President Ronald Regan once said, “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
At Lehigh Acres Food Pantry’s, the conversation often centers on real estate. Once-taboo details, home values and what people paid for their properties are casually discussed, and there appears to be little shame in walking away from a mortgage or even fighting the bank on a foreclosure.
With the primary election less than eight weeks away, the talk has turned to politics. At one the food pantries and throughout hard-hit Lehigh Acres, a frustration over the housing crisis and the federal government seems inability to help has turned into apathy at best, and rage, at worst.
“The destroyed Florida,” said Bobbie Ruggieri, a food pantry volunteer. She also volunteers as a nurse at a free medical clinic with over 200 people on its waiting list.
Once sleepy and rural, the area boomed high and hard between 2003 and 2007. The population doubled to about 95,000, mostly from service and construction workers living large off the success of the area’s new housing. The fall came just as fast. By 2008, Lehigh Acres area had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate. Currently, one in every 151 homes is in foreclosure.
Here and likely elsewhere, no politician is spared the fury over the housing crunch. Experts say neither President Barack Obama nor Republican candidate Mitt Romney who will challenge him in November have solutions for falling prices, depressed construction and waves of foreclosures.
Obama said in January that he wants to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages. His GOP opponents generally say the government should not interfere in the housing market. But more experts have begun to advocate a bolder approach to provide relief to the 11 million homeowners in the United States who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney who stood in front of an empty, foreclosed home Lehigh Acres told a crowd that he would encourage banks to work with homeowners. He also defended the banks, saying they also were hamstrung by the crisis.
“In this case, it’s because of the banks,” Romney said. “Well, the banks aren’t bad people. They’re just overwhelmed.”
Food bank pantry manager Karen Balch was too busy handing out deli meat and bread to the needy to go see candidates when they were in town. She said she wishes any national politician would just drop by and see the real need.
“They’re all good people here,” said Balch, who started volunteering when she lost her job at a flea market. “They’re just hard-working people. It seems like everyone you turns for help in Lehigh could be losing a home.”
Ruggieri doesn’t see the housing crisis as any one politician’s or party’s fault, although she does have some choice words for the banks.
Daniel Bozarth, who rents a home a few streets away from where Romney stood, the 26-year-old, who is collecting $160 a week in unemployment after losing his job, also doesn’t blame Obama.
“If we were to have someone that would think outside the box and see what we need,” he said. “We need someone to get us jobs. I think we’ve hit rock bottom.”