Today we have published an excellent article from The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority under the title of “Cayman Islands Monetary Authority issues Public Advisory: Understanding foreclosures”.

It gives advice everyone should heed.

Banks are merciless. They hold all the cards and they will take their pint of blood they are owed plus interest.

CIMA’s article starts with this warning:

“Losing your home is the last thing any homeowner wants to think about. However, by understanding the foreclosure process and what often leads to it, you can better position yourself to deal with potential problems that could impact your ability to service your mortgage and place your most valued asset at risk.”

In the United Kingdom and in some US States there is legislation making it more difficult for banks to throw you out of your home when the debt owed to the bank is small.

Despite the talk before the General Election there is still no such protection here.

Even where there is some protection by legislation there are few plans that work to aid people who are about to lose their homes to foreclosure.

Re-financing plans are a joke as most rely on the same bank that is foreclosing on you to carry out refinancing and loan modifications.

As Ronald Ricker said, writing in The Huffington Post, “A little like throwing the supposedly ‘repentant’ fox into the hen house. These banks are not monitored or supervised.”

What is forgotten is the emotional damage it does to the people who lose their homes.

Keith Ablow, MD, has written an article about this on PsychCentral titled “The Emotional Meaning of Home”.

He writes:

“Our homes are more than financial assets. They have deep emotional meaning. For those of us fortunate enough to have grown up in houses owned by our parents, they were the backdrop for our childhood memories — the places we played and argued and hung our artwork and marked the door jam with pencil lines as we grew taller. For better or worse, the houses of our childhoods represented to many of us a good measure of the success our parents had attained, an outward expression of how hard work had paid off in comfort and safety and the respect of the community. The lawn got cut. The paint got freshened up. Maybe a pool got added out back. When things went well, our houses grew with us.

“With the home foreclosure rate in America skyrocketing, our economic conditions translate into a true public health concern. Losing one’s home can feel like losing one’s self. Those being foreclosed upon can feel they have let down their families, that they have been “exposed” as failures in the eyes of the community and that the road back to stability is too full of twists and turns to even begin to think about navigating it.

“This perfect storm of lowered self-esteem and perceived loss of face is indeed the growing place for divorce, panic disorder, major depression and stress-related medical conditions like hypertension. That’s why a national program that would offer a kind of “outplacement” psychological counseling to those who are losing or who have lost their homes is needed. Our community hospitals, academic medical centers, family physicians and community mental health centers should be prepared in a special way for the special burden that home foreclosure represents.

“During my sixteen years practicing psychiatry, I’ve worked with many people facing financial reversals, including home foreclosure. Some were anxious or felt hopeless. Some had developed symptoms of major depression. “

You can read the whole article at: https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-emotional-meaning-of-home/

He gives some excellent advice to persons who are facing and have had foreclosure.

With this Editorial and the CIMA story I hope this will help any of our readers who are sadly losing their homes to foreclosure.