This statistic captures why the foreclosure issue transcends any sort of moral judgement about people "just not paying their mortgages." Home vacancies are at an all time record high in the U.S. right now [18.6 million empty homes, 3% of the housing stock].
If you see all the folks on the street without a home, that's enough to make empty homes a tragedy. It's not just the homeless, though.
Does your rent or mortgage pinch you a little financially? How do you think people with less money feel? Yet, we've got almost 20 million homes sitting empty.
In Philadelphia, it's even worse, because we have a lot of neighborhoods that are already about half condemned. Every time another house ends up standing vacant, that's another house that's likely to decay to the point of condemnation.
That's why THE DAILY NEWS is saying it is so great that Philadelphia has innovated a better way to connect homeowners with lenders desperate to keep mortgages in the black.
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Cross posted at The PUP Blog
Technorati Tags: Housing, Vacancies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, PUP, Foreclosure, Daily News