Lolly Bowean’s article in yesterday’s Tribune about Ford Heights is the most moving piece I’ve read about the foreclosure/subprime/ARM/etc. crisis. The details really get to how all this is rooted not just in greed and incompetence but relationships between property, ownership, and American society. For some reason this was the part that finally broke me:
[Mayor Saul] Beck said he never could have predicted Seeley Avenue would become a sad street of abandoned homes. He had promoted the subdivision, which village trustees named in his honor. The village sold the land to the developer so cheap it was like giving property away, he said.
“I know people are saying it’s my fault,” he said. “But they didn’t say that when they saw those nice new homes.”