Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Foreclosure Aftermaths: Today's Theme

Fascinating piece in today's Salon: A "repo" woman whose job it is to go into a foreclosed house and clean it up for the bank so that it can be re-sold. This hits close to home as I have a relative who is currently facing foreclosure, and so this repo woman or someone like her may have to clean up my relative's stuff. The most disturbing line is actually not so much about what people leave behind but how they behave while they are in the house:

"Don't you feel bad for the people?" everyone always asks. The short answer to that is, "No." But I do feel bad for the kids, the kids whose parents left behind their toys and their artwork, the kids whose school pictures I have tossed into a garbage bag. And for all the kids whose bedroom doors had locks on the outside.
I can imagine that might happen once or twice--teenager out of control or whatever--but "all the kids" suggests a behavior that is not as deviant as I would like to think.

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