Federal lending data show that a high percentage of mortgages for homes on the north, south and west sides of Newark â as much as 50 percent in some neighborhoods â are subprime loans. And a national study by the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan research group based in North Carolina, predicts that more than 18 percent of the people holding those loans will go into foreclosure in the next three to four years. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/nyregion/28debt.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all --RS
Those people were in trouble from the get go. They couldn't afford the payment in the first place. The only thing society can do for them is not lend them money so they don't get in trouble. Its not that they might or might not be hard working etc, but they should be the renters renting the other side of the house for $400/mo and saving money to buy something affordable, instead of trying to play landlords making a $2600/mo mortgage payment out of only a $2000/mo salary and wishing they could have rented the other 1/2 for $1200 instead of the $400 they were able to get.