Why people can't pay their mortgages

Every time I turn on the television I hear republicans blame homeowners for the collapse of 2008, you often hear “people taking out mortgages they could not afford”. After saving my parents house from being foreclosed I decided to see whose fault it really was.

Before I get into it there is a brief history, in 2004 my father went in for semi routine surgery and because the doctor ended up mentally and physically disabled, being in the hospital for almost six months and about his time their lawyers secretary helped herself to over 150,000.00 of their money leaving them broke. To get my father home we had to take out a mortgage on the house to add wheel chair ramps and a downstairs bathroom. The mortgage was for about 40,000.00 and the payments where about 300 dollars a month.

This left them with my mothers working and my father unable to, they are living on her 350 dollar a week salary and his 1,000 dollar social security payment. When they took out the mortgage the person who sold it to them didn’t give them much details and wanted no money down, the mortgage has went up to about 400.00 a month which would still be easy to pay if it wasn’t for the cost of everything else going up.

When the Loan was taken out till now

Gas went from 1.85 a gallon to almost 4.00

Electric bill went from 65.00 to over 100.00 a month

National Fuel went from 95.00 a month to 130.00 a month

Television Bill went from 75.00 a month to 140.00 a month

Water/Garbage bill went from 70.00 a month to 110.00 a month

Health insurance went from 120.00 a month to 200.00 a month

Cost of food has went up anywhere from 10% to 50% in that time.

The ONLY thing that has not went up is the take home pay while Social Security has increased at an extremely low pace. With the cost of living almost doubling over those 7+ years while wages staying stagnant THAT is what is making it harder for Americans to pay the mortgage they once could afford. Yes there are people who took out mortgages they can not afford but there are millions of hard working people who could afford those mortgages at the time but now do to know fault of their own can no longer make the payments and there are lower educated and elderly people who where in fact ripped off by the banks they trusted.

To blame the people who took out the mortgage is easy but is the simplified version of what is really happening, until people find jobs and wages start to increase with the cost of everything else people will continue to lose their homes and things will never get better. This is “class warfare” at it’s lowest and should be called what it is.