Nationwide Increase In Foreclosures Due To Failing Health?
Thursday, October 30th, 2008This is all according to an online database of foreclosure properties called RealtyTrac. In one month alone, they had 103 foreclosure filings. This is an increase of 43% from just one year ago. These figures are proving a nationwide increase in foreclosure filings and Kate Nardi, a counselor with the Dane County Housing Authority, has commented that the number of calls she’s receiving are from home-owners suffering financial difficulties, many of whom are experiencing health problems. Health problems are becoming a major contributing factor to mortgage defaults.
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Medical causes of home mortgage foreclosures
Policymakers and scholars may be surprised to learn that even in the midst of this spike, one of the largest causes of home foreclosures was none of the above. We studied homeowners going through foreclosure in four states and found that medical crises contribute to half of all home foreclosure filings. If these patterns hold nationwide, medical causes may put as many as 1.5 million Americans in jeopardy of losing their homes each year.
Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, we found that about 7 in 10 of our respondents either self-reported a medical cause of foreclosure, or experienced one of these indicia of medical disruptions in the years before foreclosure.
Altogether, these findings suggest that the standard account of mortgage foreclosure is missing a large portion of the story. Mortgage foreclosures are not just the results of bad loans, bad properties, or bad borrowers. Instead, many mortgage foreclosures are the result of unpredictable medical disruptions that impact both the incomes and the expenses of family finances.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/october/
medical_causes_of_ho.php