1- that article is 6 months old. , 2- I know a girl who lives on long island and she hasn't paid her mortgage in almost 4 years so there is a lot of truth to that article.
I believe publicly traded banks have to disclose, somewhere, losses on unpaid mortgages. 4 years is probably a skewed data point. Most people can probably live mortgage-free for under a year. And, what happens when they find you have other assets such as bonds or stocks? Can banks still make you pay your mortgage if you're not broke?