Recently in Economy

More

More

While many people facing foreclosure are preyed upon by the unscrupulous, a huge class of folks in Southern California have never been able to afford a home here.

That's illustrated in a disturbing project put together by the Center for Housing Policy. Their Paycheck to Paycheck database combines information about housing prices and compensation paid to workers in a variety of jobs, and breaks it all down into specific metro areas.

More

Bad times for millions of homeowners facing foreclosure is turning out to be good times for scam artists. Some homeowners become so desperate, they fail to exercise basic good judgment. And scamsters are becoming ever more sophisticated.

According to Fannie Mae, the most common "Foreclosure Rescue" scheme goes like this:

A homeowner in trouble is approached and offered a deal that will allow him to stay in his home, as a renter, in return for the deed to the property. The scam artist also usually offers a repurchase deal, so the homeowner can buy the house back when they are in better financial shape.

Once the miscreant has the deed, he sells the house, uses the proceeds to pay off the delinquent loan, pockets the equity and disappears.

Warning signs for this scam include:

• Being approached by a stranger with an unsolicited "rescue" offer.
• Receiving an unsolicited call, mail or flyer about "foreclosure rescue" or saving your home.
• Participating in a complicated deal that you don't fully understand.
• Signing documents that have blanks or false statements. Regardless of what you are told, this is never okay.

If you suspect that you have been a victim of mortgage fraud or are aware of a possible scam, you can report it by calling the Mortgage Fraud Hotline 1-800-4FRAUD8 (1-800-437-2838).

In California, you can also contact the State Attorney General's Office.

Americans between the ages of 18-35 make up the largest group of those without health insurance.

They're the subject of the top story we're working on this week, as SoCal Connected looks at the legions of the young and uninsured.

Great numbers of young people graduating from college and moving into the workforce are losing the health insurance they got through their parents or their school, and not replacing it.

In many cases, that's because employers don't offer insurance. Or, young workers often choose to opt out of employer-sponsored plans because they perceive them as being too expensive.

Many young people think of themselves as healthy, and unlikely to require much in the way of medical attention. But consider these facts:

• Young adults, particularly young males ages 16 to 24, are at the highest risk of all ages for traumatic brain injuries. (Confronting Traumatic Brain Injury, Yale Univ. Press, 1999)
• One-third of all HIV diagnoses are made among young adults. (American Demographics, Feb. 1999)
• Almost one-quarter of 18-29 year-olds are obese. (Commonwealth Fund study, April, 2009)
• There are 3.5 million pregnancies each year among the 21 million women ages 19 to 29. (Commonwealth Fund study, April, 2009)

In an upcoming episode, we are looking at the young and uninsured. People like Edward E-Nunu. He's a graduate student, pursuing a Master's degree in Education at Claremont Graduate University. He's also a diabetic. Edward attended Etiwanda High in San Bernardino County. He went on to graduate from UC Riverside. Here's his story:

In 1996 I was diagnosed with Juvenile, Type I Diabetes. My diagnosis came after I began experiencing different diabetic symptoms like frequent urination and excessive thirst. Following my diagnosis, I was fortunate enough to be insured under my parents. Under their insurance, my prescription needs for a glucometer and chemstrips to monitor my daily blood sugar records, as well as syringes and vials of insulin came with little cost or difficulty. For years I went without worry as I became involved in high school athletics and extra-curriculars for college. Visits to the doctor became a challenge as I attended school away from home. But when I graduated from college in 2006 my health situation changed dramatically.

Upon graduation, my coverage under my parents was dropped and left me with few options. Filling an existing prescription for insulin went from being a trouble-free and inexpensive task to being very problematic and pricey. Diabetes, as is the situation for other prescription-dependent illnesses and diseases, forced me to find a way to get my insulin on my own. Pharmacy visits to Rite-Aid seemed useless without an insurance card to help with retail prescription costs. Purchasing insulin affected not only my livelihood, but also my pocketbook.

My mom suggested I look into a county health program for low-income individuals in the San Bernardino area. Through this program, I was only able to get my prescriptions filled after visiting the emergency room or scheduling an appointment with a local physician. Unfortunately, these emergency room visits lasted at least 6-8 hours - just to get a prescription. It took additional time to get the prescription filled the county pharmacy. Even worse, the appointments scheduled with local physicians often required me to wait months for an urgently needed prescription.

As a result, I had no choice but to occasionally pay for high-priced pharmaceuticals or suffer the “health” consequences. Being an uninsured diabetic put me at a complete disadvantage if I were to ever become sick or injured. I injured my fingers in a recreational football game and was forced to visit the emergency room. What appeared to be a routine check-in on my fingers at the County Hospital resulted in a three-day hospital stay for an infection and an elevated blood sugar reading.

Despite being uninsured, my participation in this county program has been beneficial to my health. This may offer a solution to other individuals in this same situation. Searching for county hospitals that provide medical assistance to the uninsured seems to be the most cost effective means of obtaining treatment and needed medication.

California’s child support system is the largest in the nation and L.A. County’s is the largest in the state with over 425-thousand cases. Each one is an individual drama that’s playing out more and more often in these tough economic times. Increasingly, people are filing for what’s called “support modification” - which is when parents say they’re facing financial hardship and can’t afford to pay child support.

More

At a time of tremendous need why is there also tremendous waste? From banquet halls, caterers and hotels across southern California tons of perfectly good food ends in landfills. It seems simple -- get this food to the hungry. But as Val Zavala found out, it's more complicated than it sounds. Meet the people who have found ways to waste less food and feed more people.

More

Very few things captivate Southern Californians like the topic of real estate.  California has lived through previous housing bubbles but nothing like the size of the current housing boom and bust.  Let us look at a few key points.  The median price for a home in Southern California in February of 2000 was $197,000.  At the peak of the housing bubble, a Southern California home was going for $505,000.  The current median price?  Try $247,000.

More

The Web Team revisits the North HIlls' family trying to live their California dream in the midst of the recession. The Maxwells consider themselves a typical middle class family, even though mom, Nikki, and dad, Bill, haven’t had steady work for months.

More

Home sales are up … prices are down … mortgage rates rock-bottom. By most historical measures, this looks like the ideal time to take the plunge and buy a house in southern California.

More

Los Angeles has the highest percentage of "unbanked" in the nation. There are 300,000 households in L.A. who do not use banks. Instead they use cash, paying too much at check cashing stores and payday lenders. There are twice as many payday lenders, pawn shops and check cashers in L.A. as there are banks and credit unions. Minority communities are especially "bank poor." But things are changing. Val Zavala reports on the launch of a campaign to move the "unbanked" into the financial mainstream. She visits a home where a community organizer is teaching Spanish-speakers about the benefits of banks. She goes to a community center where tax day is a chance to get the "unbanked" banked. And some banks have already discovered that opening branches in low income areas yields surprising success for the company and the community.

More

The grim news about our economic crisis just keeps coming. Makes you want to get away and forget your troubles. Where better than SoCal’s favorite suburb: Vegas, baby! That’s the thing though, in this age of belt tightening and financial comeupance how will a city built around spending, escapism, reckless gambling and over the top glitz, survive? Sure what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but when it’s your earnings that stay there, where’s the fun—let alone justification—in that? Then, in February, President Obama made a specific reference to how inappropriate it would be for a company seeking bailout money to hold a meeting in Las Vegas. And just like one of those old hotels imploding, convention bookings plunged pretty much overnight.

More

Foreclosures, stalled funding, decreased revenue... things are bad enough in SoCal, but we’ve been hearing that things are even worse in Sin City - and they were supposed to be recession-proof. Las Vegas placed all its bets on bigger and brighter and brassier. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but are the odds against Las Vegas too high? We wondered how Las Vegas, often referred to as a “suburb of Los Angeles,” was faring in this economically challenging climate. We sent correspondent and Vegas-phile John Ridley to find out.

More

Which segments of the population are hit hardest by unemployment? What survival strategies do people use when they lose their job? And how effective are employment fairs in actually finding a new job? As joblessness in California soars past 10%, Socal Connected story editor Saul Gonzalez talks to Chris Tilly, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Unemployment.

More

In this tight economy more homeowners are trying to get their homes in the movies--or in commercials, or on TV. Production companies will pay several thousand dollars a day to use houses for location shoots. Jennie & Ken Bulow have made nearly $10,000 this year renting their home out for commercials. We visited them on the day a Dairy Queen commercial was shooting inside their living room.

More

As the economy continues to falter, double-digit unemployment means that more and more people have lost jobs and they’re often shocked and surprised when it happens.

What to do? Where to turn?

More

We talk to people waiting in line for President Obama’s Orange County town hall forum. Many had spent the night to score a coveted ticket to the event. All were hoping to ask their new president questions about the economy, health care and education.

More