Today the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by .75 of a percentage point. Everywhere you look, the subprime lending crisis appears to be hurtling the US into a recession. Newspaper stories talk about cities having to deal with epidemics of foreclosures. While all of this is true, the whole thing is a useful exercise in looking at where the media priorities of the big national newspapers lie. Because, while cities across the Country are certainly experiencing high levels of foreclosures, in reality, they are not much higher than they have been for years. In other words, yeah, subprime lending is hurting us, but, it has been hurting us for plenty long before now.
One way to measure foreclosures is to look at foreclosure filings per 1000 owner-occupied homes.
These are the rates of foreclosure in Philly per 1000 owner-occupied homes (2000-2003 numbers here):
2000: 14.6
2001: 17.1
2002: 18.2
2003: 18.1
2004: 16.1
2005: 15.9
2006: 16.4
I don't have 2007 numbers, but, I suspect they will not be higher than 2002-2003, when the wild-wild west world of 1998-99 loans were all coming through the foreclosure pipeline. Does that mean Philly is not hurting? Certainly not. But simply, it is nothing new. For example, in 2005, I rode around Philly with a reporter who wrote this:
PHILADELPHIA -- To walk Thayer Street in northeast Philadelphia is to count, door by door, the economic devastation afflicting a working-class neighborhood. On a single block, 18 of the 42 brick rowhouses have gone into foreclosure in the past three years.
There's Marciela Perez, who fell ill with cancer, lacked health insurance and stopped making mortgage payments. Barrel-chested Richard Hidalgo, who got divorced and could no longer make his monthly nut. And Mike O'Mara, a rawboned and crew-cut truck driver who took on too much debt, lost his job and fell behind on his mortgage.
"Mortgage companies convinced us to refinance, and each time our bill went up," O'Mara said as he surveyed his narrow street from his shaded front porch. "You fall behind and they swoop down on you."
Philadelphia, its suburbs and indeed much of Pennsylvania have experienced a foreclosure epidemic as low-income homeowners take on mortgage debt they cannot afford. In 2000, the Philadelphia sheriff auctioned 300 to 400 foreclosed properties a month; now he handles more than 1,000 a month. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had record auctions of foreclosed homes, and officials speak of a "Depression-era" problem. The foreclosures fall particularly hard on black and Latino families.
In a TRF study on Predatory Lending (full disclosure: I worked on both reports), for example, one neighborhood that was closely examined- Harrowgate- had about 173 foreclosures per 1000 owner-occupied properties for the years 2000-2003. To me, at least, that is a stunning amount of foreclosures, and we are talking about a time period from up to eight years ago.
Because of the advocacy community in Philly- groups like PUP, CLS, ACORN, etc., because of a progressive minded Secretary of Banking under Rendell, because of having TRF located in Philly, because of the Daily News and Marian Tasco taking on predatory lending in... 2001, this really, truly, is nothing new. Yet, to read the New York Times, this phenomenon is like nothing before.
Part of this is that the pain of subprime lending is reaching new communities, and that the Wall Street house of cards is falling, so it is having a more mainstream effect. However, even that could have been forecasted, considering that it has long been routine for the biggest subprime lenders to go out of business after ravaging communities. The difference now is that mainstream lenders- Countrywide, Citi, etc., and mainstream investors- Bear Sterns, Morgan Stanley, etc have woven themselves deep enough into the morass, that just about everyone is paying attention.
However, for the average Philadelphian, has much changed? No. The crisis that we had before is the same crisis we have now. The only difference is now, the national media is 100 percent fixed on the problem.
But, Philly still has a great predatory lending bill on the books. All that would have to happen for it to take effect would be for Dwight Evans and Vince Fumo to undo Act 55- the State preemption bill. What do you say, fellas? Want to undo some of the damage you wrought?
