If you have anything to spare, this is a really good time to give money to your local food bank:
ALTADENA, California (CNN) — When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.
It was Good Friday, and a woman helping her offered to pay her utility bill.
“It brought tears to my eyes, and I sat there and I cried. I was like, ‘This is really where I’m at?’ ” she told CNN. “I go ‘no way;’ [but] this is true. This is reality. This is the stuff you see on TV. It was hard. It was very hard.”
Guerrero is estranged from her husband and raising her two young children. She’s already burned through her savings to help make ends meet, and is drawing unemployment checks. She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month. In fact, her mother moved in with her to help pay the bills.
Guerrero even applied for food stamps, but was denied.
“I never used the system. I’ve been working since I was 15-and-a-half. I needed it now and it turned me down,” she said.
Stories like Guerrero’s are becoming more common as middle-class Americans feel the pinch of an economic downturn, rising gas prices and a housing crunch, especially in a state like California that has been rocked by foreclosures.
This is going around the blogosphere and cnn is covering it up and refusing to put it in the coments because it makes their journalists look as bad they are:
Here’s a little more information about Patricia Guerrero’s financial situation from public records (LA County Assessor and Recorder):
The 2,948 square foot house on a quarter acre lot was built in 1948.
She and her estranged husband Ray acquired the house, apparently from HIS PARENTS Israel and Esther Guerrero, in August 2002, at which time the debt load on the property was about $157,000.
Ray and Patricia took out a conventional fixed-rate first trust deed on the property on 8/14/2002 for $202,000.
I’ll spare you all the gory details of their various refinancings and equity loans, but the present note from 8/21/2006 is for $649,999.
So, it looks like they bought the place for a sweetheart deal and proceeded to jack themselves up to the tune of about $450,000 over a period of just 4 years.
I have absolutely no sympathy for a person such as her in her current situation & if what you have said here is true, she’s getting exactlt what she deserves. The bill is coming due & America can not pay it.
I have absolutely no sympathy for a person such as her in her current situation & if what you have said here is true, she’s getting exactly what she deserves. The bill is coming due & America can not pay it.
Nobody’s asking you to bail her out of her mortgage.
Susie’s post was about donating to food banks. Maybe Guerrero is a greedy dope, but she still needs to eat.
WTF should she do? Not go to the food bank? Are you only going to help out people who never make mistakes?
Go to your local food bank or shelter kitchen and see who shows up. It’s not just drunks and crazies. You might see some folks you know.
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Patricia Guerrero is in this mess of her own free will. No sympathy here, and I sure as hell don’t want my tax dollars bailing her or anyone in her position out.
Americans living well beyond their means had to know the other shoe would drop eventually. If you didn’t, you’re delusional.
You made your bed, now lie in it.
So, Rob, does that mean that you’re just as strongly opposed
to the immense government bailouts of financial firms that
abused the system to a far greater degree?
James Cayne, CEO of Bear Stearns, sold out his stake on Thursday. He sold at $10.84 a share, which grossed him $61.3 million.
Bear Stearns would be worth squat without the Fed backing up their bad paper.
I doubt the vmlinux, Stephen, or Rob know the details of why the Guerreros leveraged themselves so deeply. Maybe they spent it all on vacations and fancy clothes. Maybe the estranged Mr Guerrero has a gambling problem. Maybe they had some medical expenses.
I don’t know, you don’t know.
They have a big note, they’re almost certainly upside down on the house, hubby’s no longer in the picture, she got laid off. Can’t get assistance, so she’s at the food bank.
If you think that’s a unique story, or if you think all of the folks who share that story are just spendthrift idiots, you are wrong.
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