Foreclosure only gets worse with time

• Robin Washington

Robin Washington is the Duluth News Tribune's editor.

Talk about it

Her house was everything to her, and she in turn personified it. The impeccably cultivated flowers on the boulevard gave you the comfort of knowing she was never far off, if not standing right there greeting cheerfully as you drove by. Otherwise, she was likely inside, tending her equally impeccable home, or working on some project to improve the community. She had time because she didn’t work, and we all thought she was comfortable enough. And we couldn’t imagine the house without her.

But one day she announced to her friends she was moving and needed our help — immediately. She was being foreclosed on, and the eviction was days away. Yes, she had known; she’d fallen behind years ago, and the bank long ago sent its final notice. She had been too embarrassed to tell us earlier and, well, now it was the end.

Friends were shocked. We did help her move, but for some, the relationship was over. Why hadn’t she reached out earlier, for goodness’ sake? Some even had clout with the bank, and with the mortgage mess around the country, could have convinced its officials they’d surely prefer to renegotiate than to be stuck with another underwater home.

I’ll leave out her name and much more about her except to say the deception aside, I still consider her a friend, and that she’s working now and still in town, living somewhere else. Whether you know her or not, chances are very good you know an identical story; there have been way too many these past few years.

Not just foreclosures, but foreclosures where, because of denial or procrastination or hopes for a miracle, nothing is done until the last minute, when nothing can be done. A foreclosure is not a surprise. It takes years, and for all the sins and crimes of the mortgage industry, any lender worth a nickel will consider some kind of renegotiation before the sheriff comes to throw the belongings out the front door.

I don’t know the details of the woman who faced a similar eviction last week, intervened by a group demanding her lender agree to new terms. Nor am I privy to the lender’s side or the old terms, except our front-page story did say a full payment was due on a balloon mortgage. I do know something about those, which is that unless I have a notarized letter from Gov. Mark Dayton guaranteeing I’m going to win the lottery in 2014, I would never sign one.

Yet I won’t be presumptuous enough to impose my circumstances on somebody else. Yes, I’ve known poverty and debt and the sinking feeling of a car repair, without which I can’t get to work, with an estimate coming in $400 more than the limit on my last working credit card. I also know I was able to beat back that debt, through careful budgeting, reading every bit of fine print, not spending money on booze or cigarettes and, most fortuitously, having a wife who understands financial planning far better than I do. Add that we both have been blessed with our health.

Most of all, though, I’ve learned not to procrastinate, which is not simply putting things off until later but putting off unpleasant tasks in the mistaken belief they’ll get easier. They won’t, and facing unpleasantness now on your own terms is far more empowering than later on someone else’s.

I can’t tell you how often in my role as editor or as a member of community boards that I am presented with “emergency” requests or situations — a loan for a college student who otherwise would have to drop out, a foreclosure or apartment eviction, a car on the verge of being repossessed. While sympathetic, I can only wonder if there wouldn’t have been more — and less expensive — options if the requests for help had come sooner.

Like when the impeccable flowers on the boulevard still bloomed.

Robin Washington is editor of the News Tribune. He may be reached at rwashington@duluthnews.com.

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