Michigan Foreclosures Stressing Tenants, Social Service Groups

In Holland, Michigan, WOOD-TV Channel 8 (Grand Rapids) reports on an elderly tenant who uses an oxygen tank and was diagnosed with a debilitating case of diabetes who is being forced out of her rented home as a result of her landlord's failure to make the mortgage payments; and the stress being felt by a local social service organization as a result of the wave of foreclosure evictions.

• "This is a new kind of homeless - those that are the innocent victims," said Darryl Bartlett, the executive director of the Holland Rescue Mission for Women. "Now to hear that subprime lending has affected our people, yeah, this is a first." Can shelters like this one, with an annual budget of $2 million, handle the influx of a new category of homeless? "We did not plan for large numbers of people who are being foreclosed on becoming homeless. That was not in our plan," adds Bartlett. "We will try to put more people into these spaces and try to do it in a more efficient way."

For more, see Foreclosure forces renter out, or here to view the WOOD-TV Channel 8 video coverage.

For other stories on tenants unknowingly renting homes in foreclosure, go here, or here, or here, or here. equity skimming unwittingly gamma