LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
A “Demographic
Train Wreck”
E HAVE HOPE but at
the same time we feel
weak.” These words
are spoken by Eliseo
Orasco, a disabled 51-year-old father whose struggles are detailed
in HuffPost senior financial reporter Ben Hallman’s story about
Florida’s changing demographics
and uncertain future in this week’s
issue. The worry that underlies
Orasco’s words is specific: he is
staring down foreclosure on his
small house on Florida’s Gulf Coast
— “ground zero of the foreclosure
crisis” — where he lives with his
wife and teenage daughter.
His words also capture something larger: the fact that the
American Dream has turned
into a nightmare for millions of
middle-class families. Ben’s reporting, which takes him to the
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foreclosure-ravaged Lehigh Acres
neighborhood, captures not only
the weakness and resulting fear,
but also the hope — the hope that
the Italian journalist Luigi Barzini
must have been thinking of when
he once described America as
“alarmingly optimistic.”
In his report, Ben captures the
lives and hopes of several Florid-