HUFFINGTON
07.15.12
TWILIGHT IN THE SUNSHINE STATE
reau of Labor Statistics. As of May
2012, there were 313,000 workers
in the industry. More than half
of all homeowners are currently
underwater on their mortgage,
meaning they owe more on the
loan than the home is worth.
Many of those construction
workers bought homes in places
like Lehigh Gardens. Some took
out ridiculous mortgages that they
couldn’t afford, but the typical
homeowner in distress these days
looks more like Eliseo Orasco.
In 2003, Orasco and his wife
bought a little yellow house with
white trim for $150,000 not far
from the intersection where I am
parked and eating my lunch. He
now lives with a persistent knot
of fear in his stomach that he
will lose his home to foreclosure
and his family, which includes a
17-year-old daughter, will be forced
to live on the street or in their car.
Orasco, a trim Mexican native by way of California who
looks a decade younger than his
51 years, hasn’t worked since a
car accident a decade ago left him
disabled, he says. In 2010, his
wife lost her job of 12 years as a
caregiver at a senior center after
it shut down, and the family fell
into default on their home.
A housing counselor is working
with Suntrust Bank on a possible
loan modification that may allow
Orasco to remain with reduced payments on the house, which is now
worth about $52,000 according to
a Zillow estimate. His wife recently
found part-time work at a daycare,
but money is still very tight.
“We have hope but at the same
time we feel weak,” Orasco says.
Then he begins to sob and tell me
“ALL OF A SUDDEN,
OUR PHONES
STOPPED RINGING.
MOST OF OUR CLIENTS
DISAPPEARED.”
about his next-door neighbor who
died suddenly four days ago, leaving three kids and his a wife. The
neighbor was also deeply behind on
payments and in foreclosure.
“The bank was grinding him
down,” Orasco says, rubbing his
eyes. A foreclosure sale is set for
later in the month, he says.
Conditions aren’t much better
in nearby Ft. Myers, where Jose
and Alma Navarro are fighting to
keep their little home. Jose, who
has a fourth-grade education,
was laid off from his job as a road
painter in 2010, after he started