Latinos in Merced feel brunt of foreclosure crisis

[Liberal_in_LA]

Latinos in Merced feel brunt of foreclosure crisis
Kevin Fagan,Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writers

San Francisco Chronicle December 5, 2010 04:00

Jaime Nuñez bought his slice of the American dream in 1996 - a duplex on a tree-studded street in Merced where he, his wife and four children could have plenty of room to spread out.

The modest home cost $98,000 with a down payment of $5,000. It was a stretch, but doable for the construction worker, and it still left enough money to buy a big-screen TV, new furniture and other trappings of a comfortable life.

It was the kind of life Nuñez, who speaks little English and whose collar is a solid blue, didn't consider possible until he emigrated from Mexico in 1985. The story was the same for thousands of other Latinos in California - who, though they lived on the thinnest of economic margins, managed to snag a home loan or equity line in the go-go mortgage years of the 2000s.

Now, many of those dreams are disasters.

Latinos, especially in California's Central Valley, have been disproportionately hit by the state's foreclosure explosion of the past four years.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/04/MN651GJN2O.DTL#ixzz17SY5p4Ct

[OutNow]

1. My inlaws live in Merced

We visit my inlaws about twice a year. Starting about 2004 we saw hundreds of homes being built on former farm land. Two questions arose immediately: 1. if they were paving all the farm land where would the food come from, and 1. who did they expect to buy these houses. Merced is a poor town with high unemployment and low wages in the best of times. I still don't know the answer to question #1, but the answer to question #2 is clear. NO ONE. There are now many half finished houses and even more finished but vacant homes. Block after block.

What where they thinking?

[KamaAina]

2. Astonishingly, they may have been thinking that people priced out of the Bay Area would move there

and endure a two-hour commute each way. That's what was going on in Stockton and Modesto, which are both closer in.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. and that the UC Merced campus would bring in high paid staff. yet it remains a tiny campus

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. speculation was driven by the new UC merced campus.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Yes Merced is such as sad place to visit now

And without a doubt the Latino community and working people in general took a huge broadside in it all. I've heard some horror stories from really great people, including substandard building quality, and nearly new homes falling to pieces even as the market continues to plunge. Very sad.