Poughkeepsie copes with housing fallout: NY town's woes signal rising foreclosures spreading

[marmar]

from MSNBC:



Poughkeepsie copes with housing fallout
N.Y. town's woes signal rising foreclosures spreading to more U.S. regions

By John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC



POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. - For Al Russo, a 30-year-old husband and father of two young boys, the trouble started about two years ago, when the shoe repair business he inherited from his parents hit a seasonal slow patch during the winter.

He’d set aside money to carry him over — just as his parents had taught him. But he had to use that money to pay for his mother’s funeral and soon began falling behind on his mortgage payments. To try to head off a foreclosure on the house he and his wife bought in 2005, he filed for bankruptcy this year at the federal court here on Main Street, representing himself.

But on a recent spring afternoon in a standing-room-only courtroom, Russo's struggle to save his home ended after he missed a hearing in which the lender was allowed to proceed with its foreclosure action.

“There’s like no hope for me at all,” he said. “I’m going to lose everything my parents worked for, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

This city in the heart of the mid-Hudson Valley about an hour south of Albany, has until recently largely avoided the housing downturn that has hammered parts of California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada and other regions where the housing boom ratcheted up prices the fastest and the mortgage mess has inflicted the most damage so far.

But now, with house prices falling and foreclosures rising here, both residents and local government officials are having a tougher time making ends meet. And they fear things may get worse before they get better.

Cities like Poughkeepsie, the county seat of surrounding Dutchess County, never boomed in the same way but enjoyed a slower but steadier housing expansion and stable economic growth. Until recently, it looked as though communities like this one might escape the fallout faced by housing markets that overheated at the height of the boom.

No longer. ......(more)


The complete piece is at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24956031/

[KG]

1. off-topic but - Ya' Ever Pick Your Feet in Poughkeepsie?