Foreclosures are at an all time high. Many American families are starting to lose their homes along with their jobs. This phenomenon does not discriminate and is touching everyone. Sixty minutes did a special on the new generation of Americans who were successful, living the dream who are now living the nightmare of being without a home. The father of one family interviewed was a wall street stock broker who previously made $750,000 at the peak of the trading and now is working as a Pizza delivery guy just to pay the utilities. They were behind on their payments for over a year and foreclosure is imminent. The pool in their home was cracked and the house was deteriorating. The family could pay the electric one month and then the water then next month to keep things going. They have two teenage kids and are looking at being House less within a couple months. They have no family to move in with so where is it they are going to live after the bank takes the house?

Budgets are being cut, social service agencies do not have room at the Inn and the food centers are running low on food. The second round of foreclosures is probably on the way as there was the original ninety day moratorium on foreclosures waiting for the stimulus package to take effect. Where are these people going to live when they have no credit and no relatives to move in with?

Investors are the next group who will be letting the houses go back to the bank as the market value of the areas drop with foreclosures taking over the sold value pricing. When the foreclosures start creating the market values, many of the investment homes will have existing loans thousands over market value. With the drop in income at every level, investors who were leveraged into properties will just stop making payments and thereby let the homes go into foreclosure. When an investor lets the home go back to the bank it has taken a potential rental property out of the list of available homes until another investor or home owner purchases the home.

It appears we could be faced with many more “house less” families and a limited amount of rental properties or income to pay for the rent. Where is a family with three children and only one adult carrying a job or possibly both without a job going to live?

Do you think investors who still have credit should start investing in larger homes with more bedrooms and baths to be prepared for extended families getting back together? Do you think cities should look at zoning regulations to allow temporary boarding houses so people with extra bedrooms could rent out to people without homes?

What are your thoughts on this growing crises and what do you think communities and families should do to prepare for what could be coming down the road?

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Now the newness of the Presidential election is over and we are getting down to business. How is it we are going to help each other? What does it mean to reach out and love our neighbor? Do you find it easy to find places to volunteer? Is there something you can physically do to help in our community or are you just giving money? If you can’t give money what can you give and how is it working for you?

Is there a website you are using to find places to help? What is your church doing to reach out and help people? How are you communicating? Is your place of employment doing anything to help? Do you think kids can help? How do we coordinate the volunteers who want to do something? What is working and what is NOT working?

Share with us what you are doing so we can go out and do the same!

To comment on this blog you will have several choices:
If you are already a blogger, click on the drop down menu and select a profile to post from. If you use google you will be asked for your username and pass word then type your comment and enter. Then it will again ask you to type a string of letters and submit.

You can also just use your name (any screen name is fine) or be Anonymous. Go to the drop down menu and just type in your name and leave off the u rl if you do no have one. You will be asked to type in a string of letters shown in a box and then submit your comment.

Watching the world evolve into cyber communication it came to me we will need to help one another through the transition. The social networking elephant is way too big to eat by yourself. As I started to learn the components of the new social networking sites I realized I was spending literally 8 to 10 hours A DAY glued to the computer trying to click all the buttons and read about each function. I had to figure out how to upload pictures for profiles, create screen names and pass words.

I started with facebook, terrified I would go out in public with 0 friends. I was aware the facebook format shows right up front how many friends you have, so I called the few people I knew on facebook begging to let me be their friend. As my online tribe grew I was happy to have over 100 friends in a week. The key to building the group was hijacking friends of my friends. When one friend would accept me, I would go to their friends and see who I knew and sent them an invitation. I always wrote a note on the invitation so we could really make a connection on a personal basis.

My next endeavor was Twitter. I got the screen name and then decided I would not worry about finding followers till I understood what was going on. I still post on twitter from my lap top as I really have not figured it out on the phone nor have I decided if I want to have all those tweets coming through. I did get hooked up with an online writing group from a twitter tweet and it has worked out wonderful to meet people all over the world interested in writing articles. My learning curve has been expedited by the kind words and support from the individuals in that group. I started posting on twitter and now I have people wanting to follow me over two or three tweets a day.

I signed up on youtube and learned how to post my videos from a 9 year old who had a “how to video” on uploading my video content. I originally started using a logitec video cam which was $31.00 at Sam’s club. I had to use Microsoft movie Maker to create the videos to upload to youtube.

I knew I needed better equipment and I asked for help from my friends on facebook. I found I needed a Flip cam and now I am a master of editing and taking videos everywhere. I would never have been at this point if I hadn’t had help from my friends.
I also signed up for Linked in and joined a group within the Linkedin entity where I went through asking group members to be part of my network. One of the members was a Dj on blip.fm and sent out some great music. So I went to blip.fm and now I am a DJ too.
One of the members of my article group had a radio show on blogtalkradio.com so I am going to have a radio show soon. This method of communication and learning is addicting.

It is my opinion that it took help from other group members for me to emerge into cyber space and feel comfortable. At first it was overwhelming and the time it took to understand how each network functioned totally consumed me and I was spending way too much learning. I had some help online but mostly I learned from self teaching with hours of trial and error. I have tried to help others by saving them the ramp up time and getting them to the finish line without the long journey I took.

What do you think about social networking? How are you working it? What help do you need? Ask me more questions I would love to share my learning curve lessons. If I don’t know the answer I have friends and will get you the answer.

To comment on this blog you will have several choices:
If you are already a blogger, click on the drop down menu and select a profile to post from. If you use google you will be asked for your username and pass word then type your comment and enter. Then it will again ask you to type a string of letters and submit.

You can also just use your name (any screen name is fine) or be Anonymous. Go to the drop down menu and just type in your name and leave off the u rl if you do no have one. You will be asked to type in a string of letters shown in a box and then submit your comment.