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May Stay Thirsty Column: Health Insurance, Homeownership and the Great Recession

Last month, Over 50 and Out of Work completed the interviewing portion of our multimedia project, and we are now editing our feature-length documentary. The film will focus on three of our original 100 interviewees, who are all over 50 years of age and lost their jobs as a result of the Great Recession.

The film’s three main characters struggle with the most common difficulties that our 100 interviewees have experienced – the shock of sudden, unexpected joblessness; worries about paying bills, especially mortgage payments; loss of health insurance; a prolonged and frustrating job search; depleted or exhausted savings, as well as diminished optimism about the future. They each resolve or adapt to the devastating impact of extended unemployment on their lives differently, but the issues of health insurance coverage and homeownership dominate their concerns and fears, as they do for many Americans who are 50-plus and jobless.

To read more, click here.

 

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Is Owning a Home Still Part of the American Dream?

In the short clip above, Sewin Chan, an economist and associate professor of public policy at NYU Wagner, talks about how the last 10 years have changed Americans’ perception of homeownership.

In her full interview, posted in the experts section of our site, Chan discusses the U.S. housing market, the recent foreclosure crisis and its impact on homeownership, saving and accumulating wealth.

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Good News: Help for homeowners from NACA

Recently, we talked with one of our interviewees who was not able to make her mortgage payments after she lost her job in 2009.  She was fearful that she would lose her home.

Last December, she attended a NACA (Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America) workshop in Charlotte, N.C. and the nonprofit helped her renegotiate the terms of her mortgage with Chase.  This month, she made her first mortgage payment in three years.  She anticipates with great relief that she will be able to remain current on her future payments and remain in her home.

We have added NACA to our resources page and are hoping to interview its founder, Bruce Marks, in the near future.

NACA will hold the American Dream convention from Tuesday, Jan. 10 until Sunday, Jan. 15  at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.  If you live in the area and need help renegotiating your mortgage, check out the information on NACA’s site and plan to attend the convention.

NACA will be holding similar events around the country over the coming months, so check the schedule on its home page.

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‘Losing my home’ by Bill Davis

Bill Davis, 60, one of our 100 interviewees, who is still seeking full-time employment, contributed this piece describing how he felt about the loss of his home in 2008 to foreclosure :

 

One summer day in 2008, I walked out the sliding glass door that led from my sunroom onto the back deck of my house.  I walked over and flipped on the main light switch that lit up my back yard, two acres of manicured lawn with little ‘islands’ that featured flowering shrubs or a dogwood tree, and each had a light that shined up so that every little island was a special feature within the large green lawn.  In the woods that surrounded the property along the boundary line were other lights, high up in the trees so that when the main switch was turned on, it lit up the entire area behind my home.

This home was the crowning jewel of all my hard work, savings and plans for over 20 years. As I looked out over the scene it no longer felt like a thing that was mine – mine to enjoy, mine to call home.  I stood for a long time, remembering my boys growing up here, racing about with their friends, the birthday parties we’d had with all our friends over.  It was like looking at a postcard of some beautiful place, bright with color but just an image, a two-dimensional representation of something that was real, but that I was not part of – not any longer.

Turning back inside, I went and sat on my couch.  I looked around the family room at the pieces of furniture – mahogany chests and cherry wood tables, glowing from the polish applied with caring, loving hands.  These things were mine; they were part of me.  Each piece represented a kind of accomplishment, an addition to the accumulated totality of my life.  They were more than just things, each had a history, a story.  And I felt like crying.

Earlier in the day the sheriff had posted a notice to evacuate the premises, a foreclosure notice.  I would be packing up and leaving in just a matter of a few weeks.  All the furniture, my boat, everything would go to either to the bankruptcy court or the IRS.  I had been forced to close my employment agency because the economy would no longer sustain it.  Trying to keep things going, I had gone through most of my savings and investments.  I was broke and had just enough money left to rent an apartment.

Telling my kids that we would have to leave our home had been the hardest.  They would have to change schools. We would be leaving our friends and neighbors.  I was unemployed and getting older.  The skills I had developed over the preceding 15 years had little practical application in the current marketplace.  As I sat down with my kids and explained this, I knew that this was just the beginning – harder times yet, I feared would be coming. I couldn’t then have imagined how true this would turn out to be.

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OVER 50 INTERVIEW WITH HOME HEALTH WORKER AT OCCUPY WALL STREET

On Thursday, Oct. 13, we interviewed Rosina Grignetti, 52, at Occupy Wall Street.  Grignetti works as a home health aide in Lexington, Mass. on weekends.  She had traveled to Zuccotti Park midweek to join the occupiers and plans to return.

“Bring back the American Dream,” Grignetti said.

 

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Homes/Underwater/Foreclosures: Nevada

Today’s  Bloomberg article Fewer Homes Were ‘Under Water in Third Quarter as Foreclosures Rose focuses on a sad fact:  In the third quarter,  fewer homes were worth less than the mortgages owed on them because the number of foreclosures has increased, not because property values have rebounded.

Nevada continues to suffer the more than any other state from the housing bust.  Two-thirds of homes with mortgages are underwater, and one in 79 households received a notice of default or foreclosure last October in the Silver State.

Last month, when we interviewed eight Nevadans who were over 50 and out of work , we found that four of them had been severely impacted by the decline in the state’s home values.  Kimberly Gilek hopes to sell her home soon, although it is worth much less than she paid for it, because she needs the money for living expenses.  Albert Yasbick and Mary Sironen are both unemployed and their houses are underwater. They are struggling to make payments and stay in their homes.  Anthony Lalos has already lost his home to foreclosure.

“The impact of the recession on Nevada is horrible.  There’s just people out of work; people losing their homes.  We’re the number one state in foreclosures.  Houses all around are sitting empty, and every time I see one, I think of the poor people.  Where did they go?  What did they do?”

Kimberly Gilek

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Project Homeless Connect in Las Vegas

Today, between our scheduled interviews for Over 50 and Out of Work, we stopped by Southern Nevada’s annual Project Homeless Connect, held at the Cashman Center in Las Vegas.  Last year, over 3,500 homeless individuals showed up at the center to receive help.  Project organizers expected close to 5,000 this November, given Nevada’s high unemployment rate of 14.4 percent.

Homeless individuals lined up to enter the Cashman Center.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., homeless individuals were able to receive free medical care, benefits assistance and job readiness services, as well as food and clothing.

Volunteers helping the homeless.

At the well-organized event, police and volunteers shepherded individuals into the center and helped them access the various services offered.

Job readiness counseling.

Clothing distribution.

Sam and I also conducted three more video interviews for our multimedia documentary project today.

After we interview Mayor Oscar Goodman tomorrow, we fly back to New Jersey so that we can catch up on editing and posting our latest interviews online!

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SET FOR LIFE premieres on public television in November 2013

 

Puts a Human Face on America’s Unemployment Crisis

Award-Winning Doc Premieres on Public Television in November 2013

 

(Boston, MA) – Although four years removed from the official end of the Great Recession, the statistics surrounding U.S. unemployment still appear grim. Almost 12 million Americans remain out of work — 4.1 million more than when recession began in 2007.

This crisis has hit the Baby Boom generation particularly hard.

Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, came of age during an era of prosperity and optimism. By and large, they grew up feeling confident and secure about their futures, believing hard work and following the rules would leave them “set for life.”  Those expectations seemed justified until the economic downturn prompted massive lay-offs and government budget cutbacks. As a result, the Boomers, now in their 50s and 60s, suddenly found themselves out of a job — some for long periods of time — and trying to cope with their rapidly eroding American Dream.

In response to the ongoing unemployment crisis in the United States, American Public Television (APT) proudly announces the November 2013 (check local listings) release of Set for Life, a timely and thought-provoking one-hour documentary produced by Tree of Life Productions, LLC about three Baby Boomers struggling to recover from the Great Recession.

The Set for Life public television broadcast is funded in part by AARP Foundation, working with struggling Americans 50 plus to help them win back opportunity. In addition, hundreds of individual Kickstarter donations also helped fund the production.

Thrust into a quest they never anticipated, the film’s three main characters deal with the economic, financial and psychological impact of losing their jobs. Joe Price, a third-generation steelworker from Weirton, W. Va.; Deborah Salim, a 15-year community college employee from Conway, S.C., and George Ross, a Vietnam veteran and an information technology project manager from Livermore, Calif. suffer financial woes, self-doubt and health problems as they endure the daunting job-hunt process. Their poignant and, at times, heart-wrenching stories put a human face behind the statistics.

Prior to its national broadcast, Set for Life made the rounds on the film festival circuit, earning acclaim from both judges and critics alike. It won “Best Documentary Feature” at the Spring 2013 New Jersey Film Festival, the 2013 Northern California Film International Film Festival and the 2012 Massachusetts Independent Film Festival. It also served as an official selection of the Madrid International Film Festival.

Set for Life grew out of OverFiftyandOutofWork.com, a two-year online multimedia project. The producers traveled across the country and conducted video interviews with 100 Americans, 50 and older, who lost their jobs during the Great Recession. The online project received considerable recognition, including features in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Smart Money.com, abcnews.com, forbes.com, The Huffington Post and NextAvenue.org.

Over 50 and Out of Work

The Over 50 and Out of Work website includes 100 video interviews with Americans 50 and older, and 18 video interviews with experts who discuss unemployment among older workers from different perspectives. The website connects to an active social-media community on  FacebookTwitter and related blog.  The Over 50 and Out of Work/Set for Life network includes: AARP Foundation, AARP, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Harvard Business School, John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, Next Avenue, Northeastern University, Platform to Employment , Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College, The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, NYU/Wagner and Urban Institute.

 

Tree of Life Productions, LLC

Tree of Life Productions is a full-service video production company for both commercial and independent projects.

 

American Public Television

American Public Television (APT) has been a leading distributor of high-quality, top-rated programming to America’s public television stations since 1961. Since 2004, APT has distributed approximately half of the top 100 highest-rated public television titles. Among its 300 new program titles per year are prominent documentaries, news and current affairs programs, dramatic series, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies, including For Love of Liberty: The Story of America’s Black Patriots, A Ripple of Hope, Rick Steves’ Europe, Newsline, Globe Trekker, Simply Ming, Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope, America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Lidia’s Italy, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home, Midsomer Murders, Moyers & Company, Doc Martin, Rosemary & Thyme, BBC World News, The Rat Pack: Live and Swingin’, Johnny Mathis: Wonderful, Wonderful! and Nightly Business Report. APT also licenses programs internationally through its APT Worldwide service. In 2006, APT launched and nationally distributed Create® – the TV channel featuring the best of public television’s lifestyle programming. APT is also a partner in the WORLD™ channel, public television’s premier news and documentary channel.

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Building a supportive Over 50 and Out of Work community

Several days ago, a comment was posted on our website:

What do we do? I am 53, been out of work for 4 years and yesterday I moved out of the small apt. that I was renting, put what few worldly possessions I have into a storage unit and now I am officially homeless! I am not a lazy or stupid man, I have started many businesses and been the CEO of a few companies….Why can’t I get a job? FUCK ! If I was a drug addict or drunk it seems the govt. would be there with some assistance. I have exactly 123.00 left in the bank, I am very good at living on 5 bucks a day for food, but how much longer can I keep up the appearance that all in normal? No $$, no home, no life or health insurance…Its all gone……Shit I cant even afford to die! Who would pay for that? My ex-wife and kids don’t need that crap………………….sorry for the foul language, figured I should vent a bit before I lose my mind.

We took it and posted it anonymously on our Over 50 and Out of Work Facebook page, where we get more replies and responses.  We also notified the comment writer, asked where he or she resides and invited him or her to participate in the Facebook discussion – our usual procedure in this type of social media situation.

The writer responded and let us know that he resides in Los Angeles.  

How can we help him?  

How can we build a mutually supportive, encouraging community that helps others find jobs and resources? 

We created this site, made a documentary about the issues surrounding unemployment among older Americans and provided a forum on our social media sites.  

Now we need your ideas and suggestions.  Let us hear from you.

 

 

 


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