Beginning last January, The New York Times made regular visits to Beth Court, about 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, to chronicle how the foreclosure crisis had reshaped a middle-class neighborhood. Four of the eight houses went through foreclosure, and the others barely escaped the same fate. Beth Court was a microcosm of a nation in deep recession, a block of neighbors whose bad choices ”” often with the complicity of lending agencies ”” came crashing into a global economic downturn.
Now, a year later, California’s unemployment rate continues to grow, its housing market remains depressed and the state’s fiscal situation is dire. But the economic and policy shifts that are slowly changing parts of the country are also making a mark here.
Mr. Winkler, a factory worker, was hired at the end of September by Kimberly-Clark at the company’s mill in Fullerton, about 50 miles from here. He had gone more than year without a job….
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One Middle Class Neighborhood: Optimism Is Fresh Arrival in California Cul-de-Sac
Beginning last January, The New York Times made regular visits to Beth Court, about 60 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, to chronicle how the foreclosure crisis had reshaped a middle-class neighborhood. Four of the eight houses went through foreclosure, and the others barely escaped the same fate. Beth Court was a microcosm of a nation in deep recession, a block of neighbors whose bad choices ”” often with the complicity of lending agencies ”” came crashing into a global economic downturn.
Now, a year later, California’s unemployment rate continues to grow, its housing market remains depressed and the state’s fiscal situation is dire. But the economic and policy shifts that are slowly changing parts of the country are also making a mark here.
Mr. Winkler, a factory worker, was hired at the end of September by Kimberly-Clark at the company’s mill in Fullerton, about 50 miles from here. He had gone more than year without a job….
Read it all.