Scenes from a Recession

This is a month-old episode of This American Life that a friend played for me recently and I wanted to share it. The first half hour or so details the plight of responsible condo owners in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood who, through no fault of their own, are falling victim to the foreclosure crisis when developers cut corners and units in their building go unoccupied.

Rogers Park is a neighborhood that underwent extreme transformations during the housing boom - as the piece points out - not long ago, the neighborhood was 80% renters (and wasn't the safest place to live either). Then developers started converting buildings to condos. Then the bottom dropped out.

One of the couples interviewed (pictured) happen to also be acquaintances of mine that I see every now and again at local clubs. I don't want to imply that knowing them makes this worse or sadder, but rather that, when there's a human face on a problem, it tends to have a stronger impact.

Click here to listen to the full episode.