TAUNTON - The housing crunch has caused anguish and anxiety for millions of Americans. For Carlene Balderrama, a 53-year-old wife and mother, the pressure was apparently too much.
Police say that Balderrama fatally shot herself Tuesday afternoon, 90 minutes before her foreclosed home was scheduled to be sold at auction. Chief Raymond O'Berg said that Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company at 2:30 p.m., saying that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead."
Sad, but really, the corporate interests that own the banking industry don't give a shit about things like this. They get their government taxpayer subsidies to bail them out, and the taxpayer gets squat. Or death.
2 comments:
Carrie, I agree that the housing mess is a result of the banks being greedy. Anyone with a brain knew the 5 year ARM with interest only was a sham. People would be convinced they could afford a house way out of their price range since they would only be paying interest for 5 years. The banks should have to deal with this crisis they created and simply refinance these mortgages to reasonable terms. Even if they would extend the terms to 50 years, that gives the owner time for real estate to recover and home values to rise again. Most people would sell and be out of the mortgage before 50 years and the banks would be whole on their loans. As horrible as this woman's story is, the bank did notify police as soon as they received the fax. Also this woman handled all the family finances and her husband did not even know the home was in forclosure. I think there was more then just losing the house that prompted her suicide, but sad just the same. When will people learn, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Your point is well taken, and the story did have more teeth to it than just a simple foreclosure. I just found it sad, and given how much money the government keeps "giving away free" to the banks, and to Wall Street, and everyone else EXCEPT the regular people who actually need it, I was moved to post something about it.
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