tells you you must leave,” he continued, it undermines “a key part of well-being: perceived control over your life.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/garden/23foreclosure.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
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