The housing crisis continues unabated, and millions of unemployed Americans remain at risk of ending up homeless. But additional government help is arriving from the Obama administration, and nonprofit agencies are making a difference in the efforts of some families to get help from their lenders.
Despite rosy financial forecasts made by economists this spring, our fears that the nation is about to sink into another depression are reaching depressing extremes. A new CNN poll reveals that nearly half of Americans believe a 1930s-scale depression is possible within the next 12 months.
The economy may be rebounding, but the benefits have yet to filter down to the hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans. Here's the story of one homeless mother: how she wound up in a shelter in a tough town and how the world looks from her perspective.
DailyFinance profiled the 33-year-old widowed mother last month as part of a series of stories on "The New Homeless." Now, thanks to some generous readers, Paul and her nine-year-old daughter Alyssa are preparing to move into their own apartment.
The story of the Great Depression is often told in pictures: Photos of bank runs and bread lines still pack a punch, almost 80 years later. But the Depression's position as our absolute standard for economic disaster carries an unintended consequence: The power of its images seem to overwhelm -- and minimize -- our own economic troubles. These photos may get you to see the Great Recession differently.
Mike is an aspiring Web developer, but he and his family ended up homeless in San Francisco after he lost a job and an emergency loan from a relative fell through. Now living in temp housing with his wife and two kids, he's still looking for work nearly a year after his last job. Here's his story, the fourth in a DailyFinance series highlighting the economic downturn's often-unseen human toll.
After Jennifer Paul's husband died suddenly two years ago, she and daughter Alyssa left New Jersey for Fort Myers, Fla., where Jennifer got a job doing data entry. But disaster again struck when her employer abruptly closed. Now they're back in downtrodden Camden, N.J., in a shelter. Here's her story, the third in a series DailyFinance is doing to highlight this deep downturn's often-unseen human toll.
