Your editorial "The Housing Mirage" (Aug. 25) reflects a common misconception held by many outside the housing meltdown ground zero regions. You categorize the troubled borrowers as people unable to become "reliable" simply through modifying their home loans, and that efforts focused on keeping people in "homes they can't afford" should be abandoned.
I am one of those "troubled borrowers." My problem is not that I can't afford my home, but that I can't afford my existing 15-year mortgage. I need a 30-year mortgage, but I'm unable to refinance because of my home's decline in value. I could easily afford to buy my home at today's value with a 30-year mortgage at today's interest rates. And the miserable irony is that the next owner of my house, after the foreclosure sale, will receive exactly that deal.
Clearly, the maximum misery of the housing meltdown is concentrated in certain regions of our country, in much the same way natural disasters don't affect everyone. Victims of localized disasters are usually deemed worthy of collective help since, after all, it could have been your state or your zip code where housing values have fallen 50%.
I've been turned down for HAMP modification and see no way of keeping my home.
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