Some homeowners in Prince George’s County are grappling with the current recession while still mired in debt from predatory home loans from the last recession.
The 2008-2009 subprime mortgage crisis left thousands of homeowners in Maryland — which was third in the country for foreclosures — strapped with loans that were initially low before ballooning dramatically. Black homeowners — particularly in Prince George’s County which was hardest hit in the state for foreclosures — were often targeted for these loans. Many didn’t find out about the high cost of the loans until receiving a notice for intent to foreclose, years after the housing crisis had supposedly ended.
And when they try to seek help to avoid foreclosure, they’re mostly told to get a hard-to-obtain modification or declare bankruptcy.
The county couldn’t provide an estimate on how many of the foreclosures were due to subprime loans, but experts with the county’s NAACP says that a large majority of the more than 3,000 foreclosure cases in 2019 were due to subprime loans. The county reached its peak in foreclosures in 2010 with more than 12,700. Maryland still remains high on the national list for foreclosure, even though there’s a moratorium on evictions for government-backed mortgages.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Dominique Maria Bonessi over at WAMU
