Chris Christie’s housing fiasco: Touring the country as NJ’s urban core crumbles

[DonViejo]

New Jersey's governor may love to entertain New Hampshire and Iowa residents -- but folks back home aren't laughing

ROBERT HENNELLY

It is a telling juxtaposition. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie takes his entertaining 2016 show on the road to places like New Hampshire and Iowa, and gets to pontificate on global affairs; since last November he has helped the Republican Governor’s Association raise $60 million dollars. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, his own state continues to sink deeper and deeper into a prolonged foreclosure crisis which is taking a toll statewide, rapidly undermining the viability of its urban core.

Today, New Jersey leads the nation in the number of home foreclosures and the impacts of the crisis are worst in inner city neighborhoods where African-American and Latino households were originally targeted for the worst of the predatory sub-prime lending. Here is a stat you won’t hear in Christie’s New Jersey’s “comeback” stump speech: Three of the five cities in the nation with the highest percentage of homeowners most at risk of falling into foreclosure are in New Jersey.

In Newark, 54 percent of the home-owning households with mortgages fall into this at-risk category, according to an analysis by the Haas Institute, out of the University of California at Berkley. These so-called “underwater” households owe at least 25 percent more than their home is actually worth. In Elizabeth, it is 53 percent. In Paterson, 49 percent of homeowners with a mortgage find themselves owing considerably more than their home is worth. For perspective, consider that in the bankrupt city of Detroit, 47 percent of households are in that same untenable situation.

Families who find themselves in this upside-down condition, without meaningful mortgage modification, are twice as likely to fall into foreclosure. Foreclosed homes lose, on average, 22 percent of their value. So once a home on a block slips into foreclosure, experts say you can count on the market value of every other home in the neighborhood to decline, further increasing the chances that even more households will lose the remaining equity in their home to the mortgage meltdown.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/07/21/chris_christies_housing_fiasco_touring_the_country_as_njs_urban_core_crumbles/

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Sometimes Don

I see a small glimmer of why people voted for Christie last year. And a big part of it has to do with not seeing how close they are to extreme poverty. And inflicting pain on others . . .

[BumRushDaShow]

2. Those 3 cities are in North Jersey

but all one can do here in Philly is look across the river to Camden in South Jersey to see the same thing, as that poor city tries desperately (including cannibalizing businesses here in Philly) to make due. Ditto for Atlantic City, that is going through a major downturn with the pending closure of 4 Casinos. And Trenton in west-central Jersey is having its own issues.