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This story is fascinating, both as a an account of how far the mortgage crisis has spread, and as an example how much politicians are willing to sacrifice to run for office:
A Long Beach congresswoman who fell behind in her payments on a $535,000 mortgage in Sacramento said in a written statement that she owns the home, but financial documents show the house was sold at public auction and has been in the possession of the buyer for weeks. The auction for Rep. Laura Richardson's house, in Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood, took place on May 7. The transaction was detailed in public records filed with the county. Richardson, a Democrat, a former Assembly member who was elected to the House last year, bought the 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom house in January 2007, but soon fell behind in the payments.Essentially, Richardson couldn't both support her campaign for the congressional seat of the late Juanita Millender-McDonald (she had loaned herself $60,000) and keep up two homes (the house in Sacramento that was foreclosed upon and her home in her congressional district in Long Beach.) This doesn't exactly seem to be the story of a struggling homeowner brought low by the foreclosure crisis and Richardson doesn't seem to have been entirely honest with the press, but it is a sobering example of how dire the housing crisis has become. --Sam Boyd
