COLLATERAL
DAMAGE
reckon a three-bedroom apartment
will cost nearly $2,000 a month,
and most places require a security
deposit. They can’t seem to scrape
more than a few hundred dollars together at a time. They have no close
family who could help them out.
Genel believed Mogelberg,
she says, when he assured her
they would prevail in their fight
with bank, when he said they
wouldn’t get evicted. She realizes now they should have planned
more, saved more.
“I’ve been kicking myself in the
butt,” she says.
She’s been late a lot. She has
also missed days.
“I’ve been pushing my luck at
work,” she says.
She does so again on a Friday
morning. “I broke down on the
phone while talking to my boss,”
she says.
Often she can get a ride to
work or borrow a company car,
but today her only mode of transportation is the family’s truck.
If she left, she fears they would
have no way to get to the next
Priceline find: A $50 room in
Brea, Calif., about 15 miles away.
“I can’t leave Chris and Jaylyn,”
she says.
After breakfast — with the left-
HUFFINGTON
09.22.13
overs carefully packed into a plastic foam box — the family loads its
belongings onto a hotel cart. Genel
waits by the front entrance while
Mogelberg fetches the truck.
It is a postcard-perfect Southern California day. A family staying at the hotel chatters excitedly
as they exit. They are on their way
to one of the amusement parks.
The next hotel is smaller and
darker than this one. They will stay
throughout the weekend, sharing
one small room and one bed.
The next week, allotted a few
hours inside their former apartment, they will retrieve several
large garbage bags worth of belongings, including Genel’s father’s burial flag, a treasure she
prizes among all else.
After that, they don’t know.
“I’m at my breaking
point,” Genel says.
Ben Hallman is a senior financial
writer at The Huffington Post.
HuffPost
Associate
Business
Editor
Caroline
Fairchild
discusses
the issue of
foreclosed
renters on
HuffPost
Live.